Chapter Two

Libet was given her choice of what she would like to wear when she was in cryostasis for the trip between Earth and Mars. After all, it would be what she was wearing when Vantz woke her from cryostasis with a kiss.

“Normally,” Quincy said as she took her into the shop. “Normally, the buyer chooses what the model will wear and pays for it. In your case, Vantz has said that he will buy anything you like. What kind of dress would you like to wear? First impressions are very important.”

Lisbet groaned. “I don’t want a dress. I want leggings and a sweater.” But looking around the shop, Lisbet could see that was out of the question. They only had dresses. “Okay,” she said, getting her bearings. “Something black?”

“We can’t make it look like you’re going to your own funeral,” Quincy rebuked, pulling out a yellow gown.

“I am not going to my funeral,” Lisbet agreed firmly. “But I am not like you with your skinny ribcage and your teeny thighs. I need the black to make me look slimmer.”

“I’ve got you,” a woman called from behind the counter.

“Veronica, do not give her a black dress!” Quincy countered, taking a quick step to stop the woman from behind the counter from retrieving anything from the back.

“I’ve got something good,” Veronica yelled back.

After some fuss, the dress was brought out, stripped of its plastic covering, and handed to Lisbet. Lisbet didn’t look at it but disappeared behind a curtain to try it on.

From behind the curtain, she heard Quincy and Veronica.

“Why are you making such a fuss about what she wears? It doesn’t matter. Vantz doesn’t care. She needs to get going. You know that.” Veronica’s voice was the lightest smacking of tongue and vocal cords to make the necessary sounds.

“But… she needs to feel special,” Quincy hissed back.

“She’s not going to feel special. She’s the excuse we need, and she has to hurry.”

“But!” Quincy said again. “This is too tense. Doing business like this is too tense.”

“And if we want to stay in business, we’ll do this part perfectly. No part of this deal has to do with what she looks like. It’s going to take a year to get to Mars. Toughen up.”

“I can never get over it,” Quincy lamented. “How many times have you told your models, ‘Don’t go to Mars’, ‘Don’t go to Mars’, ‘Do not go to Mars!’ and none of them listen?”

“That’s right. Think about Mars. Think about Vantz. We need to do all we can to help him now,” Veronica said, trying to keep her voice hushed and failing.

With those words, the Sleeping Beauty Inc. employees quieted down and Lisbet finished putting the dress on. She came out of the dressing room and looked at herself in the mirror. It was good. It made her eyes bulge like balloons. She’d clearly been shopping in the wrong boutiques because she’d never tried on a dress that made her look like a black rose in the twilight.

Every dress has a purpose. Its job is to highlight a particular part of a woman’s body. A dress with a slit gives away the leg. A dress with an empire waist gives away the solar plexus. Many dresses give away the shoulders. A dress that gives away everything is not a dress, it is lingerie.

The dress Lisbet wore gave away the collarbone and the slight curve of her breasts beneath. It was made of velvet with long sleeves, a tight bodice, and an A-line skirt. It had a large cutout circle that exposed her collarbone and a touch of cleavage, but no throat. Her neck was covered with a mock turtleneck. The way the sleeves covered her hands and knuckles was what really won her.

“This will do,” Lisbet said, happy she didn’t have to try on a million dresses. Normally, she liked trying on dresses, but she was no longer in the mood. “What were you two talking about when I was in the dressing room? Quincy, you didn’t tell me not to go to Mars.”

“Did you hear that?” Quincy replied flippantly like what they were talking about was about as important as which door they received their dress deliveries. “That’s advice for the lower-grade models. You are nothing like them. We’re not marrying them off to trillionaires with priceless government contracts. You are special. You need a necklace!” Quincy declared, clearly desperate to change the subject.

Veronica rolled her eyes in the mirror over Lisbet’s shoulder. “Her collarbone is her necklace. It looks perfect. It’s a good dress because no one will be able to look at anything else.”

“Still,” Quincy said sadly. “It seems strange to take you right upstairs and put you in cryostasis without doing at least one more thing. Earrings? Makeup? Normally, we’d get someone to do your hair, but it already looks exquisite.”

Lisbet decided to sit for makeup. They had a professional who seemed enthusiastic. Besides, having sponges and brushes pushed against her face, her head, the place where her thinking happened, was helpful. It took her mind off the betrayal that was as fresh as her shadow. Lisbet would have liked to think about what awaited her, what Quincy and Veronica were talking about, what would happen in the future, and how that mattered, but she couldn’t make herself. Instead, she thought of her father and how much he hurt her and then she closed her eyes so finishing powder could be applied.

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“How long will I be in cryostasis on the trip between Earth and Mars?” she asked with her eyes closed. The makeup artist was doing her eyeshadow.

“A little over a year, Earth time,” Quincy informed her.

“Can Vantz wait that long?” Lisbet asked.

“Vantz has already been sent word that you have accepted the contract and since you’ve already signed it, you are already his property, so he’s using you already,” Quincy replied.

“How can he do that?” Lisbet wondered. “I’m here. He’s there. How can I be of any use here?”

“He had a press release ready to go should you accept. Your relationship has already been made public. He invented a story about how you contacted him asking him questions related to a possible thesis for your master’s degree. You talked back and forth while you were on Earth and he was on Mars. You both fell in love and now you’re joining him on Mars,” Quincy gushed.

How a made-up story could make a grown woman like the client coordinator gush, Lisbet didn’t know. Lisbet wasn’t about to gush.

“Is he going to want us to have a fancy wedding when I arrive on Mars?” she asked through pouted lips. She was having her lipstick done and it was difficult to speak through the application.

“No. Vantz may be a public figure, but he’s not a public public figure. You’ll have a marriage certificate to sign on your arrival in order to keep his end of the deal with your father. It should be an occasion almost identical to the one we had today, except you’ll be able to see the real Vantz Bloomburg. I envy you. Anyone who has seen him has had to sign a non-disclosure agreement vowing to never tell a soul what they’ve seen. And you get to meet him!”

Lisbet had a mirror shoved in her face and she saw the completed look.

“How is that?” the makeup artist asked.

Lisbet looked at her face in the mirror. She looked stupid. She always thought dramatic makeup made her look stupid like she was a little girl who had put it on herself and got carried away with the colors. However, Lisbet also knew that it didn’t really matter what she looked like. It was makeup. It would come off and if she didn’t let Quincy make her look the way she wanted her to look, she was going to have a fight on her hands. They had to make her look like one of their models, their products, what they promised their clients.

In the blink of an eye, she would be on Mars and then maybe she would be in charge of how she looked. Maybe she wouldn’t be. If she could do whatever she wanted then it wouldn’t matter if she couldn’t look the way she wanted now. On the contrary, if she was going to be bullied around for the rest of her life by a man who wanted her to look a certain way, she may as well get used to seeing a stranger in the mirror.

“I look perfect,” she said to the makeup artist with a fake smile.

Everyone was satisfied, including Quincy, who took her up a magical stairway like someone in a fairy tale.

“I don’t know if you know this,” Quincy said as they went up. “But normally, our models are told a fairy tale before they are put in cryostasis. I have told fairy tales to hundreds of girls going to sleep in glass boxes, but Vantz requested a special story be told to you.”

“Interesting,” Lisbet lied. Nothing was very interesting at that moment. Who cared about dumb fairy tales? Her whole life had been ripped apart in a single afternoon.

“Vantz asked that you be placed in the cryochamber with the lid put down and then to have an audio recording played for you. How does that sound? You don’t get squeamish in small spaces, do you?”

They came to the top of the stairs to a round room surrounded by arched mirrors and windows. In the middle was the cryochamber. Lisbet had never been in a room with one before. She had only seen them in movies and commercials. However, she had been in rooms with coffins before and the cryochamber looked almost exactly like one, except for the glass lid.

She clenched her jaw.

Quincy saw her and offered quietly. “Would you like me to tell you a fairy tale anyway to help soothe your nerves?”

“Just tell me the proper way to get inside. Feet first? Bum first?”

“Just like you get into a row boat?” Quincy said, offering her a hand.

Lisbet got inside. The chair inside was white leather and held her at a bit of an angle inside the box. The white leather was comforting to Lisbet. Once inside the box, everything suddenly seemed all too real. What had they said about Mars behind her back? Don’t go to Mars. Her knees were wobbling and she was thinking what a tragedy it would be if she wet herself, but if the leather was white, that must not happen very often. The chair had a four-point harness, which Quincy helped her buckle.

“The chamber will fill with gas once Vantz stops speaking. I hope it’s a smooth transition for you.” Quincy stepped away from the cryochamber, but she had one more thing to tell Lisbet. “Oh, and don’t forget he’s going to kiss you to wake you up. That’s what all the clients do.”

The lid fell closed.

Lisbet was grateful Quincy didn’t say goodbye. It was goodbye, but it was still nice of her not to say it.

The lid was clear plexiglass and was meant to look something like a space-worthy glass casket like the one Snow White was dead in. However, there was a bar that broke up the glass, and on it was a tiny screen with instructions and information.

Vantz’s voice came over the speaker. It was deep and low with a slight accent that spoke of culture and civility. “Once upon a time, there was a land that was made of red dust. There was so much of it that it formed dunes of pink sand with jagged black rocks jutting out of it. The sky was a red haze. All the kings of the red sands dreamed of showing their power by turning that pink sand into yellow sand, making that pink sky blue. They all dreamed of it. They poured their money into plans to achieve it, but it was all for nothing. In time, they stopped trying. It was something not even a king could achieve. If a king can’t achieve it, who can?”

His voice stopped and Lisbet saw the sleeping gas drift in through the vents. The little screen in the middle displayed the words, ‘Breathe Normally.’ Lisbet did, though it took all her control to do so.

She fell asleep. The heaviness that hit her was strong. Heaviness was all she knew. Heavy eyelids, heavy hands, heavy thoughts. The thoughts were the heaviest.

Time passed.

She breathed in hard.

Warm lips were on hers.

Lisbet opened her eyes and saw black. Something was covering her eyes. A blindfold?

Against all odds, the kiss was good. It felt like the kind of kiss someone got at the train station after a long journey. She was missed when she was away. She was loved. It was a feeling she’d never felt before, just hoped for.

The feeling lasted thirty seconds before the kiss ended.

The heaviness was still thick throughout her body. By the time she reached the blindfold at the back of her head, the man who had kissed her was gone. She knew it was a man. She had felt a bit of the stubble on his chin.

He was long gone.

Lisbet slid out of the cryochamber, but she was really too disoriented to be moving around. She slid, falling on her face.