The April Fool

© Jane Harvey-Berrick

“Is this a joke?”

“Darling, I’m sorry…”

“Seriously, Eric, because if this is a prank, some sort of sick April Fool, I am not laughing.”

“Constance!” he said in a wounded voice. “I would never hurt your feelings so crassly. I care about you too much for that.”

“You just told me that you were breaking up with me! Over dinner! That I made! Our seventh anniversary dinner! Our…”

I started to choke on the delicious tiramisu that had taken me hours to make. I’d baked the sponge fingers myself, rather than using shop bought ones; I’d whipped the cream and mascarpone by hand. It was delicious, the icing on the proverbial dinner-à-deux cake.

I’d been to the hairdresser, the manicurist, the pedicurist, and I’d waxed everywhere. I’d lost three pounds and was wearing a new dress; an expensive new dress.

The date had been perfect, the food perfect, even the frickin’ tiramisu was perfect.

Wanna guess what wasn’t perfect?

The date: April Fool’s Day.

And the douche-canoe sitting opposite me, holding my hand who, instead of whispering sweet nothings into my ‘adorable seashell ears’ (I’m quoting), was whispering sweet a whole lot of nothing nothings—of the ‘so long, farewell, auf weidersehen, adieu, I’m breaking up with you’. Yeah, one of those nothings.

I snatched my hand back and the jerk had the temerity to look wounded.

“Connie-bonnie…”

“Don’t call me that! I am not a Cockerpoo!”

“It’s not my fault that my parents have a dog with the same name as you.”

“Aaaaagh!”

He folded his linen napkin (which I’d pressed especially for the evening) and dabbed at his lips, placing the now greasy square of linen onto my crisp, white tablecloth.

“It’s outbursts like this which made me come to this conclusion,” he said, his mealy-mouthed words just racheting up my hurt and fury another degree. “Look, Connie,” he said, his tone softening, similar to the manner in which a doctor informs you that you have less than a week to live. “Look, Connie … Constance … I know the timing sucks…”

“Timing? The timing? We were planning a life together. I thought … I thought you were going to propose tonight.”

He gave me an incredulous look.

“Why would you think that?”

“BECAUSE WE’VE DATED FOR SEVEN YEARS AND YOU HAVE AN ENGAGEMENT RING IN YOUR SOCK DRAWER!”

He looked ever so slightly ashamed.

“Ah, well … you weren’t supposed to see that. What were you doing in my sock drawer anyway?”

“Putting away your socks! Socks that I laundered for you!”

He shifted tiredly on the chair.

“Yeah, thanks for that. But the thing is, I met someone. The ring is for her.”

I gaped at him, tears winning the battle and beginning to trickle down my cheeks, ruining my carefully applied my makeup.

“Come on, Con-con, you must have known we’d never work out in the long-run,” he sighed, my tears merely irritating him.

“Why would I think that?” I sniffed unhappily.

“Let’s face it, you’re not really the kind of woman someone like me marries,” and he laughed.

The bastard laughed.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, my tears freezing on my cheeks as my voice frosted over.

“I’m a CEO now, and you’re … you’re a nice girl. But a CEO needs a girlfriend befitting of his status. I don’t mean that in a nasty way, Con,” he said.

My eyes attempted to freeze his balls and shatter them with a blink.

“But I need a girlfriend who understands money and is comfortable around it; not someone who wears clothes from Walmart.”

“This dress is vintage Chanel!” I gasped.

“Exactly—second-hand,” he laughed. “I need someone who knows about money.”

“I’m an accountant!” I screeched.

He sighed as if I was being particularly dim.

“Someone who knows about spending money. Someone who fits with my crowd. A wife fit for a CEO.”

He sighed again and stood up, sticking out his hand for me to shake now business was concluded.

I folded my arms across my chest and vowed that he would regret this. One day, Eric Carrefleur the Third would regret that day he pissed off Constance Duke.

I vowed revenge. My heart might be broken, but my brain worked just fine.

That evening, after I’d stuffed down every last crumb of the tiramisu, even though I was sick of myself, sick of my niceness and sick of being taken for granted, I cleaned my small kitchen, did the dishes and left them to dry. Then I retreated to a place that couldn’t hurt me and only brought me relief from the world—my books.

I’m something of a whore when it comes to books—I love ‘em all: ebooks, paperbacks, hardbacks, comic books, picture books, coffee table books, but especially pre-loved books—what Eric called ‘second-hand and smelling like mold’. I loved books that had belonged to other people, that had been read by other people, people who got the same joy out of a good story well told that I did.

I closed my eyes and picked a book at random, smiling through fresh tears when I saw it was Fifty Shades of Grey.

It was the book that first made me buy an e-reader. Not solely because I was embarrassed to be seen reading it, but because by the final installation, it was a hefty doorstop of a novel. But I do admit that I would get a naughty little frisson reading it on the Subway, knowing that bondage and nipple clamps and canes and whips were in the train carriage along with people in suits going to work, students going to classes, mothers taking their kids to kindergarten or playdates.

I adored the story of poor, broken Christian Grey who is redeemed by learning to love, saved by a woman who can play the submissive but refuses to submit to his limited view of the world.

And as I read the pages while my tears dried, I got to thinking: sex, money, power.

Sex and money and power.

Power and money and sex.

Money and power and sex.

Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning to take up the world’s oldest profession.

No, I had a completely different idea.

Once I started to research the idea, I realised that I wasn’t the first. An early adopter, perhaps, but not the first.

I began to investigate the world of findom: financial dominatrix, and so my alter ego was born – the Diamond Duchess.

My friend Rebecca helped me make some sexy video vignettes of me in my pre-loved Chanel dress and a Venetian mask running diamonds through my fingers (actually cubic zirconium, but who’s counting?), and offer some cheesy sayings in a husky whisper along the lines of,

“Money maketh the man, but only if I say so.”

“Wealth belongs to the person who enjoys it and not to the one who keeps it—I am going to be so happy with your money, and I’ll let you watch me spend it.”

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. She who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it … to me.”

Yeah, I know, but it was fun! And I felt sexy and naughty, and I desperately wanted to feel both those things after Eric’s cutting belittling that I was nice.

I designed a website that was all black and gold and shimmering diamonds, and honestly, it looked amazing, and very exclusive. You had to pay a premium just to take a peek behind the gold, velvet drapes.

I put a few discreet advertisements in the back of some of the world’s most exclusive (and expensive) magazines: Port: the magazine for men, Lapham’s Quarterly, Zoo Magazine (German fashion and lifestyle), Drome (Italian contemporary art), Man About Town (yeah), Communication Arts (the bible for the advertising world), The Dirty Durty Diary (look it up), Sport & Street (costing a whopping $74 per issue).

I would have loved to put an ad in something like the diamond-studded launch of Kohl magazine: it took 86 hours for some poor schmuck to apply 91 grams of gold and 622 diamonds to the cover, costing $10,000.

Meh. Maybe next year.

I cast my net far and wild, not really knowing who my target market would be, not really caring that much. I knew that they’d probably be men with more money than sense, but other than that…

I also had very strict rules:

1. No meeting in person
2. I would have their phone number but they never got mine. All chats would be online at my instigation.
3. They handed over their entire financial estates over to me and I would give them an allowance to live on, taking a substantial chunk for managing their money.

[I wasn’t going to bleed them dry, but teach them to appreciate the wealth they had, whilst giving them the pleasure of seeing me enjoy myself by shopping in all the stores I’d never been able to afford before. And although my customers would be submissives, I wasn’t really into insulting people. I didn’t want to be the kind of findomme who would say something like, ‘Let’s go losers. I’m in the mood to drain today let’s start big and give me what I deserve.’ Yeah, that wasn’t me, and not even the Diamond Duchess either.]

• And finally, I was financially ethical. An accountant with that little bit of extra sparkle.

If it worked, great; if it didn’t, I still had the day-job.

But it did work.

My first client was a woman, the mother of a spoilt brat playboy who’d pissed her off by buying one yacht too many. Or, as she said to me,

“Who needs six yachts? Does he want one for each continent?”

I didn’t like to tell her that Antarctica was a continent, too.

And so, Lloyd Fledermaus the Fifth, became my first official financial submissive.

I learned three things from Lloyd:

ONE: he got turned on by me telling him ‘no’. His momma had handed over access to his bank accounts and he got his rocks off by me doing what no one had appeared to do his whole life: make him think about money.

“I get a rush from losing money, or the thought of it,” he said, his eyes wide. “Could you call me your slave? Or paypig, if you prefer? Maybe your personal ATM?” and his hand disappeared out of sight.

“Hands where I can see them, finsub!” I yelled.

And he did as he was told with a smile.

Weird.

TWO: it wasn’t really about money; it was about power. I had it and I never let him forget it. I punished him if he didn’t do one thoughtful thing every day.

THREE: he loved to watch me shop. I’d wear a discreet camera on my purse, and let him accompany me to all the top stores in Manhattan that I’d never been able to afford before.

I know how that sounds, but I was a lot cheaper than the $1.2 billion yacht he had his eye on.

His mom asked me if I’d marry him.

I declined. But I did insist that he start making his own pension contributions.

Actually, there’s a fourth thing I learned from Lloyd: he was a sad, lonely man, who used money to buy friendship. He told me that his mom had never wanted children and so he’d suffered an emotional neglect that couldn’t be filled by the numerous nannies and au pairs. He saw himself as ‘bad’ and deserving of punishment.

So, I punished him: he had to do five hours volunteering each week at an animal shelter.

He did it. And adopted a nine year-old Shizu called Monica.

He told me that he’d never been happier.

Shortly after that, he started dating a doggie hair-stylist called Mona. I hoped for his own sake that he didn’t get their names mixed up.

His mom terminated my services and gave me a massive bonus. I mean massive. I was almost embarrassed. But still cheaper than another yacht.

She recommended me to several of her friends, and from that, I never looked back.

I gave up the day job and spent all my time ‘servicing’ rich, needy finsubs. I was careful never to reveal my true identity.

And I hate to say it, but I sort of agreed with what Eric had said about me: I had been scared of spending money, and I had been in awe of people who had a lot of it. But, excuse me for the cliché, I also learned that money doesn’t buy happiness.

As the Diamond Duchess, I messaged around 25 submissives each day. With several of them, I worked alongside their accountants and fund managers who were horribly jealous of how much I was earning, but glad that I was helping their clients become more fiscally responsible.

I was enjoying my work and even able to employ Rebecca fulltime to run my website and help me make my little motivational videos:

“Frugality drives innovation!”

Jeff Bezos

“I am not a person who pursues luxury. I am not like those people who, once they have money, compulsively squander it or show it off.”

Wang Jianlin

That was a favourite: I made my clients say it ten times a day in front of a mirror like an affirmation.

It was early in March when Rebecca called my attention to a client whom I’d had for nine months.

Clive was 37 and had been divorced twice. He was completely hopeless with money, mostly because on his father died when he was just 17 years old, and he’d become a multi-billionaire. He couldn’t even tell me how many billions were in that little package, because he didn’t know. Really. He had no clue how much money he had.

“He’s asking to meet you again,” Rebecca said.

“Clive,” I sighed.

“Of course. He’s offering $2,000,000 to meet you in person.”

I shook my head. “No.”

She cocked her head to one side. “You’re not even a little tempted?”

I gave her a sharp look.

“No! It’s bad business practice.”

“How is earning $2,000,000 for just meeting the guy bad for business?” she asked incredulously.

“First, it shows him that money really can buy anything he wants, including me; second, who knows what else he’ll expect for that sort of money—I’ll have broken my own rules, so I won’t have a leg to stand on; third, if word gets around—and it will— then all the others will start thinking they can pay me for a date. And once they start treating me like a prostitute … if I allow that, my business is fucked—and not in away that’s going to thank me and buy me breakfast in the morning.”

“Oh,” she said, her face falling. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Her laptop pinged and she glance down.

“He’s just upped it to $3,000,000.”

“He is so getting punished,” I said.

I went to his online account and tapped my fingers on the desk as I decided how to punish him.

Ah, yes! That was perfect.

Clive spent a small fortune on limo rentals to get from his megabucks apartment overlooking Central Park to the gym he used three blocks away. He kept a limo on standby 24/7 just in case. And that was costing him $110,000.

Each.

Month.

The Diamond Duchess solution? From now on, he was walking.

He did it, and I’ve got to tell you, the feeling of empowerment was quite a rush. And after all, as much as I was in control, all my clients had the choice to simply walk away.

The week after Clive started walking everywhere, he emailed me again.

Rebecca sat on my sofa, swinging her legs as she read his message.

“Oh, man!” she gasped. “You’ll never guess what he’s offering now!”

My message of economy was not getting through.

“I’ll have to think of a new punishment,” I sighed.

“Not necessarily,” she said, her eyes still on her laptop.

“Rebecca…”

“No, listen,” she said. “This is different: he wants to meet in public and introduce you to a bunch of his friends. He wants to host a Diamond Duchess ball! This could be big, Constance.”

My instinct was to say no. Or possibly, Hell no! My confidence had grown in leaps and bounds over the last year, but the thought of having to be the Diamond Duchess in public with people staring at me… well, that was just a recipe for failure. Wasn’t it?

“You can totally do this, Connie,” she said. “Make him buy you a throne and a real crown with diamonds, and glass slippers, like Cinderella. Why not have a little fun with it?” She paused. “He’s offering $20 million.”

It was an obscene amount of money—and about the same as seven Kardashian weddings.

I started to shake my head and Rebecca threw her hands up in the air.

“You don’t have to keep the money! Have some fun, meet his friends, then give the money to charity!”

I stared at her.

“Or not,” she sighed.

“No, you’re right!” I said. “That’s brilliant! You’re brilliant!”

“You’re only just noticing?” she laughed. “Okay, I’ll tell him yes. He was suggesting a date in June and…”

“No, it has to be April First.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “April Fool’s Day?” Then she got it. “Or a year to the day when he-who-is-forever-known-as-Dick…”

“…dumped me.”

She nodded, a wide smile stretching across her face.

“Revenge. I like it!”

It turned out that Clive knew a thing or two about hosting the most opulent party ever, and he and Rebecca worked hard to pull it all off in time.

And where was this extravaganza to take place? Why, the Diamond District in New York City, of course; specifically, the Rainbow Room, 30 Rock, the Rockefeller Center. Or, to put it another way, 13,500 square feet, a private dining room, Bar SixtyFive and an outdoor terrace, the 4,464-square-foot restaurant with a 32-foot-wide rotating dance floor.

Rebecca organized my costume—and that was the only way I was going to get through this thing—by telling myself it was an acting role. Really, I was an accountant with great clothes.

Two days before the event, Rebecca came and sat on my sofa.

“You want to hear something awesome? The wives, girlfriends, and significant others who are coming to the ball are all trying to dress like the Diamond Duchess! Con, they want to be you! You’ve got your own meme and hashtag.”

“Oh, God!” I groaned.

“How are you doing? You look stressed.”

“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted. “Eric was right about me: I’m not good at spending money, and I hate wasting it. And … and I’m scared that I’ll fuck up so badly, I’ll lose all my clients and then I’ll be back to square one.”

She held my hands in hers.

“You won’t fuck up because you’re awesome. You’re good at your job. You keep these jerks on a tight rein so they won’t squander their money. And, a serious amount of money is going to charity. All you have to do is be the Diamond Duchess for four hours, five tops. And I know you can do it, because you’re you.”

Before I could reply to her cheerleading, my apartment’s buzzer sounded.

Rebecca rushed to answer it.

“Your outfit is here!”

We laid the boxes out across the floor of my home office and stared.

Instead of my signature black and gold, my ballgown was of pure gold chiffon, so light and floaty, a small breeze could have whisked it away. Overlaying the fine material was a bodice, a bustier, covered in tiny pearls.

An enormous faux sable robe was in the largest box, and the smallest box contained a gift from Clive: a tiara so beautiful that my hands trembled to touch it.

Even Rebecca was speechless.

I read the note that Clive had included.

This is an exact copy of the famous Bavarian Ruby and Spinel Parure. (I tried to buy the original, but the Residenz Museum in Germany wouldn’t sell it—that’s the German’s for you). It was made for King Ludwig I of Bavaria as a gift to his wife, Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. A thing of beauty for a thing of beauty.

Clive.

I wrinkled my nose. “I’m not a thing!”

“Have you felt how heavy this is?” Rebecca asked.

Heavy. Like nearly pounds heavy. And I felt like royalty was getting less fun by the second. But two days later, when Clive met me at the Rockefeller Center and helped me out of the vintage Bentley he’d sent for me and all the Press started snapping away, I felt like a princess. I was also very glad that I’d hung a fine veil from the tiara, instead of wearing my trademark Venetian mask.

Rich, powerful and entitled people came to see me, to my throne, to fawn at my feet. I felt beautiful and regal, and oh hell yeah, it was quite a rush. And they all wanted to be punished.

I used my ceremonial whip on a few well-endowed asses (double entendre intended); ordered one to trade places with a server that he’d been rude to; and had another run naked around the room for being too handsy with the woman behind the bar. I was really getting into the role: it was wicked fun!

And then a very familiar head of wiry hair bowed before me, a superior smirk on his face: Erik.

I waited for a flutter of apprehension, a surge of imposter syndrome, but instead, I felt like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland and wanted to roar, “Off with his head!”

I disguised my voice, giving it a slight southern accent.

“You! Kneel at my feet!”

I could tell that he didn’t want to, but all the guys were standing around him chanting, “Kneel! Kneel! Kneel!”

I lifted my Valentino-Rockstudded stiletto sandal.

“You may kiss my foot, slave!”

His face turned puce, but the chants grew louder, so he had to do it or look like the dickhead I knew him to be.

He did as I ordered, then went to stand up, but I pushed him back down with my whip.

“Now the other foot!” I ordered imperiously.

“I’ve had enough of this shit,” he hissed.

“Oh, Erik,” I said in a sing-song voice. “You’ve been a bad boy.” I lowered my voice. “I know that you cheated on your last girlfriend and that will not go unpunished.”

He frowned, and I realised that I’d forgotten my accent.

“This man will be punished!” I roared, and the crowd cheered. “One hundred hours

community service as a street cleaner! Starting now!”

They laughed and cheered, and I laughed louder than anyone as a group of men hustled Erik to the lift, promising me faithfully that he’d have a broom in his hand within minutes.

It was a good thing that the Press were still outside to record Erik’s well-deserved humiliation.

The night was a huge success: three weeks later, and I have gained several more ridiculously wealthy clients, and $27.4 million has been donated to the charity of my choice which fights poverty in New York City. Fittingly, it’s called Robin Hood: you can look it up https://robinhood.org/

Not only that, Rebecca received a marriage proposal from Clive. She said yes but only if he promised to let her handle the money. He said yes, too.

As for Eric, he’s still working through his 100 hours of community service, keeping the streets of New York clean. I’ve been checking.

And me? I currently have five clients bidding for the right to hold a bigger and better Diamond Duchess ball next year.

I do love a happy ending.

THE END