Fifty Shames of Earl Grey: A Parody

by Fanny Merkin

  “Yes, Miss Steal,” he says. “Now take off that ugly blue smock and let’s go.”

  He’s so confident and forceful, unlike any boyfriend I’ve ever had. Well, he’s not my boyfriend, and I haven’t ever had a boyfriend, but you know what I mean, right? He’s like a really rich caveman. Me. Want. Anna!

  “What about your shopping list?” I ask.

  “Forget it. I’ll have one of my assistants do my shopping.”

  “Um—Mr. Grey—I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just say 'yes.’” He smiles at me again with that smiling smile of his, all of his teeth in a straight line. How I’d like to run my tongue along those teeth . . .

  “Yes! Yes, yes, yes—oh yes, Mr. Grey!” I scream, throwing my smock off. It hits a customer riding a Rascal scooter in the face, and she crashes into a display of Katy Perry perfume. I pull my shirt over my nose to avoid choking on the vapors from the spilled perfume; Walmart suddenly smells like a prosti-tot pageant. Earl takes my hand in his and leads me out of the store before the hazmat team arrives.

  Chapter Five

  EARL GREY has a helicopter waiting for us in the Walmart parking lot. “Where’s the pilot?” I ask.

  “Right here, baby,” he says, pointing two thumbs toward his chest. For the first time since he showed up in my checkout lane, I let my eyes wander the full length of his body. The bulge running down the side of his pants leg is quite noticeable. Then I notice a similar bulge running down the side of his other pants leg. Either he has a banana in each pocket, or he’s really happy to see me.

  We step into the helicopter’s cockpit and he takes control of the controls like the controlling man he is. He flashes me that smile again, the one that makes me soak my sweatpants.

  “I’ve never been in a helicopter before,” I say as the helicopter blades start spinning overhead. “Heck, I’ve never even flown on an airplane. This is so exciting, Mr. Grey.”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet, Anna,” he says. It’s the first time he’s called me by my first name. Swoon. “Do you know what the Mile High Club is?”

  I shake my head. “Is that some sort of country club for aviators?”

  “Sort of,” he says, smirking.

  Before I know it, we’re off the ground and soaring above the parking lot. The people are so small from this height; they look like ants (although they’re wearing clothes and have two legs instead of six). This is amazing. I’m in a helicopter with Earl Grey, the most handsomest man on the planet. And now he’s the most handsomest man in the air! I peer into the distance, and can see the Space Needle in faraway Seattle jutting above the skyline. We’re up so high, and the sun is so bright—

  “Earl !” I shout.

  “What!” he shouts back, over the roar of the helicopter’s massive blades.

  “Watch out for the sun!”

  “What!”

  “I said, WATCH OUT FOR THE SUN!”

  He shoots me a puzzled look.

  “What? I’m not wearing sunscreen,” I say.

  He shakes his head.

  “Nevermind,” I mutter. He probably knows how close to the sun we can fly without getting burned. I hope.

  As we begin our descent, I get butterflies in my stomach. I close my mouth, because I don’t want to pull a Kathleen and spew chunks all over Earl. He lands the helicopter at the Starbucks across the street from Walmart.

  “We’re here,” Earl says wickedly. You might not think someone can say “we’re here” wickedly, but if you heard Earl say it, you would totes agree. He says everything wickedly.

  We step out of the helicopter and he leads me, hand in hand, into the Starbucks. He’s not wearing his joy-buzzer, but his touch is still electric. I gaze into his gazing eyes gazingly like a gazelle gazing into another gazelle’s gazing gaze.

  WHAM!

  The next thing I know, I’m on my back on the concrete. He reaches a hand out to help me up. “Are you okay, baby?”

  “I think so,” I say as he pulls me back to my feet. I was just gazing into your eyes too gazingly, and ran into the door. Stupid Anna!

  Earl opens the door for me, and this time I walk through it instead of into it. “Grab us a table and I’ll grab the drinks,” he says. Another smirk! The only time I’ve seen someone smile this much was the time Kathleen and I did E. “What would you like?”

  “Tea, please.”

  “No coffee?”

  “I drink coffee sometimes, but Starbucks’ coffee tastes like burnt ass,” I say.

  “Actually, it tastes nothing like burnt ass, Anna.”

  “And how would you know what burnt ass tastes like?”

  He laughs. “That’s for me to know . . . and you to find out.”

  I’m not sure I want to find out, but whatever.

  He starts toward the counter, then stops. “I didn’t ask you what kind of tea you wanted,” he says to me.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I say. Now it’s my turn to smirk. “Earl Grey. Hot.”

  “Do you take milk or sugar with that?” he asks, grinning.

  I’ve lost track of what he’s trying to hint at. I think he’s literally asking if I want milk or sugar for my tea, but he could very well be asking if I want them for my ass. “No thanks,” I say.

  He heads off toward the register as I sit down at an empty table. Now safely seated, I no longer have to worry about walking into any doors as I ogle him. I watch him order, and he orders wickedly. He is tall, muscular, and has the kind of shoulders you want to jump on and take a piggyback ride on. I watch as he pulls his credit card out of his wallet using his long fingers, which I swear have to be longer than his forearms.

  A few minutes later, he brings my Earl Grey tea and his coffee to our table. Our table! I can’t believe I’m already thinking about us as a couple. What would our babies look like? Would they have long fingers too?

  “Your tea, Anna,” he says. “If I may be so bold to ask: Why Earl Grey?”

  I shake my head. “I like my tea like I like my men,” I say. Named Earl Grey. But I realize that might be too forward, so instead I say, “Black.”

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “I mean, not that I exclusively like black men,” I say. “I like other kinds of tea. And men.”

  “Have you ever tasted . . . white tea, Anna?”

  Oh my. “I’ve never heard of it,” I say.

  “White tea is a lightly oxidized tea grown and harvested almost exclusively in China, primarily in the Fujian province,” he says. “White tea comes from the delicate buds and younger leaves of the Chinese Camellia sinensis plant. These buds and leaves are allowed to wither in natural sunlight before they are lightly processed to prevent oxidation.”

  Wow. “Where does the name 'white tea’ come from?”

  “It derives from the fine silvery-white hairs on the unopened buds of the tea plant, which gives the plant a whitish appearance,” he says, sipping his coffee.

  “How do you know all of this?”

  He pulls his BlackBerry out, opens an app, and pushes the device across the table to me. A web page is open to the “White tea” entry at Wikipedia. I read a few lines, and realize he just quoted the article word for word to me. “You copied Wikipedia! Even I know not to do that,” I say. “My professors are always warning us about what an unreliable source that is.”

  “Your professors are idiots, Anna.”

  “So you weren’t just reciting this article word for word?”

  “Who do you think wrote the article, Anna?”

  Woah. This guy writes for the Internet!

  Earl takes the BlackBerry from me and stashes it back into his velour sweatpants pocket. He sips his coffee.

  “Why did you ask me out, Mr. Grey? I don’t think I’m your type of girl.”

  He cocks an eyebrow. “And how would you know my 'type,’ Anna?”

  I shrug. “I saw the kind of girls you hire: tall, blond hair, well dressed.”

  “So, based on a couple of receptionists
who happen to look a certain way, out of the billion employees who work for me, you think you know my type?”

  “I may have made a generalization there,” I admit.

  “You shouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions,” he says. “For instance, if I had assumed Jin was your boyfriend, I may not have asked you out today.”

  “How do you know about Jin?”

  “I had your duplex outfitted with a surveillance system,” Earl says.

  Gulp.

  “He’s just a friend,” I say. “We’ve never dated or anything.”

  “That’s good to know,” Earl says.

  I sip my tea. Earl pulls a banana out of his pocket and peels it with his long fingers. “Want some?”

  “No thank you,” I say. So we’re down to just one banana in his pants.

  “Do I intimidate you, Anna?” he says.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because you seem nervous around me. You sound much more relaxed on the surveillance tapes I’ve watched.”

  I sigh heavily. “Yes, I’m a little nervous. I’ve never had a boyfriend, let alone a billionaire CEO stalker flying me around in his private helicopter and holding my hand and buying me tea.”

  “You’re a mystery to me, baby,” he says, biting the tip off the banana.

  I blush. “Oh, stop.”

  “No, it’s true,” he says. “I have no idea what’s going on inside that pretty little head of yours . . .”

  “To be honest, I have no idea either,” I say, looking down at the table to avoid his powerful gaze. “Most times, my mind is just an ongoing, present-tense, first-person monologue. It’s like I’m writing a novel, constantly, but only in my brain. A really bad novel.”

  “Do you have any siblings?”

  “No,” I say.

  “I knew that,” he says. “We’re both only children. Are your parents still together?”

  “No, they’re—”

  “Divorced?” he says, finishing my sentence. “I knew that as well.”

  I eye him suspiciously. “You’re a strange man, Mr. Grey.”

  “You have no idea,” he says, finishing his banana off.

  “Then why play twenty questions?”

  “You interviewed me. I don’t think I finished . . . probing you,” Earl says, sipping his coffee.

  “Probe away,” I say, deliberately trying to shock the mighty Earl Grey. I succeed, because he accidentally spits his coffee out all over my face. Oh my.

  “Sorry,” he says, using a napkin to wipe me down. “You ready to get out of here?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  He takes me by the hand and we leave Starbucks together. Are we going steady? This is all happening so fast! I ask him if he has a girlfriend.

  “I’m not a 'girlfriend’ kind of guy,” he says.

  Okay, so he’s not a “girlfriend” kind of guy. And he’s not gay. Or is he? He said he wasn’t gay as in “happy,” but he never explicitly said anything about not being homosexual. I’m trying to decode what he means, but the words keep bouncing around in my head like a broken magic eight ball, the answer never surfacing.

  I step onto the sidewalk and trip over a homeless guy, flying headfirst into the street. Damn my clumsiness!

  “Look out, Anna!” Earl screams. He pulls me back with both hands just as a hipster on a unicycle zips by, narrowly missing me by inches.

  One minute I was walking along, happy to be alive—and the next, my life was flashing before my eyes. I’m not that interesting, so the slideshow of my life was painfully dull and mercifully short, but still. I was almost crushed to death by a hipster with a twirly mustache. Now Earl Grey is cradling me in his arms, and I feel like I’ve been born again. Like I have a second chance at life. I sniff him, and inhale his manly scent: Coconut Lime Breeze body wash from Bath & Body Works’ Signature Collection. It retails for $12.50. This guy sure knows his body washes.

  “My God, Anna,” he says. “I almost lost you.” He has me in his powerful grip. I’ve never felt this safe before.

  “Never let go,” I say, looking into his beautiful gray eyes.

  “That could be problematic,” he says. “I’ll have to let you go at some point. What if I have to pee? What if you have to pee?”

  “I don’t care,” I say.

  “What if I have an important business meeting, and I’m holding you and we’re both covered in urine?”

  I start to cry. “You’re right,” I say, turning my face away from his gaze. “Nothing lasts forever.” Not even this perfect moment . . .

  “Um, excuse me? Could you guys get off me, please?” the homeless guy underneath us says. We stand up, and Earl hands him a hundred-thousand-dollar bill as an apology. The man scampers off, as homeless people are wont to do.

  “That was so kind of you, Mr. Grey,” I say.

  “I can be kind . . . when I want to be.” That wickedness is lurking just behind every word he says.

  I want him to save me from another hipster, to grab ahold of me, to kiss me. Kiss me, you arrogant man! But there are no other unicycling hipsters for me to throw myself in front of, no more homeless people to trip over.

  “Anna, stay away from me,” Earl says, turning his back to me. What? Why is he saying this? He begins walking away, and then looks over his shoulder.

  “I can be kind, but I can also be very, very cruel,” he says.

  “I don’t care,” I say.

  “Anna . . .” He pauses. “Good luck with your life.” He steps into his helicopter and flies away.

  Tears are now streaming down my face. I guess I’m walking the fifty yards back to the Walmart parking lot.

  Chapter Six

  MY BOSS DIDN’T NOTICE I’d left work, so I finish out my shift. When I get home early in the evening, Kathleen is parked on the couch as usual. This time she’s watching Pretty Woman.

  “What’s wrong, Anna?”

  I try to walk swiftly past her to my room, but she throws the TV remote at my head, knocking me to the ground. “Ow,” I say, getting back up.

  “Answer me,” she says. “Why have you been crying?”

  “No reason,” I mutter.

  “It was him, wasn’t it?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Yes you do,” she says. “Mr. Long Fingers. Mr. Womb-Ticklers.”

  I sigh. “Fine. Yes. I was at work, and he showed up. Just out of the blue. And he bought the company, and now he’s my boss. At least I think he is? It’s a little confusing. Anyway, we went on a romantic helicopter ride to Starbucks, and he knows so much about tea, and . . .”

  “And what?”

  “He saved me from some stupid Portlandia hipster on a unicycle.”

  “And that’s it?” she says.

  “Then he just told me off, like none of it meant anything to him.”

  “What a jerk-faced jerk-face!”

  “I know.”

  “You’re too good for him,” Kathleen says.

  I laugh. “Too good for Mr. Earl Grey? Please, girl.”

  “No, really,” she says. “You’re hot property. I’d do you.”

  “I think you did once,” I say.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Anyway, I need to study,” I say, leaving Kathleen to her movie. I open my door . . . and find the handsomest man in the whole world, Earl Grey, sitting on my bed!

  “What are you doing here?” I say. What a creeper!

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he says.

  “I live here,” I say.

  “I bought the duplex from Kathleen’s parents this afternoon,” he says. “I’m your landlord now. So technically I live here too.” He pauses. “I heard what you said in the living room.”

  “I knew you would.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m not used to getting close to women I like.”

  Aha! So he does like women.

  “Here,” he says, handing me a package covered in Christmas wr
apping paper.

  “It’s not Christmas,” I say.

  “It’s the only wrapping paper my assistant could find,” he says. “Don’t worry—I’ve already fired her for it.”

  “Which assistant? One of your Barbie dolls?”

  He looks at me, confused for a moment, and then says, “Now that you say that, I’m not entirely sure which assistant it was. I’ll fire them all when I return to Seattle, just to be sure.”

  What a people person, my inner guidette whispers. I tell her to shove it. I take the present from him and begin tearing into it. “I’m supposed to be studying for my exams,” I say.

  “Not anymore,” he says, smiling that wicked smile.

  “What do you mean . . . ?”

  “I mean, I bought Washington State University,” he says.

  “But it’s a public university!”

  “Not anymore,” he says, laughing.

  The nerve of this insane, handsome man!

  “You don’t have to take your tests—classes are canceled. Everyone will graduate with honors.”

  Gulp.

  “Finish opening the present, Anna.”

  “Okay,” I say, peeling the last of the wrapping paper off to reveal a hardcover book covered in cloth. I’m too young to remember a time when print books were “a thing,” but Kathleen has shelves full of them. I open it to the title page: A Shore Thing by Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi.

  “It’s Snooki’s debut novel. This is a first printing,” Earl says.

  “How did you know I’m a Jersey Shore fan?”

  “Let’s just say I had a hunch,” he says, glancing around the room at the half-dozen Jersey Shore posters plastered on the walls.

  “This book is worth a fortune,” I say. “I can’t accept it.”

  “You have to,” he says. “Please.”

  It’s too much. I feel overwhelmed. First, he buys Walmart. Then, he buys my duplex. And then my school. And now, this . . . The book is over the line. I feel like he’s trying to buy me.

  I toss the book at him, and he catches it. “I’m not a prostitute,” I say.

  “Anna—”

  I don’t give him a chance to finish whatever excuse he has prepared. I run from the room and grab Kathleen by the wrist. “I need a drink,” I say, slapping her in the face to wake her up and dragging her off the couch.