The Three Little Prigs

M. Yuan-Innes

 

 

OF COURSE I KNOW THE Wolff guy.

He’s the reason I’ve got my bullwhip 24/7.

What, I never told you about him?

He’s a massive guy—I mean enormous, in every sense of the word—with enough hair to keep both of us warm in winter. But totally broke, could hardly afford the boat trip over, y’know what I mean?

So, who should he run into but my youngest brother, Hamlet?

Yeah, you’ve never met Ham. He’s this skinny vegetarian artist with straw-blond hair. Ham refuses to come to the city. He claims that real art is being made underground anywhere but NYC or LA. Really, that means Ham’s stuck in flyover country, writing letters for Amnesty International and crying over starving children in between classes at a no-name college.

The only fun Ham gets is swimming laps. He swims like a seal, and he’s almost as hairless, except for the mop on top of his head. He says that doing laps inspires his art. He climbs out of the water and works on his “pieces.”

Here’s a pic of his latest one, made out of square hay bales. He calls it “Tiny House.”

I don’t get it, either.

Anyway, my seal of a brother runs into Wolff at the Y. Now, I bet that Ham barely comes up to Wolff’s armpit and is about as thick around as one of Wolf’s thighs. If Wolff attacked him, Ham’s biggest defense would be making a sculpture out of Wolf’s chest hair.

You’d think my little bro would squeal and sprint the other way. Instead, he feels sorry for this “displaced person” and adopts him. Food, rent—the whole shebang. Moves this Wolff right into his house.

Well, I ripped Hamlet a new one when I heard about it. He’s a poor college student, and he’s letting some huge, scruffy Wolff mooch off of him? Dad taught us better than that.

I tell my other brother, Smokey, to get Wolff the hell away from our little bro. Smokey lives in the sticks outside Detroit, it’s closer for him, so he goes.

Smokey’s just like you remember. Same haircut and jeans since 2012, got married to David right after earning a B.A. Bought some horrible log cabin fixer-upper and keeps asking me to “come out to the cottage.” Still working in insurance and tweeting jokes about policy coverage. Smokey’s idea of a good time is swapping Instant Pot recipes.

Yeah, I guess you could call him stick-in-the-mud, but he’s reliable. Like a Volvo. So, I send Smokey down to evict the Wolff.

And he does, but only because Wolff ends up crashing with Smokey.

I know. I never thought Smoke’d do anything but David at six a.m. on Sundays, but Smokey ends up blowing up his house with Wolff while his husband’s off on a business trip—probably getting his own business done—but the point is, the Wolff’s now huffing and puffing with my middle brother.

Smokey calls in sick for work, he forgets to walk the poodle, he stops donating money to the Log Cabin Republicans, which is how I knew my bro’s truly fallen off the deep end.

I had to drop the enemy a line.

 

Wolff,

You’ve been porking my brothers. Well, I’m the one built like a brick house. I run a hedge fund. I live in East Midtown. You want taste, the real deal, come to NYC.

 

I text a selfie, dressed in my open bathrobe, standing in front of my apartment’s view, though you can only see part of my face. Just a tease.

One week later, the Tuesday after Labor Day, I’m on my phone, closing a deal after-hours as I duck into my building on Vanderbilt Avenue.

I nod at the doorman, who’s dwarfed by a giant, black-haired man at the front desk.

The giant doesn’t speak. His presence is enough, a human mountain. He’s trimmed his black beard to a neat point. He’s stout, filling up a dress shirt and tight jeans. He’s rolled up the sleeves so that I can see there’s plenty of hair running along his biceps. I can imagine those wiry hairs scrubbing my bare skin.

Instead, I turn away so I can continue my phone negotiation.

The doorman hands a piece of ID back to the giant and says, his voice trembling slightly, “Who are you here to visit, sir?”

“Kevin.” The giant’s voice rumbles through the faux industrial brick lobby, raising goose bumps under my Dolce and Gabbana suit.

I shake myself and speak into my phone, saying, “That’s unacceptable,” as I march toward the elevator. There is no need to feel hypnotized simply because some lupercal guy has uttered my name.

I can still hear the doorman doing his best to interrogate the giant. “We have more than one guest named Kevin, sir. Do you have an apartment number, or would you like to call him and let him know that you’ve arrived?”

“He’s expecting me.” Wolff’s voice echoes through the lobby, growing louder as he follows me toward the stainless steel elevator, where the operator has already pressed the button for me.

“You can’t go in there,” says the doorman.

I can hear the heels of Wolff’s boots striking the terrazzo floor behind me.

“I said, don’t go in there!” The doorman raises his voice and chases him across the lobby.

Wolff has my number. He probably looked me up before he came and recognized my face, if he hadn’t figured out the family resemblance. He could call me instead of storming my building.

This is a power play. It always is.

The elevator dings. The steel doors glide open, and the operator gestures me inside, but his eyes travel upward, behind me, to stare at the giant.

I swivel around, phone still in hand.

The big, bad Wolff advances upon me. His eyes pin me like a predator’s. I remember Rasputin’s legendary, hypnotic eyes, and I know why my brothers fell before him.

I can hear Wolff’s slow, even breaths. He grins at me, a lazy, toothy grin that communicates his intentions. He has no need to rush. This is a game for him.

“Come in, sir!” The elevator operator wants to shut the elevator doors behind me, but I’m blocking them. I can’t move.

Meanwhile, Wolff grins down at me. “Let me in.”

He’s so close that I could stroke the bristles of his beard and let him nip my finger. I can feel his hot, damp breath on my face; I imagine those arms clamping around me.

This is the kind of man who would eat you up for breakfast, and leave you saying thank you. I have to close my eyes.

I hear the doorman say, “I’m telling you one more time, sir, leave the premises immediately, or I’m calling the police!”

It sounds like the elevator operator’s already dialing on his phone.

My eyes snap open, and I hold my left palm out to both of them. “It’s okay, Nick. Jerry. I got this.”

Meanwhile, I cut off my phone call. That deal can wait.

Wolff grins at me with his colossal white teeth. His immense hands remind me of baseball mitts. The broadness of his chest makes me think of a grizzly bear standing up on its hind legs to roar at me.

But his eyes. The eyes shining—those eyes tell the whole story.

“Get a hotel,” I tell Wolff. My voice sounds steady, if a little high-pitched. “Text me when you’re ready.”

Forty minutes later, I meet the Wolff in an ice-white penthouse. Before he says hello, I kick the steel door closed and pop open my briefcase.

Five seconds later, my whip cracks through the air.

He backs up, wary. He’s bigger than me. He knows he could wrestle the whip away from me.

If he could get close enough.

I ignore the strong, male scent of him. I grip the leather handle, grounding myself, watching him feint to my left.

This time, the whip smacks his hand. His breath hisses between his teeth.

I catch my breath. That’s the kind of noise he’d make in bed. I can’t lie, I want to know what it’s like to have this man work me over. He knows it and I know it.

If it weren’t for my brothers, I’d lay my whip down and let him have at it.

But I think of Ham’s straw art, that I don’t even understand. I think of how Smokey’s face used to shine when he served Instant Pot lemon chicken with Basil at Thanksgiving.

I proceed to whip the Wolff. I work him over until his screams of pleasure echo off the soundproofed walls. I keep working until I’m afraid the whip will slip out of my sweaty palms, but I don’t dare take off my suit jacket. I’ve got to stay 100 percent dominant, 100 percent of the time.

And when I throw down the leather dog collar I brought, I don’t even need to demand he put it on. He volunteers, and he’s eager to see what other surprises I have in my briefcase.

All guys like him are alike. They think they are this big daddy. They talk the talk. Hey baby, I’m so hot, I’m gonna blow your house down.

But I can tell. I’ve got him hooked now. He couldn’t get it up the regular way if the Rockettes went down on him.

I gotta admit, he’s got me hooked too. That’s why you haven’t seen me lately. There’s something about him. Even when he’s not around, I can almost taste him.

That’s why I keep him on a such a short leash. If you go down to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, that’s him with the sign, “Will blow you for food.”

The police keep busting him, but I love how he keeps coming back to me. With his tongue hanging out, begging for more.