astra_aurora | Fifty Shades Delusional: Chapter Five

Good morning, everyone! Welcome back to Fifty Shades Delusional, where the voices in my head do the talking!

*ducks a knife thrown by Ralph the Inner Serial Killer and starts running*

Note to self: Stop using everyone on That Guy With The Glasses' catch phrases!

Anyway, let's get going!

Ana asks Greta who Christian is talking to. Greta tells her that Mrs Robinson is actually Elena Lincoln, who owns the place with Grey. (Oh, and she's married.) She's not normally at the salon, but she's filling in for a sick technician. Ana's subconscious actually gets a decent line in:

I'm swamped by a strange sense of relief that my spidey sense has not let me down.
Spidey sense? my subconscious snorts. Pedo sense.

Oh snap!

Anyway, Ana has a massive freak-out, culminating in the two of them leaving. Grey admits that he took many of his subs there, so Elena knew about them, while they didn't know about her. He at least has the decency to admit that it's really fucked-up. And Ana gets another good line.

"I want to get my hair cut, preferably somewhere where you haven't fucked either the staff or the clientele."

Man, she's on fire today!

Grey gets a call from Welch, his security adviser. He finds out that Leila left her husband and ran off with a man who died in a car crash. See what I meant about Leila being a sympathetic character? She's out of her mind with grief and just wants to be with a guy who (presumably) took care of her. Ana just wants her haircut, but Grey demands that they go back to his place, because he doesn't know what Leila is going to do or how far she's going to go.

Oh, and when Ana gets pissed off and refuses to go anywhere, he actually picks her up and starts carrying her back.

Yeah, this book may be better than the last one, but unfortunately, Grey is still Grey. Fucking prick.

Anyway, as they walk home, Ana makes a list of exactly why she's angry at Grey, and the last item makes her stop- while Grey was freaked out over Leila the day before, suddenly it's much more serious. She demands to know what happened, and Grey reveals that Leila managed to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Now, before you all start screaming about how James didn't do any research, I looked up the laws in Washington concerning concealed weapons permits, and it turns out that all you need to get one is to meet a number of criteria. These criteria include the obvious ones like being either born in America or having a green card; being over 21; not having a criminal record or being sent to prison; and the problematic one- never being sent to a mental institution. I'm not sure if Leila was actually sent to one, but given that she ended up in hospital after trying to kill herself and had to see a psychologist- and that Ana described her as looking unkempt, unwashed and fucking deranged-, I'd be very surprised if she actually got that permit. Grey did say something in his conversation with Welch about why no background checks, but we aren't shown Welch's side of the conversation and Grey doesn't explain how, so it's pretty much hand waved off. This is basically a stretch of the truth, and I think we're all meant to suspend our disbelief. Which I won't, because I generally make it a point not to.

Anyway, Ana packs her stuff and goes with Grey back to his place. Grey, for some reason, has only had brunettes as subs, despite Elena being a blonde. Ana asks him to tell her more about their business arrangement: Grey is the silent partner, providing funding and not much else. He's not interested in beauty- it's Elena who does most of the work. He does it as a favour to Elena, who gave him a hundred grand to help him start his business after he dropped out of Harvard. He did two years in a Politics and Economics major and then dropped out as it wasn't working for him. Elena was a bored trophy wife whose husband wouldn't let her work. Ah, the old story. How surprising. And in her spare time, she fucks teenage boys. She also likes shopping!

(Yeah, I know that no one else will get that joke. Sue me. It's still funny.)

Oh, apparently the money that Elena lent Grey was actually her husband's- and he got his own back. I really, really don't like the sound of that, but Grey doesn't elaborate. I hope this doesn't get hand waved, because... ugh.

Anyway, when they get to Grey's place, he has a conversation with Taylor and we find out that Taylor's actually a father- he has a young daughter who lives with her mother. This is basically background filler, and I'll be very surprised if it turns up later.

Grey has to make some calls, so Ana goes to her wardrobe, finds all the expensive dresses (one is worth three grand) and calls her mother. Her mother's boyfriend is contemplating moving back to Vegas. Ouch. Anyway, Grey comes back and Ana asks him why he's doing 'this'. She clarifies a bit, and asks him why he's dating her when he could have a brunette sub who'd do anything he wants. He admits that having women do everything he wants when he wants it bores him, and there's something special about Ana.

Franco the hairdresser turns up. Ana gets her haircut, and then she has a fight with him over his being a dick. Brace yourselves, people. Grey does background checks on all his subs, meaning that he has a big-ass file on Ana. And that bit where he dropped in at her workplace? It wasn't a coincidence. Dick. She wasn't even his sub, she was just a girl he met one time! They argue about his possessing such personal information, and then he reveals that he earns about a hundred grand an hour, so he can afford to spend all this shit on Ana.

"If you were me, how would you feel about all this... largesse coming your way?" I ask.
He stares at me blankly, and there it is, his problem in a nutshell- empathy or the lack thereof. The silence stretches between us.
Finally, he shrugs. "I don't know," he says, and he looks genuinely bemused.

Exactly! He has no idea how to even imagine what other people are feeling! He's practically a damn sociopath!

Anyway, they go to eat lunch. Ana starts making an omelet, and just as she and Grey are about to fuck, Taylor interrupts them with an important problem. Grey deals with it, and Ana finishes making the lunch. Ana asks him about the music he's playing, and Grey tells her that it's in old French. Ana asks him if he understands French, and Grey explains that his mother got him and his siblings to each learn a language, an instrument and the martial arts. He and Mia speak French and Elliot speaks Spanish; Elliot plays guitar, Grey the piano, and Mia the cello. Elliot does Judo, Mia refused when she was twelve, and Grey doesn't say if he does or not. He has to go meet with some people, and then we switch scenes.

Grey has an idea: get Ana to draw on him using lipstick so she knows where the no-go areas are. She does so, noting that he's got nine scars in total (presumably from his mother's pimp). Afterwards, and I know you'll be surprised at this- they decide to have sex. My God!