Chapter Twelve

That night, Lisbet got a message from Beck on her Sleeping Beauty Inc. bracelet. “Come upstairs and get your haircut.”

Lisbet rolled the frozen blueberry around on her tongue until it got warm before she answered him. “In a minute,” she recorded her voice with a lazy shrug.

She was tired after her first day at The Boiler Room. Talking to people all day had been completely overwhelming after two weeks of solitude. She had been able to put off the haircut for one extra day because they weren’t allowing any filming of her on the first day, but they were on the second, so the haircut was happening that night whether she was in the mood or not.

She whined to herself that it would be better if her haircut took place in her dressing room instead of in his workshop. She was about to whine vocally with her bracelet’s microphone on when she glanced into her dressing room. The place looked like a bomb had gone off inside. Bra and panty sets were everywhere. There were huge piles of discarded clothing and only one neat little rack of clothing that she had been preparing for her days at The Boiler Room. She knew she couldn’t really wear the same outfit twice, so a lot of planning was necessary.

“I love physics,” she sang crankily as she got to her feet. “I love physics. That’s why I have a career in fashion and public relations.” She sang off-key with no melody as she ascended the escalator, lazily letting it carry her upwards.

Beck was leaning against a workshop bench smoking when she came in the clear automatic doors.

“Hi princess,” he said drolly as he extended his hand. A pair of very long, cruel-looking scissors sat perched there. “Ready for your haircut?”

Lisbet swung her long tangle of dark hair over her shoulder protectively. “I would like to talk you out of this.”

“Oh?”

“You see,” she began. “I’m not as appealing as my sisters. I need my hair to make me prettier. I realize it’s more practical to have shorter hair on Mars, but I’m also a trillionaire’s wife. Can’t I have a little extravagance?”

Beck opened and closed the scissors with a sharp snap before removing them from his hand and placing them on the workbench. “Hmm… I see I have some work to do before I cut your hair. You think you’re not as pretty as your sisters?”

“Of course, I’m not. It’s just that you haven’t seen my sisters,” Lisbet explained.

He laughed. “Of course, I’ve seen your sisters. Your father put all of you up for sale through Sleeping Beauty Inc.”

Lisbet gasped.

“You didn’t know? All three of you were up for sale. I read Tiffania and Cassica’s profiles. I didn’t include either of them in the list of five women I supplied Vantz. Shall I explain why you are a better choice than either of your sisters?”

Lisbet didn’t want to know.

Okay, she wanted to know.

She bit her lips together and nodded.

Beck was so businesslike that there was no way he’d embellish the story just to please her. “I’ll start with Cassica because her faults are less. She’s very pale. Pale people do not look as beautiful with no makeup. On Mars, no one can wear it because there isn’t enough water to wash it off. There isn’t even enough water to make the cleaning solutions. She’s also not got a third of your academic prowess. She has only a high school diploma and then she goofed off working at ski resorts while you worked at university. She sounds like a baby when she talks and to make matters worse, she kind of looks like one. Such a baby face! Why would Vantz want a spoiled little girl to represent him? That is the kind of woman who is purchased because someone wants a wife and a daughter rolled into one. Even if you’re not getting the relationship you expected with Vantz, at least he acknowledges you as a woman.”

Lisbet dropped her chin into her chest. What Beck said was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. Cassica was a really sweet person. She would never say anything mean about anyone, even if it was true.

Lisbet swallowed. “I heard today that she is engaged to the president of an ice drilling company on Europa. Was she sold off like me then?”

Beck nodded. “It’s more than likely that the only reason your father was able to get a buyer for her was because she’s your sister and you are publicly married to Vantz. She might visit with her husband for business purposes later on. There are plenty of pretty-faced girls in the Sleeping Beauty Inc. gold model catalog for men who want to marry a woman with connections. She was chosen because she now has a better contact list than any of the other models. I should apologize though. After we’re finished terraforming Mars, her association with you might be less than golden.”

“Okay,” Lisbet chirped, raising her hands in defeat. “What’s wrong with Tiffania? She was very popular with men and no one has purchased her yet.”

Beck snorted a laugh through his nose. “She was expelled from three schools.”

Lisbet’s jaw dropped.

He took a puff on his cinnamon stick-flavored cigarette. “They didn’t tell you?”

“No,” Lisbet said, completely forgetting to breathe.

“Well, she doesn’t even have a high school diploma. If you didn’t know, then your parents hid her sins well. All she has is her pretty face and her willingness to color outside the lines. That may have been something once, but not anymore. Everyone bends the rules when it suits them in outer space. You, on the other hand…” he hesitated on the words before setting his eyes on the ground and turning away from her. “Are perfect,” he finished quietly.

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“What did you say?” she gasped in surprise.

He turned back to her and looked her dead in the eyes. “I said you’re perfect, but you’d be even more perfect if you’d forget about your sisters and let me cut your hair.”

She took the scissors from where he’d discarded them on the table. She pulled her hair into a ponytail on the side and opened the scissors around a small chunk of hair. “Tell me why I’m perfect,” she challenged.

His eyes moved between the poised scissors and her eyes, gauging how serious she was. Rising to the challenge, he began, “You didn’t need to have your eye color changed. Your hazel eyes were fine. You are a natural beauty. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps you think all women need to look like kittens to be adorable, but the lines of your face arouse feelings more noble than baseline lust. On Mars, trust me, we’ve had our fill of that. All of us need a woman who is more than a kitten. Whether you understand it or not, you’re perfect for the job.”

He stopped talking and she let a heartbeat pass before she closed the scissors down on the lock of hair she’d set apart. The curl of black hair fell to the floor. With her fingers, she separated another lock. “Keep going,” she dared him.

“You haven’t complained and you could have. You could have made my ears bleed with incessant whining. Not only is life on Mars wildly inconvenient compared to life on Earth but what Vantz is asking you to do is hard. It’s taking a forefront in transforming a world you don’t even care about, yet you haven’t complained, and you’ve done everything you’ve been asked to do. Even now,” he pointed at the scissors in her hand with his chin, “you’re still doing it.”

She snapped the scissors shut again and pulled another bit of her hair forward.

“You loved your family. Thinking of your love for your family turns me inside out,” he continued. “Your father is unquestionably greedy. A lot of people would think that a man as greedy as that doesn’t deserve the love of his daughter, especially when he was willing to sell her. Yet, you gave him what he asked for—everything—and then drew the line and said he wouldn’t take anything more from you. It’s an elegant sacrifice.”

Lisbet felt tears welling up in her eyes. She pushed them back with a strong intake of breath and closed the scissors again. The cut hair fell soundlessly to the floor. Now she only had one chunk of hair that she hadn’t cut and she couldn’t think of one other thing that Beck could say about her that would satisfy her enough to make her cut it. Even if it was the last bit, even if she would look dumb with only one strand of long hair, she would leave it long if Beck couldn’t think of anything further to say.

His mouth hung a little open on the last thing. He had already complimented her looks, her perseverance, and her willingness to sacrifice. What else could he say?

“Sharing you with The Boiler Room is unbearable,” he finally said.

Lisbet removed the scissors from her hair. What did he mean by that?

He continued. “I know that I chose you and Vantz approved you for the job at The Boiler Room. I thought I would be fine sending you there each day, but now that it’s come to it, I don’t want you to go. Leaving you there this morning left me feeling empty.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s dangerous to be there. I know he schooled you. I know he gave you hundreds of thousands of words meant to protect you in a place like that, but I still feel uneasy. The truth is that the best way to protect you is to make every person on Mars fall in love with you. Your hair is something that yells a message to the audience no matter what comes out of your mouth. It says you’re not a Martian. You don’t understand them. It is imperative to your safety that it comes off.”

Lisbet stood there stupidly while he took the scissors from her hand and snipped the last lock of her hair.

“Let me even this out for you,” he said, turning her around so she faced the door. The scissors clicked open and shut as he worked evening out her ends. “It would really help me if you’d do something that makes me think less of you.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, maybe you could tell me everything you find lacking in me. That would help.” His words floated over her shoulder and into her ear.

Was she beginning to get what Vantz was talking about? How the isolation of Mars draws people together whether they like it or not? Her heart was beating fast and with no one around to care whether or not she made a mistake, it was hard not to turn around and do something outrageous.

What could she do? Tell him to put his arms around her? Tell him to kiss her? Tell him to take her to his bedroom to show her what his sheets felt like on her bare back?

She scoffed. She couldn’t do any of that stuff, but she made it seem like she was scoffing at him. She recovered by saying, “I can’t tell you what’s wrong with you. I didn’t read your profile.”

He wiped the clippings of hair from the scissor blades with his fingers. “You’re right. You can’t feel anything for me and I can’t stop what I feel for you. We’re going to have a delightful time together.” He put down the scissors and put a handheld mirror in front of her face.

She fingered her straight hair. All the curls had been cut off. “It’s even. Thanks. Is there anything else I’m supposed to do while I’m up here?”

“Yeah,” Beck said, pressing some buttons on his armbands. The first thing that happened was that a little robot shot out of a bay by the wall and started sucking up the hair on the floor. The second was that Beck retrieved something from the table. “This is for you. From Vantz,” he said, handing her a small rectangular box.

It was the wrong shape to be any piece of jewelry Lisbet could think of. She opened it to see a cigarette sitting in the velvet with several cartridges sitting next to it. They were all labeled rhubarb pie.

“Not all flavors taste good with the antianxiety drugs you inhale when you smoke these. It has to be something fall-scented,” he explained.

“What flavor does Vantz smoke?” Lisbet wondered aloud.

“Black licorice,” Beck said disdainfully.

“Hmm…” Lisbet considered how the kiss tasted when she was still waking up in her cryochamber. “He didn’t taste like black licorice to me.”

Beck shrugged his shoulders. “What did he taste like?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe the wind.”

“There is no wind on Mars,” Beck commented. “I’m also supposed to give you this. Vantz requested it be dug up from storage for you.”

It was a sewing machine in a box with a handle.

“How are the alterations coming? Are they slow by hand?”

“I haven’t really started,” she admitted. “I’m still sorting out what fits well enough to be worn immediately.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said, taking a puff of his cigarette and moving toward a door that led somewhere further inside.

“Is that your bedroom?” she called after him.

He nodded. “Want to see inside?” He dared to flash her a smile as he held the door open as if he was holding it open for her.

She recoiled.

He raised a cynical eyebrow at her and closed the door between them.