Previously, Alessia tells Maxim that she was a victim of sex trafficking, escaped, is now in the country illegally, and that’s why there are men after her. Maxim decides he’s going to help and offers to take her to a safe location. From the criminals who are trying to reclaim one of their victims who is hiding out with a member of the nobility, and have threatened him that they’ll be back. To a member of the nobility’s home. To do crimes. Honestly, I feel like the human traffickers need more luck than our heroes do. They’re clearly idiots.
The Mister: Chapter 10
Maxim shares his valuable thoughts on the situation, such as “How can women cry so quietly” and “What a day”. Aw yeah, this is gonna be a great road trip.
Although to be fair, the issue might have less to do with Maxim being a useless boy and more to do with E.L. James’s prose in general.
I press the phone icon on the touch screen and find Danny’s number.
E.L. James in the 1600s: “I dippeth the pointy end of my quill into the small vial of ink and bring it back to the paper upon mine table. I willst do this for a while, then I willst find a raven.”
Maxim calls up his staff to find which of his properties aren’t booked for the following week. There’s honestly some nice show-don’t-tell character building where Maxim keeps cutting off his staff from ever getting to the “lord” part of “my lord” without drawing our attention to why this behavior is significant. But then the property they go to is given the impressively on-the-nose name “The Hideout”, and you bet your ass Maxim wants us to notice how wild that one is.
“Is the Hideout or the Lookout available this weekend?”
“I think they’re both available, my—”
“And next week?”
“The Lookout is booked for a weekend clay shoot.”
“I’ll take the Hideout, then.”
Appropriate.
So. Maxim knows… some stuff now. And honestly, as much as I want desperately to find redeeming things about this book and not just shit on it because it’s E.L. James, Maxim’s inner monologue is… not the greatest. I wrote “Maxim has stupid feelings, but it’s not as cringey as Christian Grey’s possessiveness” in my notes about this chapter… but fuck if I can find why I wrote that, because every page starts off kind of like, hey, Maxim’s more mindful than Christian, but then… doesn’t… encounter much continued success as it goes on…
I reflect on all my past interactions with Alessia in light of what she’s told me today. Now I understand why she’s been so reticent around me, and my heart is leaden. In my fantasies I’d imagined that when I was finally alone with her, she would be laughing and carefree, gazing at me with adoring doe eyes. The reality is very different.
Very. Different.
And yet…I don’t mind.
I want to be with her. I want her safe.
Wowza, is “I don’t mind” a really regrettable response to learning about your crush’s sexual assault trauma and kidnapping.
I want to ask her what she’s endured. What she’s seen. But now is not the right time. All my plans, all my fantasies will be for nothing if she can’t bear to be with a man…any man.
And I realize that I can’t touch her.
Fuck.
After Maxim gets his freakout about how Alessia’s problems are really inconvenient for him too, Alessia briefly gets to worry about her situation and about the other girls and whether she can trust Maxim and about how long she might have to be wherever this man is taking her for. For, like, one page. OKAY BACK 2 MAXIM’S PROBLEMS.
Rubbing her face, she looks around the car park, and her whole body suddenly tenses and radiates anxiety. “Please, Mister, don’t leave me here,” she says quietly.
“I have no intention of leaving you here. What’s wrong?” […]
“I escaped,” she whispers. […] “It was a place like this.” She looks around again. […]
Shit! The rest of her story—I’m going to hear it here in a service station off the M5.
I feel like… this line was supposed to be funny? For some inexplicable reason? What a wild location to hear a story about… sex trafficking…
Alessia tells Maxim that her captors didn’t know she understood English, and she tried to tell the other girls what the men were really doing, but only three of them believed her. So on a night that they took them to a service station restroom, she and the other three ran and split up. Alessia doesn’t know everyone else’s fate.
Also, throughout the story, Maxim interjects with thoughts like “Bloody hell!” and “Oh, God“, which is a very useful addition to the story and definitely helps us get in Maxim’s head.
Maxim holds Alessia, leading to a surprisingly nice moment.
Her eyes move to my lips, and she raises her head, her objective clear.
“You want me to kiss you?” I ask.
She nods.
WOOOOO ESTABLISHING BOUNDARIES IS SEXY AS HELL I’m sure this book’s actual sex scenes are gonna be some grade A nightmare fuel so I’m trying to appreciate life’s little mercies
They get some food at the rest stop. Maxim pays for it, and Alessia tells him she has money, and he tells her not to worry about it. She worries about what she’s going to do for money while she’s not working because she can’t dip into her savings that she needs for a deposit on a room when her roommate emigrates. She wonders what Maxim does for a living that allows him to be so generous. She asks him, but he dodges the question pretty easily by changing the topic to roughly a dozen pages about Alessia’s grandmother, which I will not be summarizing.
Maxim briefly confronts his privilege again.
“It is expensive!” Alessia exclaims when she sees the cost.
“Yes, I suppose it is.” And I realize I’ve never paid attention to how much fuel costs. I’ve never had to. “Come on, let’s go pay.” […]
At the register I slide my credit card into the chip and PIN machine, conscious that she’s watching my every move.
“Your card is magic,” Alessia says.
“Magic?” And I have to agree with her. It is magic. I’ve done nothing to earn the money that’s paying for the petrol. My wealth is merely an accident of birth.
“Yes,” I murmur. “Magic.”
This sort of thing never happened in Fifty Shades and is definitely one of the parts of that story that aged the worst in the garbage fire decade that followed its publication, so I actually rather appreciate that Maxim’s story is more so how an asshole with money realizes how privileged he is versus Christian’s story about an underprivileged man who gets money realizes he can be an asshole about it and that’s pretty much how the whole story goes.
Their late night drive continues for the rest of the chapter. They continue to bond over music, and Alessia goes through Maxim’s library, which is all totally new to her. It’s cute enough, but for our purposes the only real highlight is this bit where Maxim mentions DJing and clubbing and none of the words mean anything to Alessia.
“I sometimes use this as part of a set when I’m DJing.” […]
“DJing?” she asks.
“You know, in a club. For people to dance to. I DJ a couple of nights a month in Hoxton.”
I glance at Alessia, who is staring blankly at me.
She has no idea what I’m talking about.
“Okay, I’ll have to take you to a club.”
Alessia’s look is still blank
I think… I’m actually looking forward to a scene in this book whatisthisfeeling
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“All my plans, all my fantasies will be for nothing if she can’t bear to be with a man…any man” EW EW EW EW
Luckily for these kidnappers, EL James characters are allergic to actually involving law enforcement so they’re in the clear.
It’s funny that this book isn’t very good, but it is marginally closer to an actual novel with actual characters, so it seems worlds better.
the thing that is driving me ABSOLUTELY BANANAS about this book is how he DOESNT EXPLAIN ANYTHING when she doesnt understand a word. don’t say ‘oh i’ll take you to a club,’ just be like ‘oh a club is where people dance socially to loud music and the DJ is the person who curates the music.’
this is a pet peeve i have with a lot of media, but there’s so little to grab me in this book that it stands out so much more haha