Previously in E.L. James’s The Mister, Maxim had a one-night stand in celebration of Let’s Fuck Thursday. Imagine how boring the last chapter would have been if we caught him on Let’s Hang Out With My Friends This Time Monday or I Just Feel Like Staying In And Playing Fortnite Wednesday.
The Mister: Chapter 4
ALSO, Maxim and Alessia have finally crossed paths! Maxim has no idea who she is and asks her “Who the hell are you?” E.L. James continues to take her best guess at writing an Eastern European character.
Zot! He is here, and he is mad.
E.L. James almost immediately gives up and gives us another half page of Alessia (thinking things that really flesh out Alessia’s perspective like “He is so attractive!” and “Too attractive!”) before switching the narrative back to Maxim’s perspective.
Who the hell is this timid creature standing in my hallway? I’m completely bemused. […]
Shit!
One peek from her dark, fathomless eyes and I’m… unsettled. […] She looks like she needs a few days in the sun and a good hearty meal.
This two narrator thing is a real double-edged sword, huh.
Maxim wonders why this stranger is cleaning his house and wondering where his old daily Krysyna is. Thus begins a bizarre, frustrating sequence where Maxim asks Alessia a series of questions, and Alessia… stares at the floor…
“Who are you?” I ask again, but in a softer tone, not wanting to alarm her. […]
[She looks] up at me, then back at the floor. […]
“Where’s Krystyna?” I ask, growing a little frustrated at her silence. […]
She continues to stare at the floor, her brow furrowed.
And sometimes… Maxim thinks at her, and Alessia does things with her face.
Look at me, I will her. I want to reach forward and tilt her chin up, but as if she reads my mind, she raises her head. Her eyes meet mine, and her tongue darts out, and nervously she licks her upper lip.
This may not sound like riveting stuff, but apparently it is deeply arousing.
My whole body tightens in a hot, heavy rush as desire hits me like a demolition ball.
Fuck a duck!
Ok, to be fair, as frustrating and boring as this sequence is to read, I definitely sympathize with Alessia here. She’s a woman in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable place with no real friend network alone in a room with a male E.L. James character. This is how, like, a third of all episodes of murder podcasts start.
Thankfully, Maxim figures out that he might unintentionally be intimidating her, and that his previous cleaner didn’t really speak English, so maybe she doesn’t either. At which point Alessia abruptly starts conversing with him in English, so I’m really glad we’ve learned more about Maxim’s old cleaner than we have about Alessia in this chapter where she mostly just silently stares at the floor.
“I am cleaner, Mister,” she whispers, her eyes still downcast and her eyelashes fanned out above her luminous cheeks.
“Where’s Krystyna?”
“She has returned to Poland.”
“When?”
“Since last week.”
This is news. Why the hell did I not know this? I liked Krystyna. She’d cleaned for me for three years and knew all my dirty little secrets. And I never got to say good-bye.
Maybe it’s temporary. “Is she coming back?” I ask. The lines in the girl’s forehead deepen, but she says nothing
Over the next few pages, Maxim slowly learns that 1) her name is Alessia, and that 2) she’s been her for three weeks. Alessia 1) licks her lips a lot.
I want to flee from this stranger and her soul-searching eyes. “Well, good to meet you, Alessia. You’d better get on and clean, then.” As an afterthought, I add, “In fact, you can change the sheets on my bed.” I wave in the general direction of my bedroom. “You know where the linen is kept, don’t you?”
She nods again but still doesn’t move.
“I’m going to the gym,” I mutter, though why I’m explaining myself to her I don’t know.
Honestly, I just thought that passage was really funny. Awkward Maxim is… actually fun?
The chapter briefly shifts over to Alessia’s perspective again, where she thinks about how bad it’d be if Maxim fired her and she couldn’t secretly play his piano anymore, and also about how attractive Maxim is. It adds nothing new to the story. Even the part of this scene that does add something new to the story feels very been there, done that.
She wonders why there’s a wide silk ribbon tied to the headboard but unwinds it and places it on his nightstand next to the cuffs. As she throws a clean white sheet on the bed, she wonders what these items are for.
Well, someone didn’t read Fifty Shades of Grey.
Maxim goes back to his hobby of angstily working out:
I am running from my fucking daily—cleaner, whatever she calls herself—escaping from her big brown eyes.
No. I’m running from my reaction to her.
It’s a little over the top.
[I] decide to do some weights. Yes. That should get her out of my mind.
Alessia gets a scene where she plays piano again. It’s not interesting.
Maxim gets lunch with his younger sister and their mother. We learn that his sister, Maryanne, is a doctor, a career she pursued because their father died of a heart attack the day she was born. We also learn that Maxim’s too distracted by his run-in with his new cleaner to flirt with the waitress. I feel like we’ve sort of learned a lot about both of these two here.
Maxim’s mom, Rowena, shows up, and I regret to have to inform you that’s she’s incredibly boring. Maxim tells us that their father never got over their divorce, but honestly I don’t really see why:
“It’s all in trust to me.”
“And Caroline?”
“Nothing.”
“I see. Well, we can’t let the poor girl starve.”
“We?” I ask.
Rowena flushes. “You,” she says, her voice frigid. “You can’t let the poor girl starve. On the other hand, she has her trust fund, and when her father shuffles off his mortal coil, she’ll inherit a fortune. Kit chose wisely in that regard.”
“Unless her stepmother disinherits her,” I retort, and take another much-needed sip of Bloody Mary.
My mother purses her lips. “Why don’t you set her to work—maybe the Mayfair development? She has a good eye for interior design, and she’ll need the distraction.”
“I think we should let Caroline decide what she wants to do.”
I’m really glad that in the years since Fifty Shades, E.L. James’s writing has progressed from “well, at least the mom character is unintentionally entertaining” to “ugh, great, the mom character is unintentionally a dollar store Emily Gilmore.”
Maxim checks off some boxes on the progressing the plot list, telling his family that Caroline might be pregnant. Rowena hopes so, because neither of her children seem to be settling down any time soon, so this might be the best shot at keeping the estate from passing to their uncle Cameron. Plot!
After the arbitrary plot progression lunch, Caroline desperately texts Maxim that she can be relevant to the plot for reasons other than being pregnant. Sorry, girl. You’re in an E.L. James novel.
How was lunch?
Tiring. The Dowager was her usual self.
I’ll be the dowager if you get married! 🙁
At the end of the day, Maxim sits down at the piano and wraps up a boring chapter by discovering his impression of Alessia is helps his finish a composition he’d been stuck on for weeks. Oh, right, row, I just remembered our two romantic leads met in this chapter, and I forgot and described this chapter as boring.
The notes ring out through the room. Evocative. Melancholic. Stirring me. Inspiring me.
I am cleaner, Mister.
Yes. I speak English. My name is Alessia Demachi.
Alessia.
Look, this is a lot to ask us to just accept is artistic muse material even for you, E.L. James.
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