Bootsie did something just unforgivable.
"Don't make any plans this weekend, Darrell," she said breezily.
"I've hired a Male Master to work on your attitude problems."
Darrell's jaw dropped.
"A-a what?" He needed to clean out his ears, he thought.
Bootsie smiled.
"A male master...he's a friend of Fanchon Nemirow's.
You know, you go to ChasteBois with her husband. I've decided that part of the reason you hold on to this false pride and arrogance, which
prevents you from showing your real self to your secretary, has something to do with the male ego."
Darrell wiped his brow.
"The male ego. But...the guys at ChasteBois have been telling me about that-that being dominated by a guy stuff. I'm not gay, and I don't think—"
Bootsie shook her head.
"Don't worry about your needs. You're so obsessed with self. It's all about you, all the time.
I'm trying to eradicate that. It's going to be expensive, too, paying for him to come from Germany but it's worth it—"
"Germany? You're going to have some guy come from Germany for the WEEKEND?"
Darrell's eyes were bugged out.
She was insane, this woman.
"We don't have the money, and I don't—"
"Don't worry about it. I'm selling your Sportrend speedboat.
And, I think, the Jet Ski as well. Master Hans isn't coming for the weekend, but for about a month.
It's really going to do you good, Darrell."
Bootsie paused, smiling before she returned to her "Elle" magazine.
"You told me it would excite you to put your possessions in my name, as your dominant.
Yes, so it should excite you more that I'm selling them."
That Friday night, when Darrell walked into the house, he saw a trim looking man with curly blond hair, wearing a turtleneck sweater, and relaxing with a cigarette.
Darrell noted with horror that the blond fellow was using his frat mug as an ashtray.
"Hey, we don't smoke here in the house" Darrell began.
"I don't know who you are—"
"That will be enough talk"
the blond man said in a heavy European accent.
"More to hear from you is ah, unnecessary, ja?"
He dropped the cigarette in the mug and stood up.
"I am Master Hans. You are Darrell?"
"Yeah, I'm Darrell. Where's Bootsie?"
Fucking Kraut.
Darrell was half Jewish, and his Uncle Shmuley had always said that if he ever became President the two things he'd do were ban diesel trucks and bomb Germany for what they did to the Jews.
No one is fucking around with me, Darrell thought.
Look at this little twerp. Doesn't look like he weighs more than one fifty.
"Where's Bootsie? I don't want her leaving strangers in my house and—"
Darrell, in thinking about it later, never did figure out how Hans got close enough to him to hook his leg and bring all 195 pounds of him to the floor.
Or how then, Hans had flipped him on his stomach and pulled his arm behind his back.
"Your wife has gone to her sister's for the next month."
Master Hans's voice came from above Darrell's confused and dizzy head.
"I said this earlier, it is much talk I do not need to hear from you, ja? What we need from you, Darrell is a bit of quiet."
Darrell, who bench pressed 270, struggled mightily against Hans's arm holding him down.