Chapter Ten

The next morning in the cafeteria, Clandestine sat down across from Ornette without an invitation. “Okay,” she said gruffly. “I want to talk. What the hell did you do to Fenrir? Your bracelet won’t let you sleep with him or do him any other ‘favors’, so what did you do?”

Ornette rolled her eyes and crossed her ankles under her chair. “I worked with him.”

“Well, if you’re so good at ‘working with’ designers and men and all that, then why are you the lowest-paid model here? Was there a scandal that lowered your price? Is something icky going to come out? Spill the tea.”

Ornette wrinkled her nose. There was, but there was no need for Ornette to tattle on herself. Just because she had been forthright with Clandestine once did not mean she was always obligated to be an open book. She swallowed and said clearly, “I don’t think there’s anything special in my file that every one of us is not guilty of. It would be in poor taste for you to throw rocks when you live in a glass house yourself.”

“Okay, fine,” Clandestine fumed. “Let’s say you didn’t do anything against the rules with Fenrir. What did you do?”

Ornette leaned in to make her point extra clear. “I worked with him and he was very nice to work with.”

“I saw him kissing you,” Clandestine shot back.

“He’s a good kisser,” Ornette snapped. “Besides he was allowed to kiss me. He did it like a hundred times and no one got snarly with him.”

Clandestine sat back in her chair like she’d figured it out. “I didn’t know the guys could kiss us. Did any of you know?” she asked the room at large.

No one said they knew kissing was allowed

“So, none of you got kissed by your designer?” Ornette asked the room.

There was a dull silence that seemed to indicate no. If anyone knew anything more, they kept it to themselves.

“Still,” Clandestine said, tapping her manicured nails against the table. “It seems weird that you would have been able to control him so completely with only a few dozen kisses. Did you excrete drugs from under your tongue?”

Ornette laughed. “I wish.”

“Well,” Clandestine said, getting up and kicking her chair back into position. “We’ll see how things go in the next round. Do you know anything about the guy you got?”

Ornette made herself look bored. “I know I got a guy who sells sporting equipment and owns gyms. I’m about as sporty as a set of gym clothes left in the closet. At first glance, it’s not a good match.”

Clandestine leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table and said saucily. “But you’ll make it a good match, won’t you?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Ornette said back. “I’m not going to be a brat and ruin this show. Are you?”

Clandestine straightened. “I guess not.”

“Who did you get?” Ornette wanted to know.

“Oh, I got someone good. I got the president of a jewelry chain. It’s going to be excellent.”

“Yup. Enjoy trying on diamonds and rubies. I’ll be somewhere sweating to a song that should have been taken off the radio thirty years ago.”

“Well, you would know. You were around to hear it.”

Ornette laughed. Ribbing her about her age was hilarious. She was not ashamed of her age. “That’s a good one. Try to think of a few more zingers like that while you’re at the jewelry store.” Ornette got up, threw out her trash, and went to get herself cleaned up. Once again, she had to look fabulous before she met the loser man she had to impress. He wasn't a designer. He didn't need a blank canvas.

***

Two hours later, Ornette was back in the helocarrier with Tania, Jane, and Yilin.

“Who was that guy who collapsed at your feet?” Tania asked Ornette, excited for gossip and bored when there was no one to talk to.

“Albert… something,” Ornette answered lazily.

“You don’t even know who he was?” Jane snarled, her lips twisting on a warped smile.

Ornette sighed. “Of course not. The only thing I knew about him was that he kept talking and he wouldn’t let me leave.”

“Was he gross?” Tania persisted.

“Yeah. He was a little gross,” Ornette agreed. “Not majorly, but a little. He was the kind of guy you wouldn’t want as a master. You’d have woken up in your cryochamber with his blubbery lips all over your face and you’d be a little too groggy to make a fuss. Then you’d spend the next eighteen months to two years listening to him whining about how each and every one of his actions had a consequence and how tired he was of not winning at everything he tried to do. He’d get you to wear the lowest cut dress in the boutique every single time and he’d hover over your chest so persistently that he’d keep dropping his crumbs between your cleavage.”

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“Not all of us have that problem,” Jane smirked.

“You didn’t have a master like that?”

“Of course, I did,” Jane sighed noisily. “I’ve had plenty of masters like that. Good-looking men with good manners don’t have to pay their arm candy.”

“But…” Ornette stressed. “That sort of guy wasn’t the worst kind of master I’ve had. You know, if I understood anything about Albert from our conversation last night, I didn’t like him. I’m glad he didn’t get me for this week’s activities, but I don’t know that I got anyone better. Have any of you heard of the businessman you’re set up with?”

Tania picked at her nails and said no.

Jane whacked the back of her head against the wall of the helocarrier and said no.

Yilin nodded. “I’ve heard of him.”

“Who did you get again?” Tania asked.

“Chip Bickman,” she replied.

Ornette hadn’t heard of him, but Jane knew all about him. “He bought me six years ago. He’s fine. It seems like you had a rotten designer last week. This week will be better. He never hit me. He only shocked me a handful of times and only because his friends were watching and they wanted to see what happened to a model when her owner shocked her. He was less traumatizing than a lot of other owners I’ve had. He’s in the shoe business. You’ll have fun if you get to model shoes. He makes really good shoes.”

Ornette let her jaw drop in envious surprise and then she slapped Yilin on the knee in a playful way. “Lucky! I’m going to go work out for a week when I’d rather starve myself than do a million sit-ups to stay slim. I’d love to try on shoes.”

Yilin looked a little happier at that moment than she’d ever looked before. She was able to chat a little more with the other models before Tania and Jane were dropped off. When she and Ornette were alone, she told her how much she liked Ornette’s dress at the show the night before and how fortunate she was to have the opportunity. Things were very cozy by the time Yilin was dropped off.

Once she was gone, Ornette cast her eyes to the front of the helocarrier. No Desmond that day. There was only one pilot. That had been the case most days when she was dropped off at Fen’s.

She leaned back in her chair and waited to land.

It turned out that she wasn’t being dropped off at Joel’s headquarters. Instead, she was dropped off at a gym where she was met by one of his assistants and rushed to do a full slate of workout classes for the day.

She started with a spin class, then was moved to a yoga class, then to a water class where she had to run in place underwater, then she was taken to a cafeteria where they fed her a salad the size of a dog house. It was under her calorie count, so even though it tasted like nothing, she ate the whole thing.

Then she was taken to a completely different wing of the building where she worked with a trainer who knew she didn’t work out and that every single one of her muscles was screaming from the morning classes, but who did not let up.

By the time she met Joel at the end of the day, she was pathetic and weak.

“You’re not in great shape,” he said, coming up behind her.

Joel would have killed for Fen’s body type. Even though the man had clearly worked like a slave in the gym to try to improve his body, he would never look like Fen. Fen’s charms were genetic. Joel’s were hard-earned.

“I admire your dedication,” Ornette said, trying to get to her feet to welcome him properly, but he waved her down.

He had a nice face, and he was young, younger than Fen, and therefore much younger than Ornette.

“I know I have no business being here,” she admitted with a rasp in her throat. “I suppose you saw footage of me working out and how depressing it was. I’m sorry. I tried my best, but I wasn’t sold as a fitness instructor. I designed clothes.”

“I’d send you to the design floor of my office building, but that’s not the purpose of our week together. I’m supposed to figure out how you could sell my product and then let you be in an ad campaign. Then we are to show the ad at the end of the week. You spent the day seeing what we do. Did any of it appeal to you at all?”

“The yoga was best,” she volunteered. “I know it’s not a great match, but I’m flexible and I would like to sell yoga mats and yoga classes.”

Joel frowned. “We don’t really need that. Yoga sells itself. I’d rather we didn’t waste our time coming up with an ad campaign that doesn’t support one of our struggling sectors.”

Ornette wanted to grouse at him, ‘Then why did you let me choose anything? Why didn’t you just ask me to choose from the list of departments that weren’t banking?’ She refrained from saying anything.

The thing was, it had been a miracle that Fen had fallen in love with her. Joel was not going to follow suit. It seemed like such a thing was repugnant to him. He wanted to keep her at arm’s length and make sure he didn’t get emotionally involved. He wanted the benefit of her to go to his company, not to himself.

“What are the struggling sectors?” she asked sensibly instead. Before he could talk, she put up her hand. “I bet I know something I could help you with.”

“What?”

“I bet women don’t feel safe at the gym and I bet I could help with a campaign that would help them feel safer.”

Joel scoffed. “That is asking too much from anyone. No one can make ladies feel safer at the gym. The only solution is to have a ‘women only’ gym, but men hate that. They want the ladies to see them because they want to impress them.”

“You’re thinking too hard about this,” Ornette said from her creaky position on the couch. The couch didn’t creak, her bones did. “What I’m suggesting is that I spend a week going to your gym and from that experience, I write a statement that says that I wasn’t bothered by any men while I was working out and it was amazing. At the end of the week, we can film a little commercial with me in one of your gyms where I say what I wrote. You don’t have to change anything about the way you run your business on short notice. You don’t have to promise some crazy thing your company can’t provide because men are men and women are women and they’re still your customers. What do you say?”

Joel looked at her critically for a moment and then his face softened. “Actually, I’d say that’s not a bad idea. You are a smaller woman, so your testimonial might be more meaningful to the more petite women. Can we start out with you saying your height and weight? The camera won’t show how tiny you are.”

“Anything you want,” she replied, wheezing into her water bottle.

“Then I’ll fine-tune your plan tonight and you can come to the gym tomorrow to work out,” Joel said, the cadence of his voice was kind. “For now, you look bushed. It’s early, but I’ll call your transport back so you can rest a bit before dinner.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Ornette said, smiling at the corners of her slightly blood-shot eyes.

His expression was unreadable. He took a step back, paused to say something, refrained from saying what was on his mind, nodded his goodbye to her, and disappeared out the glass door he had come in by.