Chapter 5: The Royal Flush
The grocery run with Manuel was a silent, air-conditioned affair. They loaded bags of frozen meals, champagne, and industrial-sized packs of toilet paper into the Mercedes van. Manuel drove with a grim focus, the radio off. Barney stared at his reflection in the side window, the red marks on his arm now faint bruises.
Dinner was a ritual. Delilah devoured an entire roast chicken with her hands, tearing at the flesh with surprising strength, sucking the marrow from the bones with wet, guttural sounds. Grease shone on her chin and dripped onto her leopard print. She washed it down with two glasses of red wine, her eyes growing heavy-lidded and fixed on some middle distance.
“Barnaby,” she said, tossing a clean-picked bone onto the silver platter. “I’m experiencing a tectonic event. Escort me.”
She didn’t wait for a reply. She pushed back from the table, the chair legs screeching on the marble floor, and lumbered towards her private wing. He followed, a ghost in her wake.
Her bathroom was a monument to gilded excess. Everything was marble or gold-plate. A chandelier hung over a claw-foot tub the size of a small car. The air was thick with conflicting scents: jasmine perfume, powder, and beneath it, the faint, unmistakable sewer-gas smell of her earlier visits.
She went straight to the toilet, a monstrous, gold-encrusted throne on a raised dais. With a grunt, she hoisted her caftan up around her waist, revealing the pale, mapped landscape of her thighs and the startling, swollen pink of her exposed flesh. She mounted the porcelain like a conqueror, her vast hips spreading wide, swallowing the seat.
“Come here,” she commanded, her voice strained. Her face was already flushing a deep red. “Don’t just hover by the damn door.”
He took two steps forward. The smell intensified.
“Closer.” She reached out, her hand snagging the front of his shirt, and pulled him in until his hips were almost against the rim of the bowl. She didn’t let go. Instead, she wrapped her arm around his lower back, pulling his thin frame against her. His face was level with her chest, crushed against the leopard print and the immense, pillowy softness beneath. He could feel the heat coming off her, hear the gurgling, internal thunder building deep within her gut.
“Oh, fuck,” she groaned, a sound of pure, unadulterated effort. Her body tensed. Her hold on him tightened, using him for leverage. “Here it comes. The goddamn crown jewels.”
The first part was a deep, prolonged rumble, a seismic shift followed by a wet, solid impact. She let out a shuddering sigh of relief that morphed into another groan as another wave took her. The sounds were obscenely personal—splashes, thick plops, a ceaseless, groaning evacuation. The air filled with a hot, fecal density that made his eyes water.
She rocked slightly on the seat, her face pressed into his shoulder. “That’s it… that’s the bitch,” she muttered, her words slurred with concentration and wine. With each push, her body shifted forward, and he realized with a jolt that she was rubbing herself against the cool, curved front of the toilet bowl. A soft, sticky, rhythmic sound, barely audible beneath the other noises.
“Used to… ah… used to do this on set,” she panted, her breath hot against his neck. “Between takes. Too many guys, you get swollen. Tender. The only thing that helped was a cold toilet rim. Don’t you fuckin’ judge me.”
He wasn’t judging. He had ceased to think. He was a pillar of bone and nerves, holding up a mountain of shuddering, expelling flesh. The violence of it, the sheer physicality, was awe-inspiring. This wasn’t the performative grunting of her porn tapes. This was real. This was animal.
The climax of it was a series of shorter, desperate pushes, accompanied by low, whimpering moans that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with a brutal, final exertion. A last, liquid trickle. Then stillness.
Her grip on him loosened. Her breathing, ragged and deep, began to slow. She didn’t let go, but her hold became less a anchor and more an embrace. They stayed like that for a full minute in the perfumed, poisoned air. He could feel the sweat soaking through his shirt where her face had been.
Finally, she gave his back a pat. “Good lad,” she said, her voice hoarse but satisfied. “You’re a solid piece of scaffolding.” She released him.
He stumbled back a step, his legs numb. She reached for a roll of triple-ply toilet paper, tore off a great wad, and attended to herself with brisk, unselfconscious efficiency. The subsequent flush was a roaring, gargantuan thing that seemed to shake the pipes in the walls. It didn’t erase the smell, just churned it into the steam.
Delilah stood, letting the caftan fall back into place. She walked to the sink, washed her hands meticulously, then splashed water on her face. She caught his eye in the gold-framed mirror. Her expression was calm, stripped of its usual theatrical fury or lust. She looked tired. Real.
“Everyone wants the cleavage and the come-shots, Barnaby,” she said, patting her face dry with a monogrammed towel. “No one wants to know about the hemorrhoids or the gut-rot from a life of cheap champagne and cheaper men. But it’s all part of the performance. The whole, ugly, magnificent show.”
She turned and walked past him, out of the bathroom. “Open a window in here, would you? And then you can go. I’m spent.”
He stood alone in the opulent room. He didn’t open a window. He just breathed in the lingering, complicated truth of it. The home theater had been a lesson in curated fantasy. This was the blunt, undeniable fact. And in a way he couldn’t begin to articulate, it felt more honest.
He turned off the light and closed the door softly behind him. The mansion was quiet. He walked back to his pool-house room, the ghost of her heat still pressed against him, the memory of her weight in his arms. The screaming face on the ceiling was silent. He lay down on his bed, staring at the smooth, white plaster, and for the first time, he didn't feel like he was waiting for something to happen. He felt like he was in the middle of it.