Chapter Twenty Six

Ornette fell asleep on a plush sofa as she waited to be measured for her flight suits. When she woke up, an understudy tailor/aeronaut was trying to measure her without waking her. The digital measuring tape he had in his hand was ridiculous.

“Would you like to choose your styles, miss?” he asked cautiously.

Ornette stood up to let herself be measured efficiently, chose her styles, and went back to sleep.

“Is something wrong with her?” Orpah asked the other contestants, unfortunately, her voice was not quiet enough for Ornette to miss hearing.

“I dunno. She needs to go. The show will be a lot more fun and a lot fairer once she’s gone,” Clandestine said with her nose in the air.

“The men like her because she’s broken,” Yilin said, not lowering her voice at all. “Most of the men who are running this show are old. They don’t want a young horse they have to break in. That bores them. They’ve already broken in all the lovers and business partners and friends they’d care to. It’s like training a puppy not to pee on the carpet. They don’t want to bother with that. They want a dog who knows where to pee. Likewise, they want a woman like her who is still beautiful, but who knows the business. She’s been sold more times than any of us. She knows exactly what they want. She’s giving it to them because, at this point, it’s easier for her to do that than to do anything else.”

“Do you want her to leave the show?” Clandestine asked Yilin coldly.

“No. She’s been very considerate toward me, but that’s probably just because that’s who she is not. She thinks of herself last except for when she needs to look good because if she looks bad, that will make someone else look bad. It’s the sixth love language—looking good. Anyway, I’d rather she didn’t leave, but she’s going to. The wolves are hungry for her.”

“Aren’t you worried about being filmed saying something like that?” Orpah asked, clearly she had been thinking about what she had been filmed saying and doing.

“No. They like thinking of themselves that way. They want to be wolves,” Yilin said tersely before turning her back on the other women and sitting on the couch cushion Ornette wasn’t sleeping on. She sat near her like she was watching over her.

***

With Yilin’s help, Ornette finished the last of her shopping almost immediately after dinner. The two of them talked as they got on the helocarrier to head back to the dorms. Ornette could not stop gaping at the shoes Yilin had chosen to go with the peplum dress. They were closed-toe heels with humongous gauze bows on the backs. The dress was so short that the shoes were on display. Ornette got the black ones, the exact same as Yilin, and got a wide black choker to wear around her neck. Yilin was going to wear a pendant.

Ornette sent messages to Orpah and Clandestine that they could choose any shoes they liked, but the ones Yilin chose were awesome and they might as well get them if they couldn’t think of anything else.

When they arrived back at the dorms, Ornette sent her clothes to her room ahead of her and marched down to the cafeteria to see if anyone else was there. She wanted to hear reports of how things went with Uncle Bear and Brother Bear. Did they have similar setups, or were they doing something completely different?”

Silvania was there and spilled the tea about what it was like to be owned by Uncle Bear for the week. Her group had an almost identical schedule except they had one more day where no one would be eliminated because they had only three contestants instead of four. It just meant that no one would be eliminated after the photoshoot. Their schedules were staggered. Her group had been measured for the flight suits in the morning and the other group was being measured that evening.

Otherwise, they laughed and talked as more and more of Ornette’s group returned from shopping and the more sociable ones met in the cafeteria.

Ornette thought it was a pretty nice night. She went to bed happy.

***

Photoshoot Day was less fun than Ornette had been prepared for. If she had been a bride, there would have been fewer pictures. If she had been a self-obsessed bride who insisted on a crazy amount of pictures, she would have had fewer pictures. If she had been the Queen of Venus, there would have been fewer pictures.

Varner was wretched.

He had bowties to match each of the girls. He had individual pictures taken of him with each woman and the bowtie that matched. He made them take odious pictures of each girl ripping it off him with lust in her eyes.

When Ornette saw her pictures with him on one of the side monitors, she wanted to scream. She was less than half his size. Yes, he was all muscle. Yes, she was little for a woman, but all the organizers and Varner himself should have known better than to attempt to pair the two of them. It wasn’t a match. She was the size of his leg, half his abs, and one of his pecs. Forget about his arms, shoulders, and his head. It was ridiculous.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

When they weren’t taking pictures of her, she sat in a chair, closed her eyes, and deliberately dissociated to get herself out of there. She closed her eyes and pictured orange clouds, golden clouds, and then pink clouds in a navy sky.

Desmond.

She was thinking about Desmond again. He was nice to think about. He had snuck into her room the night before. He’d kissed her mouth gently, pulled her onto his chest, and she’d had a really good sleep. She hoped he’d sneak in again that night, and every night for the rest of her life.

That put a dreamy smile on her face as she sat still with her eyes closed.

Naturally, she was interrupted. She had to do group photos where all of them swarmed Varner like they were all vying for his attention.

The way Ornette saw it, Orpah and Clandestine actually were vying for his attention, but their motives weren’t exactly clear to her.

Yilin wanted off the show. She treated him with a kind of indifference that she completely got away with because she was Asian. He didn’t seem put off by it. She was allowed to be snootier.

Ornette tried to mirror it, but that didn’t seem to put him off either.

When they were finally finished, he took them all to dinner… at his house.

Ornette didn’t see the footage taken to distort reality and tell a specific story, but it was a little funny that Varner’s house was not nicer than Hans’. In fact, it made Hans’ house look more luxurious and if Ornette was honest, even though she did not like Hans at all (she thought he was a hundred kinds of creepy), she would rather get him than Varner. The more time she spent with Papa Bear, the more she felt she couldn’t stand it.

After dinner, he took them into his sunken living room and said they were going to play a game where he got to ask them questions out of a box.

He directed his first question to Yilin. “How many sexual partners have you had?”

Ornette felt her whole body clench. She’d played this kind of game with owners before, but never in front of a camera. She hated this kind of thing. She hated it madly. Her heart was thudding madly and her left hand began trembling. He hadn’t even asked her the question, but she knew he’d ask her an equally odious one soon.

Yilin looked bored as she answered. “How many stars are there in the sky? I’ve had more lovers than every point of light in the night sky.”

Varner looked impressed before turning to Clandestine and asking from a card, “How old were you when you lost your virginity?”

It was a terrible question to ask a woman who put herself up for sale. She’d probably been sexually abused since before puberty. Ornette hated Varner for asking such a question. Clandestine absolutely did not have to answer that… Except she did. Those were the rules of her contract.

The redhead looked unfazed. Without batting an eyelash, she hedged, “I like to think that every time is the first time.”

Varner did not like that answer. He wanted the girls to open up to him, but if they were going to answer flippantly, he was not going to get the good TV he was aiming for. He turned to Orpah, “What’s your favorite position during sex?”

She smiled. “All of them.”

His smile dropped, but he was going to try asking Ornette a question before he complained. He pulled out another question out of the box. “Ornette, who has been your favorite owner?”

“The one who paid the most for me,” she replied, deciding to stand in solidarity with her sisters by giving vague answers.

“Who was that?” he pressed when he hadn’t pressed with the others.

“I don’t remember,” Ornette explained. It was absolutely true. “I always forget what happened with my last owner when I take on a new job.”

He squinted and asked her more seriously, “With a memory wipe?”

“Certainly not,” Ornette insisted. “That would lower my value. No. I just don’t ever think about them again. There is no immortality in a woman you rent. If you want more than just the time you pay for, you have to marry her.”

“Would you ever consider marrying an owner?” he pressed.

“I have never been proposed to.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

She smiled. “No man has ever asked me to marry him. If such a thing did happen to me, I don’t think I’d believe him. Owners can get carried away. They don’t know what they’re saying. Though I’ve never been proposed to, I have had owners promise to pay more for me than they paid the previous round.”

“And do they go through with it?”

“No. I’ve never been purchased by the same owner twice. They say they’re going to pay more for me. They don’t mean it. They might think they mean it at the time but when it comes to the actual moment, they don’t follow through. Maybe they buy another model for cheaper. Maybe they buy a better model for more money. Maybe they decide to go through a different agency. Maybe they decide to hire a whore. Sometimes I think they just go for the maids who are already in their homes instead. They’re there and nothing is better than a woman who is just there.”

“Are you saying you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that I was going to bid on you when you went up for auction?” he asked, looking affronted.

“Well, if I went up for auction in the last round, and it could have happened,” Ornette acknowledged carefully. “It would have ruined your show for you to have bid on me. How could you come back and create drama and mystery surrounding the auctions for the next nine weeks when you’d already bought me? It wouldn’t have been a smart career move, in front of everyone. It would show that you were the kind of man who follows your whims instead of sound business sense. You don’t need investors, or indeed, the whole of Venus thinking that way about you.” Ornette didn’t know why he was fussing. The whole show was rigged.

Then suddenly she knew.

She knew that parts of the show were rigged, but one part of the Goldilocks Zone that couldn’t be rigged was the voting on who should leave the show. Each member cast their vote and if they all met afterward and compared their votes, they could easily test the validity of who went up for auction. Even if every other part of the show was geared to flatter and please Varner, that one aspect couldn’t be faked.

He gave Ornette a spiteful, angry look, before wiping his face and asking Yilin another terrible question.