‘Were friends,’Tabby thought.How’s that for confirmation?
“So, you want me back the way I was, is that it?” she ground out.
“No, I?—”
“You don’t think I look good enough? You want me to be more like the mannequins you put your dick in while you were shit-talking me at the Village Belle?”
Quiet stretched like a spiderweb between them, and Tabby was seconds away from screaming ‘fuck you’ and hanging up when Toby’s voice came down the line, all smoke and satin. “Iwantyou to look like my perfect little fuckdoll. You telling me that doesn’t turn you on?”
The words were like silver arrows tearing through her defences. She couldn’t think of anything funny to say. Couldn’t talk at all.Yes, that turned her on.Of course,that turned her on.
“I want you to pretend I bought you,” Toby muttered. “The whole time you’re getting done up, you’re gonna tell yourself it’s because I bought you for the night, and you need to look good for me. You’re cheating on whatever idiot you were last wasting time with because I’m an entitled cunt, and I made you an offer you couldn’t refuse. Bribery. Blackmail. Whatever you wanna pretend it is. And at seven o’clock, you’ll come to my house looking better than you ever have, and then I’m going to send you home with a wallet full of cash, so well-fucked you can hardly walk. Do you understand?”
Tabby was shaking, her fingers twitching around her phone.
“Tabitha?”
“I say… that’s fine,” she managed.
“Good. Your first appointment is at ten, I’ll text you the details. See you soon.”
He hung up, leaving her in near darkness at the top of the hill. If she was shaking before it was nothing compared to now. She was like one of those jerk-off weights they used to sell on TV before it became a meme. She waited a few minutes for her heart to slow, but it didn’t, so she stood on trembling Bambi legs to walk to FAT Chicken for a burger.
That was the beauty of obsession, she thought as she walked past the abandoned Franco Cozzo. In a world of ridiculous, unexpected, painful things, it was delicious to find yourself in a place where all that mattered was him—whetherhewas talking to you, whetherhewanted to see you. It was gorgeous to give in to that singular distraction. And unlike when she was younger, Tabby went consciously into the sensation, willing it to keep her from thinking about anything else.
* * *
At 9:57a.m. the next day, Tabby was skulking out the front of a rich lady spa in South Yarra. She’d arrived early to stake out the place, needing to make sure this wasn’t a huge goof and Toby hadn’t paid for someone to pour pig blood on her and film it. At one minute to ten, she got a text from the man himself.
Am I going to get what I paid for, Tabitha?
Tabby took a selfie, flipping off the camera. Wincing at how tired she looked, she sent it and entered Serenity Beauty Therapy Centre.
The inside smelled so expensive that Toby would probably have to pay oxygen fees, and the receptionist looked like a supermodel. She eyed Tabby like she’d staggered in drunk with a gunshot wound.
“Do you have a booking?”
“I, uh, hope so,” Tabby said, almost knocking over a spindly naked lady statue with her duffel bag. “Tabitha DaSilva?”
“Up the hall and on the left,” the receptionist said with no change of expression. “Leave your shoes in the rack beside The Pearlescent Room.”
Tabby waited for more information, but the chick’s line-free face remained blank.
“Okayyy,” she said, before venturing deeper into the marble death crypt, praying things would make more sense when she reached ‘The Pearlescent Room.’ Whatever the fuck that was. Thankfully, a sign on the door let Tabby know she’d reached her destination. She took off her battered AF1s and put them on the blond wooden rack beside some Chanel slides. She wondered if her shoes were the grossest thing to ever touch this place and decided to ask the receptionist on the way out—either that or where she could buy some amyl nitrate.
The ‘Pearlescent Room’ looked more like a sandstone cavern dressed up for a porno. There was a circular in-ground pool, shelves covered in glass bottles and a big white-sheeted bed. Tabby hucked her bag onto the floor and rotated, trying to assess how much group sex had taken place in ‘The Pearlescent Room’ and if that was the point.
The door swung open, and Tabby jumped.
“Sorry,” said a broad Dutch woman in white. “I’m Adrie, your beauty therapist and skin healer. Do you want me to come back in a moment?”
Skin healer?“Yes. No. Actually, what am I getting done here, exactly?”
Adrie, who was fresh-faced and mercifully friendly, laughed. “Just take off your clothes and get under the sheets.”
“… And then what will happen?”
“Well, you have a Metamorphosis package, so that includes a therapeutic salt scrub, a full body lymphatic drainage massage, a herbal soak and a coffee and sea-kelp wrap. Then you’ll have tea and fresh fruit followed by a probiome facial with microdermabrasion, and we’ll finish with some beautiful plant-based oils to get you glowing like a golden goddess!”
