Chapter Thirteen

Backstage before the show, Ornette was at her assigned dressing table, except this time she was with Joel instead of Fen. He wasn’t dressing her, but he was showing her the two different cuts they’d made of the commercial. They’d already chosen which one they were going to present, but he was showing her both all the same. He’d brought her a dress, though it was clearly not one he’d chosen or even thought about. It was made from the same pattern as the dress he’d given her for their date, but the new one was covered in rhinestones. Ornette loved it and was not shy about how much she loved it when he informed her that the executives had already told him that the rhinestone dress was the one they were going to auction off and, no matter what, she didn’t get to keep it.

Ornette was not disappointed. She suspected as much when she opened the box containing it.

But something interesting happened. When Joel was showing her the commercials, a piece of news popped up on the screen. He stood up straight and stopped the commercial to read the news bite.

“Huh?” he said, as he held the hologram over her head. “You know that guy who had a heart attack in your arms last week?”

“Albert?” she recalled sweetly. “Of course, I remember him. Was the news about him? Is he alright?”

“Uh, he lived,” Joel said absently. “He’s going to be okay, but he’s got a different problem now. His heart is the least of his worries. He was the CEO of a helium trading company and he had a clause as part of his contract that if he had another heart attack, he’d be replaced. Apparently, the board of directors suspected that he had minor ones that he’d been covering up, but when he had one in front of all those cameras when he was talking to you, he couldn’t hide it anymore.”

Ornette stood up next to Joel and looked at the hologram news story. “He was fired?”

Joel took a long breath in. “Yeah. I guess you could call it that.”

“That’s so shocking!” Ornette exclaimed, but she didn’t mean that it was shocking that Albert had had a heart attack, or that it was shocking that he’d been fired. What was shocking was that Desmond had met her in the revolving door, changed her bracelet, and sent her out. Then she’d been stuck in a conversation with him that placed her bracelet so close to him. It has been against his chest, close to his heart. Did Albert have a pacemaker? Did her bracelet do something to disrupt the function? She was very shocked.

Lucky for her, to Joel, it just looked like she was the hooker with a heart of gold, and he seemed to admire her all the more for her worry. He put his arm around her and comforted her while she read the news story on his wrist hologram.

Her eyes raced over the words of the article, but she didn’t find any mention of a pacemaker.

“He’ll be out of the game now,” Joel said, flipping the screen on his hologram to go back to showing her the commercial. “Will you be okay?”

“Absolutely. I’m kind of a flutter brain,” she reassured him as she fluffed her hair. “I can’t think straight when I’m wearing a dress this pretty.”

“Do you really think it’s pretty after what Fen had on you last week?” Joel asked, sounding a little grouchy.

Ornette did not have a lot of practice defusing that kind of jealousy. “Did something happen since our date?” she asked, giving him a coy little look.

“No,” he said, clicking his tongue and realizing that he needed to act like a grownup.

When Ornette went through the revolving doors to the waiting area behind the curtain, Desmond did not pop out of nowhere when she went through the revolving door. Instead, she was on time, she was in her place. She stood behind the velvet curtain with Tania, Jane, and Yilin. They watched all the contestants’ advertisements together.

Ornette had been the front-runner the week before, but in her estimation from her place behind the curtain, she would only place in the mid-ranks on the second week. It wasn’t like it mattered much. No one was being eliminated that week either. They wanted both the designers and the businessmen to each have a no-pressure week.

Besides, being eliminated probably wouldn’t be that bad. They were just going to be auctioned off… to a designer… or a businessman. Neither of those things sounded very appealing, but work was work. Besides, that was what normally happened when Sleeping Beauty Inc. models were sold off. No matter what, everything that was happening was work.

That was what she reminded herself when she went out in her sequined dress and stood with Joel while he told all of them about her performance and showed them the commercial they’d made together.

“Ornette is not a gym rat,” Joel explained, sounding perfectly reasonable. “I’m not sure if she had ever attended a gym before. On the first day we met, she told me that women her size weren’t comfortable going to a gym because they were worried about how they would be looked at and treated by the men who went there all the time.”

Ornette smiled and linked her arm with his in a way that would have been completely impossible the week before with Fen. She absolutely could not have her clothes mussed that day, but the sequined dress was hardy and her arms were bare, so she clung to him with a little less tenacity than a baby chimp.

The lights were too bright to see anyone in the audience, but the stakes were rising. She could feel them getting taller as she was scrutinized by Fen, Crois, Desmond, and Varner. Varner was the most obvious of the four. His eyes were dark and intense, but that was also because he was at the table at the bottom of the stage and the lights were positioned so that she could see him.

But why?

When Papa Bear, Varner, singled her out and drew a target on her back in the introduction segment, he had hoped to create more drama than he had. Her telling everyone how much she made had cooled any aggression that had been directed toward her. Naturally, the aggression had gone back up after she had her show with Fen and the other models had figured out that she really was a force to be reckoned with. They tried harder with their commercials than they had with their runway shows… Or maybe her superiority had everything to do with Fen and very little to do with her personally. She was not in command of who she got to work with.

Joel continued explaining how charming she was and how easy she was to work with while she gushed and returned his compliments, saying gooey lovely things she made up, but crossing her heart and hoping to die that they were all true.

Joel kissed her hand before she was led to join the other models who had already had their commercials shown. Then he joined the businessmen who had worked with the women in the previous week.

Then Varner got up. He stood in his fabulous tuxedo that would have made normal women salivate but had no effect on Ornette. She didn’t think it had any effect on the other contestants either. They all knew that there were hard limits to how much they could expect from an owner. The system of Sleeping Beauty Inc. was to prevent the models from taking an equal share in a business relationship or a romantic relationship. It didn’t matter to the contestants what he looked like, he was just like any other owner who had his reasons why it was better for him to hire a woman than to find an equitable relationship elsewhere.

“For our first elimination round, our designers and our models will be creating a line of three pieces of jewelry. They can choose between creating a necklace, earrings, a tiara, a bracelet, a ring, an anklet, a belly chain, or any other ring someone can put in a hole. I’m thinking of you, Silvania,” he said, calling out to her. “I know you have your eyebrow pierced.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She gushed like it was a rare piece of trivia and maybe it was, but as soon as he had finished looking at her, he started looking at Ornette. Actually, anytime he didn’t need to be looking somewhere else, he was looking at Ornette. He moved from looking at the camera to looking at her to looking at the businessmen to looking at her.

Ornette directed her attention elsewhere. The safest place she saw was the board where all the designer’s names and numbers were displayed. Fen’s name and number were back up. However, there was a mark on the board that indicated he and Ornette were not allowed to be paired up again.

The names were drawn and the designer she was paired up with was Mr. Hans Switzer. She knew him. He was a famous watch designer. He was also a hundred years old and as frail as a newspaper printed the day he was born (when they still printed things like newspapers). The man had no weight, only frail white skin covering his bones. The brain encased in his skull was different from the brains of the other men there because he was an old-school watch designer who still used gears and wheels.

However, the luck of having been chosen by that designer was completely wasted on Ornette. She had immunity for the first round of elimination.

In three seconds, she understood without a doubt that the game was rigged. There was nothing random about the designers or businessmen who were drawn to work with. They had to let Hans do the jewelry round. It would be a disappointment to him and everyone watching if he couldn’t participate that week, but they couldn’t let his superiority give too much of an edge to the contestant he worked with as far as elimination went, so they gave him to Ornette who had earned immunity that week.

The episode ended and Ornette went to the after-party where she wanted to seek out Hans and talk to him, but she was swarmed by fitness-related businessmen. There were three of them and that was enough to block all her paths of escape. They talked to her about her experience at Joel’s gym and she was forced to fake enthusiasm, even as she saw Hans make eyes at her from behind his fur collar and his position at the door. He tipped his tophat, took his cane, and disappeared from the celebration without speaking to her.

She supposed it didn’t matter. She would see him the next day.

There was dancing that night. She had to dance with each of the fitness boys, all of whom gave her the creeps before she found herself standing beside Fen.

“You look so cheap in that dress,” he said seductively, whispering in her ear.

She turned back to him and said lovingly, “I can’t always wear something you design.”

“Some day you will,” he promised.

“Are you going to ask me to dance?” she asked, looking at how every other contestant was out on the dancefloor and if he didn’t ask her soon, he would lose the chance.

“I’m not allowed. I’m not allowed to ask you for another thing until we get matched up again when you’re eliminated and up for auction. I have to make room for the other men who haven’t worked with you.”

“I see,” she said, nodding with understanding and pouting in disappointment.

He hadn’t been chosen to work with anyone that week. A few of the other designers had been chosen twice, but not Fen.

That was the moment when Desmond appeared at Ornette’s elbow and asked her to dance.

Ornette was relieved. She wanted to talk to him and she didn’t know when he’d show up again. He did seem to have unusually clever connections.

He extended his white-gloved hand and she took it. It seemed he actually knew how to waltz as he spun her in three/fourth circles.

“Did you like the bracelet I wore last week?” she asked, trying to sound cute and not at all accusing. There were a million people around them and it wouldn’t be the thing to say something that might get caught on the wrong microphone. All the same, Ornette was suspicious about Albert’s heart attack and if she had had a role in causing it.

“Were you wearing a bracelet?” Desmond replied in an unconcerned tone. “I can’t remember anything about what you wore last week except that it didn’t show enough of your chest for my taste.”

He had never talked to her like that before. In a normal work setting, saying something like that was sexual harassment. For a model from Sleeping Beauty Inc., it was par for the course. Anyone was allowed to talk to her like that and the men she was working with on the show had already showered her with similar comments. He was talking like that to fit in with them. Incidentally, it was a hilarious dig. Her dress could not have had a lower neckline.

All the same, his evasion confirmed her suspicions. The bracelet had caused Albert’s heart attack.

Ornette tried to think of something to ask him. There had to be a way for them to talk about what was going on and his role as a show organizer because he had to be in on the production side of the show. His access behind the curtain, in the helocarrier, and when he met her aboard the Cannonball III all proved he was working with the show’s organizers. The Coordinator had even delivered a sandwich from him.

She was thinking about it when he started whispering in her ear as they swayed to the music. “I wanted to tell you that I was sorry.”

“You’re sorry for what?” she breathed into his ear.

His lips parted and he was about to tell her when Varner cut in.

“Move aside, Dezzy. You’re in the way,” Varner said scornfully, standing in front of them like a mountain.

Ornette did not want to dance with Varner. There actually wasn’t a man there that she wanted to dance with less than Varner.

Regardless of her preference, Desmond took his gloved hands off her and passed her off to Varner without a word. He didn’t even look defiant.

Papa Bear’s hand was hot and meaty as he took Ornette in his arms. He looked in her eyes and led her around the floor in a way that she would have expected to be more clumsy, but was highly polished as they got the attention of two main cameras.

“Did you have a good time at the gym last week?” he asked pleasantly.

“It was such a pleasant surprise,” she gushed like a fountain of lies. She hadn’t had a fun time at the gym. She had a passable time at the gym. If that was her life, she was sure she could find even more things that she liked about being there. For instance, it would have been more fun if she’d made a friend. As things were, it hadn’t been hell on earth and that was enough for Ornette.

“So, tell me,” she said, taking the opportunity to ask him a question. “I’m not sure I understand how you and the other bears can participate in the bidding. Could you explain it to me?”

“I can remove a model from the bidding and take her for myself,” he said, his tone lined in his satisfaction with his own magnificence.

“Why?” she asked in a little-girl voice.

“Because me and my brother bears organized all this fun.”

“Are you my owner?”

“I may as well be. I'm running all this. The game says that me and my boys can each take a model for ourselves, except if there’s a disagreement, I get who I want because I put the most amount of money into this business venture.”

Ornette should have expected that. “What happens if you don’t like any of the models when it actually comes down to bidding?” She asked it with the most innocent expression on her face like she was afraid something like that would happen, and it would be such a shame if he wasn’t entertained by his own game.

He paused.

Ornette stopped breathing. It was exactly the same look Fen had on his face right before he kissed her. Joel had a similar moment in the elevator. He didn’t kiss her then, but he warmed up to it over the course of their dinner date and then he kissed her in front of the hotel when he dropped her off.

She knew what caused it in Varner’s case. It was that she seemed more worried about him and his interests than she was for herself. She did not ask Varner what would happen to her if no one bid on her. That was the most natural question for most people. It was, ‘What will happen to me?’ Not, ‘What will happen to you?’

Eventually, Varner clicked his tongue. “There’s no need to worry about that. I chose you.”

“You chose me?” she cooed in delight. In truth, she was not delighted. She was relieved she wasn’t left in cryostasis and that she had a job, but she was not delighted. She only pretended joy. She didn’t experience it.

He nodded, but the way he nodded was odd.

He was lying.

She knew immediately.

He had not chosen her. He had been involved in the selection process, but she had not been a special favorite of his. He was using her to make his contest more exciting.

At the base, he and his friends had organized the competition, but perhaps they had not funded it as completely as he suggested. He was trying to make himself sound richer than he was. So, he got to choose which model he wanted disregarding any other concern. He looked like a hero because he was allowing all the money the designers and the businessmen bidded on the girls to go to charity. What about the money earned from the ratings? She bet he’d make a killing on it.

They continued dancing and he didn’t say a single thing that indicated he was even a little bit worried about what would happen to her.