Ray’s father pulled his hand away from Danielle’s and spun on his son.
“This is my father, David Ferris,” Ray went on, as though he hadn’t anticipated David’s reaction.
“Your wife?” David asked. “Are you out of your mind?”
“You seemed to want that for me,” Ray asked, laying it on thick. They were near Hollywood after all, so his acting was more than appropriate.
“May I speak to you in the other room please?”
“Which one dad?” Ray said with a grin, raising his hands. They had plenty to pick from. David didn’t find his son’s antics funny, and he turned and stalked out of the living room. “I’ll be right back honey,” Ray said to Danielle, before following his father out.
Danielle stood awkwardly near the couch. She wasn’t sure where Ray and his father had gone, but she could hear them though their words were muffled and not clear. Still she heard David say the words black, kidding me, and use your brain, with a lot of other angry words in between. Ray was either silent or speaking in a normal tone because she couldn’t make out any of his words.
After ten minutes, Ray returned and smiled. “Okay, that’s done. Dinner is cancelled, I’m afraid. We can go out tonight if you want.”
Danielle nodded and then waited until they were in Ray’s car and heading down the long driveway before she asked what she wanted to.
“What did he say?”
“He told me you were after my money. Well, his money I guess.”
“He’s not concerned that I’m black?”
Ray laughed. “He brought it up, but surprisingly he wasn’t as racist as I thought he would be about it.”
Danielle laughed. She couldn’t help herself. Somehow the absolute absurdity of her situation presented itself, suddenly, like a tiger springing onto an unsuspecting deer from the forest brush.
“What’s so funny?” Ray asked as he pulled onto the road.
“Everything,” Danielle said. And then the rich man began to laugh too.
That evening they went to a restaurant so expensive that they didn’t even bother putting the prices on the menus. If you had to ask how much anything there cost, you couldn’t afford it. Over dinner, Ray was very open, and Danielle took advantage of it. He discussed his childhood, growing up in that lifestyle, with the wealth, but a busy father who had little time for him. He discussed his future, and how he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, and how he didn’t feel great about living off of his father’s wealth, but that the shame of doing so wasn’t enough to make him stop.
“So isn’t he going to cut you off?” Danielle asked as she sipped a wine that was older than anything she owned, a true classic vintage with an intense but pleasurable taste.
“No. He told me I had to get married, I had to start living a life that wasn’t just partying, and that’s what I’m doing. I told him I loved you. I’ll be upset in six months when it all falls apart, and maybe he’ll turn into a human being and feel bad for me, and I can get a few more years off of him.”
Danielle was surprised to hear her husband speak so bluntly. He seemed very self-aware, and he seemed sad inside, but he hid it behind his lavish lifestyle.
“So you have to want to do something,” Danielle pressed.
Ray sighed. “I have one thing,” he said.
“What?”
“I want to write.”
“Write? Poetry? Movies?”
“A novel. But my dad… I don’t know… he just throws money at creative people. He doesn’t respect them, he doesn’t think I have that in me. Writers are just people he forces to write a script the way he thinks it will sell. I have this idea… it’s a book, a real novel with complex… well, everything. But it’s stupid.”
Danielle reached across the table and placed her hand on top of Ray’s. “It’s not stupid,” she said with a smile.
“You’re the best wife I’ve ever had,” Ray joked, and they both laughed.
6
Two months passed, and Danielle was further exposed to a world she could barely comprehend. Ray had a personal chef who he could call up and have over at a moments notice, and once a week a crew of women came through and cleaned the massive house. He had more cars than she had pairs of shoes, which had been her one weakness throughout her life, even if being a broke college student meant she didn’t buy as many as she wanted.
They did nothing, and it was exactly what Danielle had needed, after years of intense study at school. She lounged in the pool, she lounged in the massive home theater watching movies with Ray, and she lounged in bed late at night after they had sex. They never made love, not those first two months. It was always fucking, and they did it often. Danielle was glad she was on birth control because it meant the rich young white man could take her whenever he wanted. And he wanted to a lot.