Play the long game

As soon as the call ends, Carrie blocks your number, but waits for later to delete it in front of Troy. She decides the vague niceties of her plan pretty fast: play the long game to make Troy think he’s really achieved something, play up his skills and give him free reign over her after their first fuck, and try to truly act romantically interested in such a dull and manipulative man. In the mean time, she goes around to explore Troy’s home.

Troy set her up in his pool house, and she slept on a Murphy bed in what has the look of a nice studio apartment. Nice furniture is scattered throughout the room, as is storage for both pool supplies and some basic miscellaneous things. On the other side of the bed is a bathroom with a shower, tub, toilet, and vanity, all made of exquisitely cleaned and polished porcelain. Outside the pool house is the enormous pool and yard. When Carrie saw a manor last night, she saw correctly. The house itself is an ornate building, made mostly of limestone and red brick and obviously quite storied. Even just from the side, the house is imposingly large. With three stories and tall ceilings making the roofline barely even visible through the glass double doors or her pool house suite.

Carrie changes out of her pajamas into the swimwear Troy left, noting it’s the only clothes she has other than sleepwear. The top fits well enough, covering her chest but hanging a bit loosely from her shoulders, and the bottoms are noticeable too tight, barely covering her holes and leaving most of her light bush to the open air.

Making her way in through a side door to the pool, she finds a dining room to her left and a kitchen to her right. She finds herself in the kitchen, running her hands on the marble countertops and mahogany cabinets. The room in huge and beautiful. What a home she gets to stay in for a while. Outside the kitchen is the great room, with the front door and two sets of symmetrical sets of stairs that circle up the the second floor, like a haunted mansion from a kids cartoon. There’s even a comically ornate chandelier hanging above the front door. Carrie imagines being fucked in such an opulent hall. Behind the stairs is a small study, with a fireplace, coffee table and chairs, some bookshelves, and a door that leads to the basement.

The basement is noticeably newer, with the exception of a giant wine cellar snaking to the other side of the house. The stairs loop down into a cozy hallway with four doors, one to the wine cellar, one to an in-home theater, one to his game room he told her about, and one to a big storage area. She notes this and goes back upstairs to explore more.

The other side of the first floor has a more traditional looking living room, with sofas and TV and decor scattered about, a small bathroom, and a breezeway to a state-of-the-art home gym and his 6-car garage to match the pool and guest house across the manor. Even just the first floor of this house is enough to tell Carrie a lot about Troy: he’s obviously very, VERY rich, but he at least has some amount of taste too. Nice art and furniture adorns the home, but it all meshes well into an aesthetic of old money and high class. It’s also clean, which tells her either Troy is responsible enough to clean this whole house (which she doubts), hires cleaners regularly, or just never uses the space. The latter would really be a shame, but no matter what, Carrie is impressed.

She makes her way up the stairs to the second floor and looks around in the long hallway at the top of the stairs. Most of the hall is doors, lots and lots of doors. Most of the lead to what seems to be guest bedrooms and bathrooms, and while they’re nice, certainly better than anything that old boyfriend of her could ever dream of having, they seemed pretty lifeless. The beds are made, the floors are clean, and the porcelain is as gorgeous and polished as ever.

The three doors of interest to her on the floor lead to a huge library, fit even with a wooden ladder to help reach higher shelves, the master suite which she leaves to explore last, and a locked door at the end of the hall. This house is old, and presumably this door leads to the stairs to the top floor which used to be for live-in maids and houseworkers. In this day in age the idea of a floor, much less the top floor, to domestic labor is preposterous, but Carrie knows her history and suspects this to be true. She notes to ask Troy to take her up there at some point. The master suite is, unexpectedly, as clean as the other bedrooms. The bed is made, the sink and shower are dry, and the closet is only about a quarter full, and mostly of winter items. Troy doesn’t use the master suite. The mystery of Troy’s living space draws Carrie in further, and even if she hadn’t been doing the whole whoring herself for Troy thing, she’d probably try to stay just to find out. With the house as explored as she can really do, Carrie starts to really plan for the rest of her day.