He Made Me His Servant, Then Begged Me to Say No novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Sit. Eat.
Laurence orders Eli to eat sitting down and wear a coat, then calls him to heel in front of the campus.
At six in the morning a tray landed on the bedside table.
"Sit up," Laurence said. "Eat that."
Eli was upright before he was awake, hands flat on the blanket where Laurence could see them.
Laurence stood in the connecting doorway in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, already dressed, already cold.
On the tray was coffee, toast, two fried eggs and a glass of orange juice.
"Sir, I can make my own..." Eli began.
"Did I ask what you could do?"
"No, sir."
Laurence jerked his chin at the tray.
"Sit. Eat. All of it."
Eli ate with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up, fast, with one eye on the door.
Laurence watched him from the doorway and did not say a word.
His thumb moved on his watch.
When the plate was clean, he crossed the room and picked a grey wool coat off the chair.
He dropped it over Eli's arm.
The tag still hung from the sleeve.
Eli turned it over and saw a number with four digits.
"Wear that," Laurence said.
"I have a jacket," Eli said.
"You have a hoodie with a hole in the cuff. I've seen it. Wear the coat."
"Sir, it's too..."
"Sorrell," Laurence said.
Laurence did not raise his voice.
He never raised it, and somehow that was worse.
"Put the coat on."
Eli put it on.
It fit across the shoulders exactly.
It smelled of cedar, and for a strange moment the warmth of it made his throat tighten.
Laurence looked at him for one beat too long, then turned and walked out.
"Car in ten minutes. Don't be late."
Merrin College sat on a hill above the river, all brick and ivy and old money.
Laurence drove himself, in a black car that made no sound, and he did not speak the whole way down.
Eli sat with his hands in his lap and watched him in the side of his eye.
Laurence drove with one wrist over the wheel.
His hand on the wheel was long and sure, with a vein standing up across the back.
Eli looked away, then looked back, then stared out of the window, annoyed with himself.
At Bell Hall the car stopped at the curb, and a dozen students turned their heads.
"Bag," Laurence said.
Eli reached into the back and lifted out a leather bag so heavy that his shoulder dropped.
He carried it up the steps behind Laurence, one pace back, as he had been told to do in the folder.
It was in the folder, on page six: Mr. Fairbanks will be accompanied.
At the top of the steps Brant Lathrop was waiting with two friends and a phone.
"Look at that," Brant said. "He's got him house-trained already."
"He's quick," Laurence said.
He did not look at Eli.
"Does he fetch?"
"Try it."
Brant took a coffee lid out of his pocket and tossed it down the steps.
It bounced twice and rolled across the stone.
A couple of the girls laughed, uncertain.
Eli's feet were already moving.
"Sorrell," Laurence said.
Eli stopped with one foot in the air.
"Heel."
Nobody on the steps laughed.
Eli put his foot down and turned around.
He walked back to where Laurence stood and took his place one pace behind him.
His face was burning.
His hands were steady.
He had been told to heel before, in other houses, and he knew what to do with his face.
He made his face empty.
Laurence went into the lecture hall without looking back.
Brant's phone followed Eli until the door closed.
At lunch they sat at the long table in the Commons, and the whole room knew who Eli was.
He stood by Laurence's chair holding a tray, because nobody had told him to sit.
"Sit," Laurence said, without turning.
"Sir?"
"You're making my neck hurt. Sit."
There was a space beside Laurence, and Eli took it.
Brant leaned across the table.
"Is the dog allowed at the table now?"
"The dog is allowed to eat," Laurence said.
"If he doesn't, I get a phone call from my father. You want to take that call?"
Brant held up both hands, laughing.
Laurence pushed a plate in front of Eli. A sandwich, an apple, a carton of milk.
"All of it," he said, under the noise.
Eli ate.
His mind kept going back to the night before.
Two fingers under his chin.
Warm.
He had never felt a hand that did not want something.
He did not know what he was meant to do with the memory.
Brant was talking about a regatta.
Laurence answered in bored half sentences and turned his watch, round and round.
When the others had stood and shouldered their bags, Laurence waited until the table was nearly empty.
He did not look at Eli.
He folded his napkin.
"Tonight," he said, to the air in front of him. "Midnight. My room."
Eli's stomach dropped.
"Sir?"
"Come alone."
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