Day 3 - Bubble Sailing

  The whole point of a man taking a woman bubble sailing was so a woman had to spread her legs around a piece of machinery to mount it and then he mounted it, spooning her from behind, and ‘showing’ her how to use it. Men had been using that trick to get close to a woman since horses, since motorcycles, since sea-doos, and maybe since bicycles with banana seats.

  Yilin, Orpah, and Cndestine all let Varner show them how to use one, but Ornette said she knew how and instead of riding with him, she raced him, and whatever woman he had with him at the time.

  She wasn’t better at piloting the small crafts than he was, but he was a little handicapped by having one of the other contestants with him. From Ornette’s perspective, the bubble craft wasn’t even a little difficult to pilot. Children on Venus used them to get around instead of bicycles. Adults loved to send kids around in them. For one thing, if a panel that was part of a floating city was poorly attached to the other panels, the bubble around it kept the child safe. Don’t get the wrong idea though, if a panel was poorly attached and someone fell between the cracks, they wouldn’t fall to their death and pass through kilometers of cloud to nd on the rock-hard surface of Venue. No, they’d fall between the cracks. It was more like falling into a well. There were twists and turns. Fishing someone out from between the panel cracks was the stuff of nightmares.

  Even though bubble riding was something children did, what Varner had in mind was something with a little more bite to it. He was proposing that they fly out off the panels and ride for a while with only clouds under them and wind around them.

  That meant the bubble crafts were sturdier than what would have been given to a child, but the principle was still the same.

  Afterward, he took them back to his pce for dinner. Unfortunately, Varner had not bought extra clothes for other parts of the day other than the flight suits, so Ornette was wearing the dress Joel gave her. Varner saw it and gave her a dirty look.

  “I have to save the other dresses you bought me,” she pointed out saucily.

  He was scandalized. “Are you saying I didn’t buy you enough clothes?”

  “If you had, I’d be wearing something you bought me and not something Joel bought me,” she replied with a nose crinkle. Then she straightened and rexed her face. “Don’t worry about it. If I run out of clothes, The Coordinator said that Fen has been sending me dresses. I can pick up one of those in a pinch.”

  Maybe Ornette shouldn’t have teased him like that, but she couldn’t help it. She honestly did not like him and if possible, she wanted to rub him wrong so he would eliminate her.

  That thought percoted in her head like aromatic tea. If he eliminated her, she could spend more time with Desmond… If he was avaible. If he wasn’t avaible, she could spend time with the other contestants in the cafeteria. That would also be better than hanging out with Varner and pying his gross little games.

  What could she do to turn him off?

  The after-dinner game was a drinking game. Ornette thought that was a terrible thing to do since the next day they were going to meet Varner’s mother at a garden party. He would be terribly disappointed if the women didn’t drink with him. He would also be terribly annoyed if they showed up at his mother’s garden party hungover. The contestants would have to hit the right bance, or the wrong bance if Ornette wanted to be eliminated from Varner’s mini-game.

  Luckily, the drinking game wasn’t associated with him asking them horrible questions. It was a mercy, but it was a dice game where you rolled five dice at once and if you rolled specific terrible numbers, you had to take a drink.

  The first few rounds were easy, because they were collecting numbers that were forbidden. It meant that when Varner rolled the dice, the number he rolled became one of the forbidden numbers. He got a sixteen. With five six-sided dice, it was unlikely to roll numbers under ten and over twenty, so most of the numbers would be in the teens.

  Each contestant rolled the dice, and none of them got a sixteen.

  The next round he rolled an eighteen.

  Again, they went around. Cndestine rolled a sixteen and had to take a drink.

  There was a bartender nearby and he asked Cndestine what she would like to drink. Apparently, if she rolled a sixteen again, she would have to drink what Varner chose for her.

  She chose a peach cooler with the lowest possible alcohol content.

  “What?” Varner compined loudly. “That’s a sissy drink. I have some terrific bourbon and some aged whisky.”

  Cndestine tilted her head like a ditz and said, “I’m a cheap drunk.”

  He nodded approvingly. He loved cheap drunks.

  She took her drink and they started rolling the dice again.

  Yilin had to take the next drink, but she clearly did not care about meeting Varner’s mother the next day. She had a shot of soju and seemed eager to roll the wrong number again.

  When Ornette rolled the wrong number and the bartender asked what she would like, she ordered the whisky.

  “That’s my girl!” Varner praised.

  Ornette took the gss and lifted it to Varner. She took the shot and promptly hiss-spat it all over the front of her dress. She held her mouth open and let her tongue drip onto her dress for a horrified second before grabbing a napkin and shoving it into her mouth so it would absorb as much of the alcohol as possible.

  Varner was ughing like it was the most hirious thing he had ever seen.

  “How do you drink that stuff?” Ornette yowled when she pulled the napkin out of her mouth. “It burns. It burns.”

  Varner called over the bartender and had him pour him a shot of whiskey. When he held the gss in his hand, he said, “Like this.” Then he swallowed it like a champ.

  Ornette fanned her bare tongue with her hand and got up. “I need to clean up. Which way is the bathroom?”

  Once in the bathroom, Ornette took her sweet, sweet time. She rinsed out her mouth seven times, had a drink, dabbed at her dress, and felt a bit sad that she’d had to spit on the great bra-filled dress that Joel gave her until a maid showed up and asked her if she needed any help. Through the door, Ornette got the maid to volunteer to wash her dress while she stayed in the bathroom with a housecoat. The housecoat seemed fairly generic and Ornette thought it was reserved for guests instead of something Varner wore. After a few more seconds of thought, Ornette realized that it couldn’t belong to him because it was too small.

  Just when Ornette was getting really comfy in the bathroom, the maid came back and told her she had to return to the game even if that meant that she had to wear the housecoat out to the living room.

  Out she went.

  When Ornette opened the door, she saw the maid she had been talking to through the bathroom door and she was a little bowled over.

  The maid was blonde. She was in her early forties, exactly the age Ornette would have been if she’d stayed out of cryostasis. She was faded, probably in her st year before she stopped looking like a beauty and started looking like an old woman. She had multiple scars that sliced through her lips, like she had anciently had knives in her mouth that had made quick deep cuts. No stitches. The wounds had been taped shut, but in a pce like a person’s mouth that had to be opened and closed for eating, the cuts had not healed well.

  Had Varner done that to his maid, or had he rescued her from someone else?

  The thought was removed from her mind as she was brought back into the living room.

  They’d already done a whole round and it was Ornette’s turn. The new forbidden number was twenty-one.

  Crouching next to the ornate coffee table, Ornette rattled the dice between her cupped fingers. She rolled well and didn’t need to drink.

  When Cndestine had to drink again, she took another sip of peach cooler and Varner’s shoulder fell in disappointment. She was boring him. But she didn’t want to. She was clearly uncomfortable, so she pointed out the obvious, “I don’t want to be knee-walking drunk when I meet your mother tomorrow.”

  “So, you’re okay with displeasing me today?” he asked coldly.

  Cndestine’s eyes went wide in horror. She did not want to get kicked off, but she was struggling to figure out what she should do. Yilin was throwing back soju like tomorrow never happened while Orpah had not had to take a drink at all and Ornette had already spat her drink onto her dress. What was left for her to do to make herself stand out?

  It was Ornette’s turn to roll again. She got three ones, a six, and a two. That gave her a score of eleven.

  Seeing all those ones reminded Varner of something and he piped up. “I forgot to tell you, if any of you roll all ones or all fives, I have a special treat for you.”

  “What?” Yilin asked excitedly. That was the first time she’d looked excited.

  “Well, you get to make a wish,” he offered tantalizingly. “And I have to grant it.”

  “What kind of wish?” Yilin persisted.

  “Anything you want.”

  “I want a case of your soju,” she said pinly. “Can I have that?”

  He nodded. “But you have to roll all ones or all fives.”

  Ornette ran the numbers in her head. It was pretty unlikely that any of them would roll that well, but it did make a game that was already interesting even more interesting.

  “What would you ask me for?” Varner asked Orpah.

  “It sounds like we’re talking about things in this room. Are we?”

  “Or out of it. Not cash though. That’s crass,” he said, ruling out money.

  Orpah’s eyes scanned the room. There were decorative knives and swords on the wall. Not a lot of art in the form of pictures on the walls, but there were smaller statues and other decorative pieces adorning each surface.

  “I want one of your tie pins, to cherish,” the perfect-roller decided.

  Ornette thought that was a great idea since Orpah was trying to please Varner. Saying that he was the most valuable thing in the room and giving him a compliment was pretty clever. It got extra clever because if he didn’t choose her in the end and the experience of being on Goldilock Zone ended up not being a delight, it was only a tie-pin. It took up almost no room in her luggage. Not only that, but for that moment, they were talking in hypotheticals. He hadn’t actually offered to give her anything.

  “I can definitely do that,” he said, getting lost temporarily in Orpah’s beauty.

  Honestly, it was a relief to see him show some genuine interest in someone who was not Ornette. So far, most of his attention seemed to be going to her and she didn’t want it.

  “What about you?” he asked, remembering what he was supposed to be doing and directing himself toward Cndestine.

  “I want the shirt you have on your back,” she said with a winning, although rather desperate, smile.

  From the look on his face, she’d bombed it. He was not impressed. She’d tried to do the same thing as Orpah but failed.

  He didn’t even answer her, but instead turned to Ornette. “What would you want?”

  “You said I could have anything as long as it isn’t money?” she crified.

  “Yeah. Test me. What can I get you?”

  Ornette decided to flush the whole thing down the toilet as hard as she could. Maybe she’d swallowed more of the whisky than she’d meant to, which was none. “I want a dinner date with Desmond Falstead.”

  The look on Varner’s face was the one cartoons get when they’re hit square in the face with a frying pan. “Desmond?” he asked bnkly like he couldn’t believe his ears. “You want to go on a date with Desmond?”

  “Who is that?” Yilin asked, a rge number of her inhibitions washed down with the soju.

  Orpah answered. “He’s the businessman who raised the bid on Mikay. He’s got white hair and he usually wears all white, though I have seen him in a bck suit on non-recording days.”

  “He hasn’t had a contestant for a week, has he?”

  “No,” Orpah replied.

  “And you want to go on a date with him?” Varner asked again, hardly moving. “Why?”

  Ornette was suddenly aware that she had gone too far, as Varner seemed almost blind with rage, but she could hardly take it back now. “Why does anyone want to go on a date with anyone?” she hedged, unwilling to back down, but also keeping a little of the hangman’s noose between her figurative fingers. “Should we roll the dice?” she said, handing the dice to Cndestine.

  They did a few rounds with Varner in a stupor until Orpah rolled a forbidden number.

  “What would you like to drink?” the bartender asked her.

  She gnced at Varner, who was still out of it. “I’d like Varner to choose for me,” she said, waking him.

  “What?” he said with a bewildered gnce.

  “I rolled a forbidden number. What should I drink?” she reminded him.

  “Red wine,” he said, aware that allowing her to keep her alcohol content down would keep her out of the tough spot he’d put all the contestants.

  He watched her drink it like a dainty little bird before saying that he needed to talk to The Coordinator.

  “Why did you say that?” Cndestine fumed at Ornette once he was gone. “He was in such a good mood and you ruined it.”

  “You should be thanking me,” Ornette shot back at her cleanly. “You were going to be eliminated tonight and now I will be.”

  “Why do you want to be eliminated?” she hissed back. “Elimination will mean so many bad things for your career. You know what? That’s why you have never got anywhere and why you’re worth less than the rest of us. You don’t know what’s good for you even when it’s right in front of you.”

  “Varner can’t have me,” Ornette said simply. “Think of the handbook. Think of the rules. Varner can’t have me.”

  “What rules? There’s no rule to prevent Varner from buying you.”

  Ornette rolled her eyes and stared at the ceiling.

  “Wait,” Yilin said across the coffee table. “I know what rule she’s talking about and she’s right. Varner can’t have her. It would be a viotion of the rules. And I agree with her. It is better for her to screw up and be out of his favor than for her to go all the way with him, leading him on and taking all the attention she can get when she knows it can’t lead to anything. If he bid on her and couldn’t have her, that would ruin the show.”

  “What rule?” Cndestine fumed.

  Ornette or Yilin probably would have answered her, but Varner returned to the room in a much better mood. “We’re done with this game. I have news! You’re not going back to the dorms tonight. I have enough guest rooms to accommodate all of you. We’ll have your clothes brought here and I’ll py host to you all until the sixth day. Then I’ll send the remaining contestant back to the dorms. Sadly, we have to say goodbye to one of you tonight, so let’s move to the hall for that. We have a ritual.”

  “Is it roses?” Yilin asked with a snide grin. “Are you going to give us roses if you choose us?”

  “No. We have ribbons,” he replied with a slight frown.

  Ornette guessed that real roses were outside their budget. Cheapskates.

  Once they were all in the hall with their shoes in a line waiting to be worn by the contestant that would leave.

  Varner stood in front of them and addressed them with the cameras on him. “I set this up because I have always been fascinated by the marriage rituals of ancient people. I'm interested in the ceremonies and trials they used to find a bride for the king. Women would have to fit through cutouts and if their body was too rge, they were eliminated. They would have to drink and if they couldn’t, they were eliminated. There are more trials to be sure, but I want the woman I would choose to be with me to be able to endure anything I would choose to inflict upon her.” At this point, it seemed like he was about to order them to do something crazy.

  Ornette saw The Coordinator making a mad cut gesture across his neck. He knew whatever Varner had pnned and he was advising against it as hard as he could.

  The maid with the scarred lips was gone.

  Ornette had to press on.

  She didn’t think Varner would listen, but she was past caring. He was about to eliminate her and more than anything else, more than seeing Desmond that night, or having a sparkling career, or staying on the show, or whatever… She wanted to be away from Varner. Her survival was the most important thing and she felt certain that if she stayed with him, he would ruin what was left of her.

  If he asked them to bow to him as their king, which seemed to be the thing on his mind, she would refuse to do it.

  She straightened her shoulders and imagined clouds.

  In a brave new world, Varner didn’t say anything more and instead picked up a ribbon. It was yellow. The color of fourth pce.

  Slowly, as if to keep the camera on him as long as possible, he gave it to Cndestine. He pinned it around the strap of her dress.

  “I liked you very much,” he said kindly… too kindly… like he studied how to look and be kind at this very moment.

  Ornette ground her teeth together. What did she have to do to get away from him?

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  Author's Notes: Thanks for reading! The news today is that my book, 'Octavia Girl Vol. III' is now avaible as an audiobook on GooglePy. It's free. Go have a listen. See you on Thursday for the next chapter of 'Goldilocks Zone'. See ya then!