Chapter 3: 3. Gun

Of course, I realised very quickly that I’d done precisely what she had talked about; taken her as mortal, rather than a billionaire. She could fix my life, and my friends’ lives, if she wanted to. She could fix world hunger. If she wanted to. But she was a billionaire, so she didn’t. 

I congratulated myself on boosting my savings, and threw myself back into work. The end of the sprint was coming up, and I was not ready.

MERRITTS: U still here?

It was late. Ten-thirty, and I was the only person in the section. Even the cleaners were gone now, although security still came round.

The office chat beeped again.

MERRITTS: your lights green

I sighed.

PIERCEP: im 1 of those mouse wigglers

MERRITTS: :D

MERRITTS: come up?

PIERCEP: ive got work 2 finish

MERRITTS: i am CEO

MERRITTS: i will tell ur boss not too blame u

MERRITTS: i have Qs and $$$

PIERCEP: ok

⁂

Sabine was a little tipsy. She was wearing a white dress and high-heels.

“Left early,” she said, swinging on her chair. “Who cares about childhood cancer?”

“Um…”

“Right, right,” she said. “Everyone cares, I know. What I mean is that no-one at the fundraiser cares. We just give a tax-deductible donation, and dress up for a bit. Schmooze the press.”

“Right.”

“I bet if you asked the guests whether it was fundraising for preventing childhood cancer, or for causing it,” she said, “they wouldn’t be sure.”

“Um, I suppose it’s a good cause,” I said. “Sorry you were bored though.”

“Fuck,” she said. “Fuck. I sounded like I was whining, didn’t I?”

“A little bit,” I said. 

“Sorry,” she said. “Do you want something to eat?”

She stood up suddenly and walked over to one of the doors. “Come on.” 

The kitchen was bigger than mine, but didn’t look like it had ever been cooked in. It looked clean to the point of sterility.

We—the office—knew she sometimes stayed here, rather than return to her expensive house in the exclusive suburbs, but I was expecting a camp bed, or similar. The kitchen led into a lounge; this was basically a very nice penthouse apartment. Of course, I didn’t know why I thought otherwise.

She approached the massive stainless steel refrigerator, and began getting out Chinese takeout. Was it real leftovers? Or takeout bought to be leftovers? Or cooked by personal chefs, and then put into takeout cartons? I was going to go mad thinking about this.

She awkwardly carried an armful of cartons over to a low table, and slumped into a leather sofa.

“Shit,” she said. “Forgot the wine. Can you get it?”

She directed me to the glasses, and then to a large wine cabinet. “I think maybe a Spätlese?” she said.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Oh. Any white will be fine,” Sabine said. I picked one that didn’t look too old and posh. “Corkscrew is in that drawer by your hip.”

I managed to get the wine open, and everything to the table.

“Sit,” said Sabine, waving a piece of dim sum in my direction. “So, question…”

“Okay,” I said, taking up some chopsticks and snagging an egg roll.

“Are you a lesbian?” 

I didn’t drop the egg roll, but I had to concentrate on not dropping it. “Is it that obvious?” I said.

“You flinched the other day,” she said. “When I mentioned Calliope’s effect on lesbians. She isn’t, by the way. I made sure.”

“Um.”

“She likes men,” she continued. “Nothing men. She fucks them until they fall in love with her, then dumps them.”

“Is that really—”

“She is beautiful enough that I’d be tempted, if I hadn’t made sure she was straight,” said Sabine. “She sells anonymous stories to the press sometimes, but nothing damaging, so I let it slide. But, yes, lesbian yearning is wasted on her.”

“I see,” I said, taking another egg roll. “Noted.”

“Plus, I’ve caught you looking at me.”

This time I did choke.

“It’s okay, I’m a lesbian too,” she said, reaching for her wine. 

“You have a boyfriend,” I said. “A famous boyfriend.”

“He’s gay,” she said. “But it’s in both of our interests to appear bi. His female fans love to imagine themselves in a gay sandwich.”

“And you?”

“Men don’t take kindly to people who can’t stand them,” she said. “I would be called a shrill, frigid harpy in minutes. Men are much happier believing that I could succumb to their charmless flirting.”

“My bi friends won’t thank you for adding to the I don’t believe you brigade,” I said. “And anyway, don’t you find men still believe they are charming with lesbians too?”

“Oh yes,” said Sabine. “They just won’t believe that we don’t want dick.”

I froze.

“What?” she said. “Your face just fell.”

I looked at her.

“Oh shit,” Sabine said. “Sorry! It’s just something my friends say.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Not my friends.”

“Right, right,” she said. “I should have thought. Don’t… don’t some lesbians mind?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But we weed those out by checking whether they say shit like ‘I hate dicks’ first.”

Sabine looked down.

“But most are okay with it,” I said. “Because most understand that lesbianism is about your attitude to men, not your attitude to dick.”

“But you still want to get it cut off?” she said. She had clearly finished with her short span of regret.

“Yes,” I said. “But not because it stops me being a woman, or a lesbian. It doesn’t even make me particularly dysphoric. Just, I don’t want one, if I ever have the option. Other trans girls have their own opinions.”

“Do you sleep with trans women?”

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“What? Yes, of course,” I said. “I like women.”

“So some of them will have dicks?”

“Yes,” I said. “You’re making this a lot more complex than you have to. I like women, including cis women and trans women; some have dicks and some have pussy. I don’t care much about that, but obviously, I prefer trans women.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because with some cis lesbians you have to answer twenty stupid dick-based questions first,” I said.

She chuckled, and then looked down. “I annoy you, don’t I?”

I sighed. “You are paying for it. I make that seven questions, that’s 3500 dollars.”

“A bargain,” she said. “Okay, enough questions for now. Let’s eat.”

⁂

I began to stack the empty cartons.

“What are you doing?” she said. “Housekeeping will be in in the morning.”

“Wow,” I said. “Spoken like a true billionaire.”

She shrugged. “I am,” she said. “So why try and hide it? You’ve gotta be yourself.”

“Yes, won’t somebody think of the poor billionaires,” I said.

“People are mean to us,” she said.

“Oh, I wonder why?”

“Okay, some of us are a bit stupid,” she said. “Mostly very divorced men, who have been told that their every idea was brilliant, and have enough money to never confront the fact that they are stupid.”

“Right,” I said. “And all the evil.”

“No,” she said, holding up a finger. “That’s where you are wrong. Look, you’re a nice person, but even if you weren’t there are a lot of barriers for you. Police, expenses, effort. All things that could stop you from doing what you wanted.”

“I suppose.”

“But billionaires? Those barriers are a lot less. We can accidentally misplace millions, while you will be jailed for shoplifting a coke. We can expose ourselves to an underling, if we want. We can have reams of photos with a paedophile. A bit of money, some precisely worded apologies, and it’s fine. Murder and manslaughter are only slightly trickier.” She finished her wine; she had drunk most of the bottle.

“Really selling me on billionaires.”

She laughed. “But that’s the thing; the barriers are so much less for billionaires. You want to murder someone? As well as your conscience, you’ve got police and just plain effort to deal with, and not enough money to ease them. So you generally don’t. Billionaires, however, live purely on their conscience; we should get more praise for not being totally evil, because there’s very little stopping us.”

“Wow.”

“You don’t agree?” she said. “It’s like, if you had the power of a god, are you sure you’d be good.”

“Yes.”

“Really?” Sabine said, slumping back on the sofa. “You answered that fast. Wouldn’t curse irritating people? Wouldn’t love-spell attractive ones?”

“No,” I said. “And anyway, I’d be too busy doing body alteration on myself and my friends.”

“Oh, but if you were a billionaire, you wouldn’t have friends,” she said. “Not really. Cheerful enemies and familiar servants.”

“I see,” I said.

“Sorry,” she said. “Hang on.”

She got awkwardly off the sofa, and hurried into the other room.

She came back with a gun. A pistol, I don’t know guns.

“What the fuck—”

“Come on.”

She ran out of the door.

I followed, panicking a bit. She had run onto the balcony. It had stopped raining, but everything was wet.

“I come out here,” she said, aiming the gun over the balcony, downwards at one of the other buildings, “whenever I’m not sure that I am good.”

“What?”

She moved the gun around. “I could fire, at a building, or off into space, at traffic. Probably miss. Or maybe kill someone. Or something in between.”

“Why don’t you put the gun down?”

“On the TV, the police would do ballistics, trace it back here,” she said, waving the gun casually. “Don’t know if that works in real life. Would wind and gravity mess things up? But if they did, I would just say sorry, pay some bills. Cleaning my gun. An accident.”

She looked sideways at me. “I could kill someone,” she said. “But I don’t, because I’m good.”

She suddenly put the muzzle of the gun in her mouth.

“Don’t!” I shouted.

The gun clicked.

“No magazine,” Sabine said, showing me the empty grip. “If there was a round in the chamber I would have blown out the back of my head. No magazine disconnect on a Glock 43. But I don’t do that.”

“Fucking hell, that’s so fucking stupid,” I shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

She shrugged. “Trying to show you that it’s different for billionaires.”

“I know it’s different,” I said, voice still slightly raised, deeper than it should be. “Most of my friends have gofundmes; do you think I don’t know things might be different if I wasn’t just scraping by? If you bastards weren’t hoarding wealth? I fucking know.”

Sabine leant forward. “Do you want to slap me?”

It took me a moment to process what she was saying. 

“No.” I yanked the door open and went inside.

“Thank you for caring about me dying,” she called after me.

“Just didn’t want to get blood on me,” I muttered as I left.

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