9 Get Used to People Being Up in Your Business #2
A trio of people in fancy silks entered, followed by a brown-skinned man Temmi recognized as the makeup artist who’d applied the lovely splotch of grime to her face the day before. He dragged a silver-beaded trunk on wheels behind him.
Pursing his lips, the makeup artist glanced around. “Glinda, Karel, Corie, head into the bathroom and draw the bath.”
The trio, two women and someone whose gender identity Temmi couldn’t decipher at first glance, swept through the sitting room and into the bathroom.
“You can’t just barge in without knocking,” Temmi said. “I could’ve been lounging around nude.” Not that she’d ever lounged nude in her life; X-er modesty had made certain she possessed an unhealthy abundance of body shame. But he didn’t need to know that.
The makeup artist snorted. “Sweetheart, I need you naked; you would’ve only saved me time.”
From the bathroom came the sound of water running and voices gossiping. Temmi’s entire body locked up.
“Oh, no. You’re here to...” She gripped the table’s edge. “No.”
His large brown eyes, which had been accentuated in lilac powder, softened. “Honey. Didn’t Kal tell you I was coming?”
“He said you’d establish my image, not fucking bathe me.”
“I’m Manny. We met yesterday. And bathing you is the first step in establishing your image. I need to see what you have going on under all...that.”
“We’re ready for her!” someone shouted from the bathroom.
“I rather like my image as is,” she protested, calculating how much time it would take to sprint for the door and spend the next two weeks hiding in the cargo bay.
In all fairness, what had she been expecting?
She was going on the biggest reality show in the galaxy.
Of course they wanted to change her image.
She wasn’t cut out for this. There was every chance the process would kill her.
“Sweetie.” Manny’s tone gained an edge of unbearable pity. “I’d rather not have to call in a few guards to hold you down, but if that’s the only way to garner your cooperation, then I’ll do what needs to be done.”
Temmi considered tossing herself out of an airlock and letting the vacuum of space have its way with her.
With a foul curse in X-er, she followed Manny to the bathroom. A huge porcelain tub—that likely wasted an insane amount of water—was filled to the brim, steam curling off the top.
“Strip.”
“I can bathe myself.”
Manny came around to open his trunk beside the tub. “Based on the grime beneath your fingernails, I doubt that very much. Now, clothes off. I promise you don’t have anything I haven’t seen before.”
Temmi didn’t know how to explain a lifetime of cultural propriety to these people who belonged to a monoculture that flaunted near-nudity.
X72 was a cold world. It never got warm enough to go outdoors without a coat on, let alone bare one’s naked skin.
She closed her eyes, reminding herself of the two million reasons she was there.
“Let me undress alone. Then you can do...whatever it is you’re going to do.”
The makeup artist heaved a theatrical sigh complete with an over-the-top eye roll. “You’re going on reality holovision. You need to get used to people being up in your business.” But he waved a hand at his assistants, and within seconds, Temmi was alone.
She removed her boots first, then unzipped her jumpsuit and carefully took off her orrist basalt necklace. She hid it in the toe of her right boot. Without the illicit stone’s heat, she immediately felt off-balance—it was decided officially, then. She’d keep the necklace.
Once fully and vulnerably naked, she slid into the steaming water. Hot. Hothothothothot. Wincing, she forced herself into the tub until water scalded her to her chin. Some sloshed to the tiled floor.
“I’m done waiting!” Manny strode back into the bathroom, clocking her position inside the tub. “Wonderful. Ladies,” he said to his assistants filing in after him, “get to scrubbing.”
Manny stayed a few steps back, chin in hand, giving directions like a foreman at a construction site.
Every inch of Temmi’s skin was poked and prodded and polished until it burned.
Every. Last. Inch. Her face flamed red from the intrusion, but the assistants’ touch was impersonal, clinical, and she eventually acquiesced to the bathing process.
Not with any degree of actual relaxation, but at least she wasn’t completely dying of shame.
Next came the razors and pots of wax. Temmi bucked away from the first one, sending a wave of water onto the lap of the assistant to her right, a woman with sharp cheekbones and spiky dyed yellow hair. The woman barely reacted, a consummate professional.
“Sweetie.” Manny sidestepped a puddle of water spreading toward his feet. “You’re hairier than a nebula-cursed chimpanzee. It all has to go: arms, legs, pits—”
“Fuck, no, you’re not taking all of it.” Temmi clenched her thighs together meaningfully. “The hell is so wrong with a little body hair, anyway? I never heard of anybody shaving their gods-damned pits before.”
“Oh, honey ,” Manny said, elongating the last word. “You’re not on your little trash planet anymore.”
Temmi’s protests didn’t matter. Over the next few minutes, she was made the victim of brutal hair removal.
When it came time for the pubic area, she doubled down on her refusals.
“I’m not about to go around looking like a prepubescent nine-year-old!
” She clenched her raw-skinned thighs together with every ounce of willpower in her battered body.
“And nobody will be seeing me there anyway.”
Manny sighed with impressive flair. “Child, there’s going to be beach and pool scenes. I’ll be ordering your bikinis—you’ve got a surprisingly curvaceous figure under that nasty jumpsuit. The bush goes.”
Temmi cursed darkly. She hadn’t considered that something as awful as swimming might be in her future.
There wasn’t a swimmable body of water on her entire planet.
Again, what was the damn point? Liquid and X-ers did not mix.
Except when it came to booze. X-ers tore free of their mothers’ wombs with blood alcohol levels of . 02.
When it was over, she didn’t relax her muscles until the razors and pots of wax were put away.
The tub water had gone chilly and murky with an embarrassing volume of filth.
It wasn’t that Temmi never bathed, but water on X72 was costly and expensive, so she usually contented herself with washing her hands and wiping down her body with a washcloth.
Two assistants grabbed her arms and helped her stand.
She stepped, fully nude and dripping, onto the already-wet floor.
Six hands worked in tandem to dry her, patting warm towels against her raw skin, and then, finally, throwing a blessed robe around her shoulders.
Thank all the combusting stars. She couldn’t wait to crawl beneath the covers of her bed and forget the last hour had ever happened.
But when she made to leave, she was stopped by Manny’s thin figure blocking the door. He pointed to a chair that had been set before the bathroom mirror.
“Please don’t tell me there’s more.”
“Oh, dear child, I’ve only just begun.”
Temmi let out a good half dozen fuck-yous before dropping into the chair.
“You’ve quite the mouth on you, you know that?
” Manny crossed to stand behind her, his image slightly fuzzy in the steamed-up mirror.
His strong fingers rubbed her scalp and toyed with her hair, an appraising expression on his face.
“I’m thinking we shorten it a good six inches.
Add in some light layers, maybe even bangs?
” He inspected the ends of her hair. “Really, hon, when was the last time you got a haircut?” But he didn’t stop talking long enough for Temmi to do anything more than show him her middle finger.
“Hm, as for the curls...I like them, but they’re a bit of a frizzy mess.
Maybe a mild relaxer? Loosen them up a bit? Corie, your thoughts?”
The assistant with the ambiguous gender identity came to stand beside Manny.
They had handsome pale features and striking ochre eyes.
Three gaudy emerald rings were pierced through their left eyebrow.
Temmi had heard of some Expanese sub-cultures having four or five genders and wearing jewelry to denote which they belonged to, but she didn’t know enough about Corie’s particular culture to understand what the piercing meant.
Truth was, X-er culture was far more archaic and binary in nature.
Fluidity in gender expression was spoken of as an Expanese ideal, not an X-er one.
But Temmi, who’d never questioned her assigned birth gender, hadn’t had much reason to think about it before.
She imagined having options would be freeing for people.
Corie rubbed a few strands of Temmi’s damp hair between two fingers.
“If we had the time to put her hair through the proper regimen, I’d say keep the curls.
” Their voice rang with a handsome accent, like slightly off-kilter Expanese.
“They’re sure to be stunning when properly cared for.
As it is, Bless wants first shots for her promo in the morning. Relax it.”
They might as well have been speaking another language for all Temmi understood.
“And the color?” Manny asked. “I’m thinking a brighter cerulean. Hers is rather dark for her race. Planetside, I saw countless locals with the most vibrant blue hair. A representative should be fully representative, don’t you think?”
“I do think,” Corie said.
Temmi grumbled something about being only half X-er.
On X72, it had set her apart, and not in a good way.
In primary school, her hyperfocus on the sciences had already designated her a misfit; add in her obviously foreign blood, and making friends had been nearly impossible.
But she’d already resigned herself. What was her hair color in the face of two million credits?
A pair of little scissors appeared in Manny’s hand; he immediately started snipping away at her hair. While he worked, Corie and one of the two women began applying wax to Temmi’s eyebrows and upper lip. The third woman took to clipping and scraping at Temmi’s fingernails.
Hours passed in excruciating slowness. Her hair was rinsed, lathered with cream, rinsed again, lathered with some other unknown substance, rinsed again.
Her eyelashes were dyed to match her hair, as were her brows.
Manny applied cosmetics to her face. She’d never worn cosmetics before.
They were an expensive luxury on X72. Hell, breathing was an expensive luxury on X72.
When it was over, Manny stepped back. Glinda, Corie, and Karel flanked him, all of them wearing expressions of ultimate satisfaction.
Temmi squinted at her reflection. A stranger stared back at her.
Striking, with somewhat shaggy hair that framed a slightly asymmetrical face.
Her wide X-er cheekbones had been accentuated, her brows perfectly arched, her lips outlined in red.
Her brown eyes burned like polished gold.
It was the face of someone she might expect to see on the holo, an actress from one of the wealthier X-er planets.
Her looks had never been something she’d put much stock in.
She’d never been beautiful. Smart? Yes. Resourceful?
Certainly. A pain in the ass? Without a doubt. But beautiful?
Manny’s face settled beside hers in the mirror, his lips curving into a self-satisfied grin. “What do you think, hon?”
Temmi shook her head. She didn’t know what to think.
Manny twined a lock of Temmi’s newly dyed hair around his finger, the blue bright enough to match a rich planet’s cloudless sky. The color made her look alarmingly like a young version of her mother.
“You’re perfect,” he said. “The face of someone who belongs in the grand halls of the Imperial Tower. The empire is going to fall in love with you. The princess is going to go weak-kneed and doe-eyed. She won’t be able to resist you.”
The princess? Temmi jerked away from Manny’s touch. “I’m not here for Spie.”
Manny arched a fine brow. “You’re one of Nix’s?
Huh. I’d assumed, what with your...well, everything.
The chemistry between you and Spie on that little clip was—” He kissed the tips of his fingers.
“I would’ve bet good money on the two of you.
And I’m rarely off base. But then, His Highness is a sexy little mystery I’d love to see you solve. ”
Temmi’s face flushed an embarrassing crimson. An image flashed in her mind: Spie Expani’s obnoxiously perfect face, her lips curved in a smirk. Temmi felt something traitorous twist low in her gut—a stab of unwanted heat.
Fuck that.
She shoved out of her chair hard enough to send it skittering backward over the tiled floor. “We’re done here, yeah?”
Manny studied her with an intensity that seemed to drill right through her. More warmth flushed up her neck, and she cursed her stupid body. But he, blessedly, didn’t press the issue.