Heller's Revenge (2 page)

“Oh God, look what I’m reduced
to,” the man groaned, glowering up at me with disgust. “I’m fucking
ruined.”

“Pardon, sir?” I asked,
bemused.

“You work for the organisers,
don’t you?”

I nodded.

“Can you walk?”

What a weird question. “Of
course I can. You just saw me walk over to you.”

“Not that gorilla gait! Can you
walk
? Strut? Display the goods?”

What the hell was he talking
about? “Of course I can
walk
,” I repeated, emphasising the
word just as he had done. Maybe he was hard of hearing or his
English wasn’t very good?

“Fine, because I’m desperate and
you’ll just have to do. At least you’re tall enough.”

“Hey, if you need a tall person,
my colleagues are taller than me and –” I helpfully began to tell
him as he scampered down a hall, impatiently beckoning me to
follow.

He stopped and spun around,
angry disbelief on his face. “Are you jerking me off?”

“What?” I asked, startled. “No!”
Eww!

“I don’t need fucking men!”

That’s not what my gaydar was
telling me. I thought for a moment. “Did you mean, am I jerking you
around
?”

“That’s what I said,” he
insisted huffily.

I wasn’t going to correct him. I
didn’t know who he was and he might have been someone who could get
me fired. I hadn’t failed to notice that the canape-eating incident
hadn’t yet been mentioned and I sure as hell wasn’t going to raise
it if he wasn’t.

“No, I’m not jerking you –”

“Hurry up!” he snapped,
interrupting. “We’re going to be late.
Merde!
I’m finished
in this business if I don’t sort this out!”

I followed him to a crowded
dressing room buzzing with pre-show panic and activity. I wasn’t
unfamiliar with that, having done some live acting before. Yeah,
okay, I was playing a piece of fruit in a play for primary school
kids, but the atmosphere was the same. Trust me.

In the middle of the melee sat
Jenna Mackenzie, minions flapping around her making last minute
touches to her makeup and hair. She ignored them, looking serenely
divine, staring at herself in the mirror, practicing her
provocative pout. She wore a red leather bustier that cupped her
impressive boobs, hooked by suspenders to red fishnet stockings. A
miniscule pair of red satin panties, not enough material to blow
your nose on, and impossibly high red stilettos completed her
ensemble. All the other women wore a riot of styles and materials,
but each in solid black. Jenna would be a standout in her
scarlet-woman red.

“I found someone!” the tiny man
shouted into the chaos and everyone stopped what they were doing to
turn and cheer. “It’s not good, but it will have to do.”

I sure hoped that I wasn’t the
‘it’ he was referring to. I could feel my blood temperature rising
already. He dragged me through the crush to a clothes rack filled
with lingerie, his eyes scouring my body before choosing a set.

He thrust them at me. “You’ll be
wearing my fabulous Chain Gang, the latest in my Captivating
Convict range. So get changed and snap to it.”

“What?”

“I’m a lady down tonight and . .
.
Oh
mon Dieu!
I’m
so
desperate!” he sighed
dramatically. “You’ll have to fill in for her. Otherwise we’ll be
lopsided.”

“Lopsided?”

He pushed me towards a small
changing cubicle. “Do you keep your lady hedges trimmed?”

“What?” Suddenly we were talking
about gardening? I was confused – conversationally, this guy was
all over the place.

He sighed with exaggerated
exasperation. “Down
there
! Is your girlie garden
well-tended?”

“Huh?”

He stared at me as if I was an
imbecile. “Do you bare your goods in the downstairs
department?”

Now he was talking about
shopping? “I-I don’t understand.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he
complained, eyes rolling to the heavens at my stupidity. “Do you
wax your pussy?”

“
Oh!
” Geez, how much more
personal could a man be? “Um . . . yes . . . everything’s in order
down there, thank you very much,” I replied with Antarctic
frostiness.

“Well, that’s
something
to be thankful for at least. I don’t want any of my ladies looking
as though they’re trying to smuggle a Yeti through Customs.”

I felt as though this had gone
on long enough and rounded on him. “Okay, who the hell are you and
what exactly are you expecting me to do?”

There was a sudden hush and
every eye flew to me in shock. A hum of offended whispering rippled
around the room as the tiny man drew himself taller and addressed
me with dignity. “
I
am Jules Roux.”

I stared at him blankly, no
wiser.

Annoyed at having to explain
further, he continued, “The designer of the world-renowned
Masquerade brand of lingerie.”

“Oh.
That
Jules Roux,” I
pretended.

He huffed and pushed the
lingerie set into my hands again. “I’m a model down tonight and you
are going to fill in for her. On the catwalk.”

“Oh no,” I said, shaking my head
and backing away. “I couldn’t possibly do that. I’m just a security
–”

“I don’t give a shit what you
are! You work for the organisers and you are filling in for them.
For me. I won’t have my beautiful Jenna lopsided at her grand
finale. I need you to make up the numbers. It’s a great honour to
be asked by me, you know. Models over the world beg to be chosen to
be in my shows.” He thrust the lingerie at me once more. “Now get
ready.” He stalked away.

“No,” I repeated to his
retreating back. It was a ridiculous request – I was no model. I’d
only recently committed to becoming a security officer and I didn’t
want to change careers now.

He turned around. “Do you want
me to tell the organisers that it’s all because of
you
that
my show was a failure? That Jenna was embarrassed in front of all
of those important, influential people out there because of
you
?”

Important, influential
people?
Had we been looking at the same crowd? “Well no, of
course –”

“Your choice, darling,” he
snapped, interrupting. “And you have five minutes to get
ready.”

He departed, leaving me behind
with a disagreeable dilemma. I asked myself what Heller would want
me to do, but I already knew the answer. Always with an eye for a
business opportunity, Heller would want me to keep the client
happy. This would improve his chance of being chosen again to
provide security for the same show next year, and maybe also some
of the department store’s other fashion parades throughout the
year. But still I hesitated, lingerie dangling in my hand, glancing
at the women surrounding me in various states of undress.

“I can’t,” I said to them
faintly. “I’m a security officer.”

“Please?” asked Jenna in a soft
wheedling tone, slinking over to me, the minions in her trail
complaining that she’d never be ready in time. “It would mean so
much to me. It’s a huge show for me and I won’t have the right
number of women behind me on my grand finale if you don’t.”

She stroked the lingerie set
that I was clutching, causing the silver chains to tinkle together
charmingly. Her moisturised, manicured hand clasped mine and her
large angelic hazel eyes fixed on me in supplication. She shook her
carefully curled blonde hair back behind her shoulders and used one
finger to wipe her upper lip line to remove excess lippy – all done
with languorous eroticism. God, she was hot!

“Well, okay,” I found my mouth
saying, even though my brain was giving me very firm and sensible
instructions to turn the offer down.

“Yay!” she smiled, bouncing up
and down and clapping her hands. “My finale is going to be perfect,
after all.”

She’s much nicer than I
expected from a top model
, I thought, staring at her dreamily.
But then she grabbed my hand and dragged me back to the changing
cubicle where she ungently pushed me inside and threw the lingerie
at me.

“So get those fucking undies on
now,” she ordered, “and stop your whining. I will
not
have
some fucking plain nobody ruining my grand finale.” She stalked
back to her chair, not even casting me a fleeting backwards glance.
She was used to being obeyed.

Plain? Me?
I was
insulted. Didn’t she know that Heller coughed up a lot of money to
keep me looking this good? Appearances were important to him, and
as well as being one of his security officers, I also occasionally
accompanied him to meetings with prospective clients, whenever he
felt a nice cleavage or pair of legs might help win him the
job.

Muttering under my breath, I
reluctantly peeled off my uniform and underwear and replaced them
with the bra and panties, spending two minutes simply trying to
untangle the silver chains.

“Shoes! Extra large as ordered!”
yelled an unknown voice and the two high-heeled stilettos flew over
the curtain, almost knocking me unconscious. I yanked them on,
resenting the Big Foot comment. Tall women have larger feet –
everyone knew that.

The curtain was yanked aside and
one of the minions dragged me from the cubicle and pushed me into a
vacant chair. A duo of stylists pounced on me, one liberally
plastering makeup on my face while the other took control of my
hair. The hair stylist, an older man with suspiciously smooth skin
and kind eyes, loosened my hair from the bun I wore for work,
twisting and pulling on it uncomfortably.

“Hey, be gentle!” I
squealed.

“There’s nothing gentle about
this business, my darling,” he warned as he cruelly plied the
curling wand.

“I’m not in this business,” I
grumbled quietly, praying he wouldn’t singe my scalp he was working
so quickly. He shot me a sympathy-face as we both watched me
transform from security officer to sultry vixen. Afterwards, I
regarded myself critically in a full-length mirror, twisting and
turning, not happy with the skimpiness of the underwear or the
kilogram of makeup I was forced to wear.
God Heller
, I
thought to myself gloomily,
the things I do for you!
The
only saving grace in the whole sorry situation was that all of the
models donned burlesque half-masks – frivolous lacy, feathery
disguises to reinforce the Masquerade branding. They also provided
a small modicum of anonymity. Or so I hoped.

Frowning at myself in the
mirror, I suddenly felt a hand on each butt cheek and swung around,
ready to rearrange some dental work.

And that’s when Jules Roux made
his rude comments about my arse ruining his business. I listened
politely to his opinion and then pointed out, equally polite, that
any normal woman’s arse would look huge in those panties and that
there was better coverage offered by a shoelace.

“My gorgeous lingerie is
designed for a
particular
type of figure,” he sneered,
clearly implying that mine wasn’t even close to living up to that
level of particularity.

“What? A stick figure?”

We eyed each other off for a few
tense ticks of the clock.

He waved his hand at me a few
times as if swatting away a particularly persistent mosquito, and
looked down his nose at me – which was quite a feat considering I
was much taller than him. “I care not for your uneducated, oafish
opinions about fashion. What would you know?”

I shrugged. “Well, I
am
a
woman.”

“That’s debatable,” he muttered
under his breath.

He made it very difficult for me
to remain amiable, so I gave up trying. “And I have to buy and wear
these overpriced, uncomfortable little pieces of torture that you
design.”

He sniffed with derision. “I
doubt the likes of
you
could afford one of my creations.
Now, listen up. I don’t have one second more to waste on you. When
it’s your turn to go out, you walk to the end of the catwalk,
strike a pose for a few seconds, then turn and walk back,” he
barked. “Think you can manage that?”

I nodded brusquely. “Yeah, I
think I can manage that. I learned to walk a long time ago.”

He eyeballed me with undisguised
loathing, but continued, “Then Jenna will make four walks down the
stage by herself, wearing different sets. On her fifth and final
walk, she will wear my masterpiece set, Climactic Angel from my
Heavenly Hedonist range. She’ll be accompanied by all the ladies,
acting as handmaids to her celestial greatness.” I rolled my eyes.
“You will be situated in the least conspicuous place – in the
middle. Understood?”

I nodded again, but this time
kept my smartarse comments to myself, growing increasingly nervous
about it all. What if I tumbled in these heels? What if I had a
wardrobe malfunction in this tiny lingerie? What if I fell off the
stage? What if Mum and Dad saw me? Or even worse, what if Daniel
and Niq saw me? They wouldn’t stop laughing for a week.

A blare of raunchy music from
the stage area made us all jump.

“It’s time!
Mon
fucking
Dieu
! It’s time, ladies,” Jules panicked, clapping his
hands. “Get in your places.”

Obediently, the women formed a
neat and orderly line in the direction of the stage. I didn’t know
where I was supposed to be and frantically tried to join them,
pushing in a few places, only to be repeatedly shoved out of the
queue with a tart, “Not
here
!”

Huffing with impatience, Jules
grabbed my elbow and forced me between a curvy redhead and a very
young, well-endowed blonde, who needlessly jostled me from behind
to show her annoyance about her spot in the line-up being stolen. I
turned and mouthed “
sorry”
to her, but her cold, hard,
ambitious eyes warned me that she wasn’t overly familiar with that
emotion.