He held up his finger, listening to something on his satellite phone. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Okay. Got it. Thanks. I’ll pass it along.” He hung up and then looked over at us. “Production says four hour penalty for the green team.”
“That’s it?” I gaped at him. “That’s unfair! Four hours and they’re still going to be ahead of us because we can’t get anywhere without money.”
He shrugged. “I don’t make the rules, ladies.” He put away his phone and shouldered his camera again.
“What about those Red Hat ladies? They were in on it.”
“I was told only a penalty for the green team,” he said, and hit the record button again, then gestured. “You’re back on.”
I looked at my twin, frustrated. “We’re screwed without any money.”
“I’m not willing to give up,” Georgie said, glancing around the busy airport. We were still near the taxi stand, but our driver was long gone. “There has to be something we can do.”
“Well, we need money.”
“Yes, but how much?”
I drummed my fingers on my lips, thinking. We’d need enough to pay a taxi to take us out to the hammam – whatever it was – and then we’d need additional money for food and drink. We were low on both, and our packs probably only had one power bar between the two of them. Also? It was hot as hell in Marrakech and we were wearing long sleeves and long pants. We were going to need water.
As I thought, a man slowed his steps, walking past us. I frowned to myself, watching him. I’d seen him pass by twice now. What was the deal? “I think that guy is staring at us,” I told Georgie.
She glanced over and didn’t seem concerned. “We’re two Americans standing in front of a camera. Of course he’s going to wonder what’s going on.”
A moment later, the man approached. He held out his cellphone. “Georgie Price?” he asked in accented English. “It is you, yes?”
Ah. A fan. The idea wheel began to turn in my mind as Georgie greeted the man, signed an autograph, and listened to him fawn over her with a patient smile on her face. She let him take a selfie with her, sucking in her cheeks and giving her best ‘model’ bitchface. As he shook her hand, an idea crept inside my head and wouldn’t go away.
We could totally make money. Georgie was just money waiting to happen.
The man thanked my twin profusely and the moment he left, I grabbed her hand. “Are you on any recent magazines?”
Her brow wrinkled a little. “I…I don’t know. I think there was a Vogue shoot from a few months ago–”
“Come on,” I said, and dragged her back into the airport.
~~ * * * ~~
An hour and a half later, the gift shop had sold out of every copy of the French version of Vogue, which featured a six-month-old picture of Georgie on the cover. We’d appealed first to the gift shop owner, who was ecstatic to meet Georgie, and insisted on having a signed copy for himself, along with several pictures taken.
I was in charge of the panhandling. I tugged on people’s arms and entreated them to come into the gift shop, where famous model Georgie Price was signing autographs for the next half hour only! I disguised it as a meet and greet, and people were allowed to take their photo with Georgie for a five dollar donation. The cameraman rolling film just helped add to the authenticity of our staged meeting, and by the time I decided we had enough money, we had a mob of men waiting to meet Georgie.
We couldn’t spend all day here, though. We were in a race. So I dragged my twin out of the gift shop as she blew kisses at her adoring fans and made apologies, and then we raced back to the taxi stand, got into the nearest cab, and were off to the hammam.
“That was so much fun,” Georgie said breathlessly, wiping sweat from her brow and then taking a sip out of a cold water bottle that we’d been given by our new friend at the shop. “I like meeting people.”
“I’m glad one of us does,” I told her as I counted out money. “A hundred and thirty American dollars,” I told her. “And some guy slipped us a weird bill, whatever that is.” I squinted at the foreign money and then shrugged. “I think we’re good for now.”
“Maybe we should have stayed longer?” Georgie asked, concerned. “Gotten a bit more money?”
I shook my head and peered out the window. “It’s a race and we’re already almost two hours behind the others. It doesn’t matter how much we have if we come in last place. Or second to last,” I added after a moment, thinking of this leg’s twist. “Two teams are going to be eliminated, remember?”
“The green team now has a four hour penalty,” Georgie mused. “They must have banked on us falling so far behind that we wouldn’t be able to catch up. Fuckers.”
“I just don’t get why they’re being such dicks to us for working with Team One Percent? The Doctor Moms and the Red Hat ladies work together, too, and you don’t see anyone going after them.”
“Eh.” Georgie studied our clue again. “They’re jealous. Not only is Team One Percent in the lead, but they’re also getting laid. Drew’s still mad that I won’t suck his dick.”
I stared at my twin, aghast. “What? He asked you to suck his dick?” My voice rose a shrill octave, and the cab driver stared at us with a frown.
Georgie waved a hand at me, trying to shush me. She looked at the camera and then back at me, and spoke. “Yeah, he hit on me at one of the pit stops. Everyone thinks because you’re pretty and you’re famous, you’re automatically a whore.” Her mouth thinned, and I knew she was thinking about her past with modeling, where her agent had treated her just like that. “I told him no,” she added after a moment. Then she looked at the camera again and wiggled her pinky at it. “He’s got a tiny nubbin, world. Don’t waste your time on him. I know I didn’t.”
I snorted. I doubted she’d even seen his dick if she was joking about it, but I didn’t mind her casting a few insults in his direction. They were jerks and they deserved whatever they got. “Maybe we can catch up at this hammam thing.”
“I don’t even know what a hammam is,” Georgie said. She leaned forward and got the cab driver’s attention. “Excuse me, sir? Do you know what a hammam is?”
He spoke in Arabic, and then switched to French, and Georgie nodded. “It’s a bath, Clemmy! Hot dog, we’re getting massages! Maybe something this day is finally going to go our way.”
~~ * * * ~~
When we arrived at the Hammam de la Rose, we had to step inside to get the clue. A woman waited there for us, a white fluffy towel wrapped around her head and wearing a floor length, equally fluffy bathrobe. She held out the disk for us and smiled, and her hands were covered in mehndi designs. The place smelled like steam and perfume and Georgie gave a happy little squeal. “This is so awesome!”
I pulled out my broken glasses and used one lens like a monocle, reading the clue. “Racers must now experience a traditional Moroccan hammam treatment. Female racers will be given the full hammam experience and then will have the henna design of their choice painted on their bodies. Male racers will also experience the full hammam treatment, and must undergo a shave and haircut. Once you have completed your tasks, your attendant will give you your next clue.”
Georgie bounced, excited. “We’re gonna get massaaaaages,” she singsonged. “Moroccan massaaaaaages.”
I read the clue a second time. “So there’s different treatments for the guys and the girls?”
The woman nodded and gestured at a door to her left. “Women please go this way.”
“How long does this take?” I asked, holding Georgie’s hand so she wouldn’t charge ahead. Time was crucial because we had so much to make up. “The full treatment and the mehndi?”
“Full treatment begins with a fifteen minute steam. Then you will rinse off, soap up, and then rinse again. You will receive a massage,” the woman continued, and Georgie began to sing-song again. “Then we will exfoliate with black olive soap, and rinse. When you are clean, the mehndi can be applied.”
This sounded like a lot
of scrubbing and rinsing. “And it takes how long?” I prompted again.
“Expect to spend two hours,” she said in her gentle voice and gestured at the door again. “Please enter.”
“What if I was a guy? How long would that take?”
Her brows drew together and she gave a small shrug of her shoulders. “Ninety minutes?”
Shit. “Georgie, we’re one of the two-girl teams. Those Green Machine dickfaces are going to get ahead of us just because they’re dudes.”
“Then we have to move fast,” she said, snatching the clue from my hand and dragging me forward. “Come on.”
When we entered the room, I frowned. There were four people waiting for us – two held cameras, and two were attendants. All were women.
“Come,” said the first woman. “You will each have your own steam room.”
I looked over at Georgie. She shrugged, and then went with the first woman. I went with the second, and a quick glance over my shoulder showed that the blurry form behind me was the new camera-woman, no doubt filming every moment of the massage. I hoped this wasn’t one of those brutal massages where they tried to twist your body into a pretzel.
My attendant took me down a hall filled with many doors. The entire place was steamy as heck, and I began to perspire and pluck at my long-sleeved clothes. Ugh. I’d need extra deodorant while we were in Morocco, it’d seem.
“Your room,” she said, gesturing at a small closet of a room. She turned over a plaque that had a word in Arabic on the door. Probably ‘In Use’. “You may change and then enter the steam room. Pour a ladle of water on the heat source and it will create the steam. You will have fifteen minutes.”
I nodded.
“I will return for you shortly,” she said with a small smile and then headed down the hall.
I went into the cubby. To my chagrin, the camera-woman followed me in. I tried to ignore her, slipping my shoes off and putting them in the designated spot. There was a small, blue wrapped bundle left on one end of the bench, along with a pair of sandals. That was probably a robe, I thought with relief.
I looked over at the camera-woman. “Do you have to be in here?”
“You signed an agreement,” she said in a bored voice, no doubt expecting this argument. “If it makes you feel any better, we’re network TV. No one’s gonna see your tits.”
I was more worried they’d see my lack of tits. I held the bundle of clothes to change into and hesitated for a bit longer. There was no time to waste, but I didn’t like the thought of changing in front of someone.
But…we had time to make up, too. I had to do this. Mind made up, I removed the white ribbon around my bundle of clothing–
–and stared in shock. There was a tiny white panty barely big enough to cover my privates, and the blue was a scarf that would probably cover my hips…if I got creative.
Where was my top?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Yo, where is everybody?” – Plate, Team One Percent, The World Races
I debated modesty for about two minutes before anxiety won out, and I stripped for the massage. I knew Georgie wouldn’t care – being a model, she’d been naked a lot – and I didn’t want to be the one to cost us the race. So, cringing, I held the scarf in front of my boobs and went into the next room, trying to pretend that there wasn’t a camera following me.
The massage actually started out pretty awesome. They dripped hot water on me, then cold, and then sponged me down with a soapy pillow of some kind until I was loose and relaxed. Then, they scrubbed every inch of my skin and exfoliated me. Then, more rubbing.
I was so relaxed that I was completely unprepared for the moment that they decided to take things up a level. The masseuse grabbed my arms and legs and stretched me to the point of pain, leaving me whimpering under her ministrations. Every muscle was worked, kneaded, stretched, and pounded. By the time she was done, I felt boneless and broken.
She handed me my cloth sarong back and babbled something, then gestured at the door, indicating I should dress once more. I slid (so bonelessly) off the table and moaned at how achy I was.
It was gonna be a bitch to try and race like this.
The moment I put my clothes on, a note slid under the door. I picked it up and read it aloud for the camera’s benefit. “Find your partner and seek out the mehndi artist. Once your henna tattoo is completed, you will receive your next clue.”
Okay, no sweat. I emerged from the room and nearly ran into my twin and her camera-woman. “Hey,” Georgie said, giving me the dopiest look. “Was that not the best massage?”
“It was,” I said, grabbing her by the arm and hurrying her along. “Until they started to turn me into a pretzel.”
She chuckled. “It was a bit like a Swedish deep-tissue massage on crack, wasn’t it?”
Seeing as I’d never had a Swedish massage, I had no idea. “Let’s go get our henna. We have to make it snappy or we’re going to fall even further behind.”
Following a few well-placed arrows, we found the henna artist. She showed us a series of designs for us to pick, and we chose the simplest ones. Georgie went first, and I paced as the woman carefully and quietly painted an intricate design on the back of Georgie’s hand.
“I’m not seeing any others,” I told Georgie. “We’re in last. We have to be.”
“Then we’re in last,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do about it except to try and make up those four hours that the Green Team is getting penalized.”
“It should have been more than four hours!”
She shrugged. “Whining about it isn’t going to get us anywhere. I think you’re up now.” She stood, admiring the swirling mud on her hand. “This is going to look so cool.”
The woman indicated Georgie should take another seat, and, with gestures and a lot of hand-waving, explained that the tattoo needed to stay covered with the mud for one hour.
I tried not to panic at that. An hour? We didn’t have an hour to sit around and wait for our mud to dry. I held my hand out, and tried not to twitch as the woman began to carefully paint.
I might have even been blowing gently on the mud to dry it – or at least I was until she gave me a cross look. It felt like it took forever, but she eventually finished the last swirl on my tattoo. I leapt out of my seat and held my other hand out. “Clue? Please?”
Georgie got to her feet as well.
The woman shook her head and scolded us in Arabic, gesturing at the tattoos. Her body language told us very specifically that we could not mess up our tattoos.
“Nothing said we have to wait, though, right” I pleaded. “What if we’re really careful?” I mimed protecting the mud on my hand. “We’ll probably be in a taxi anyhow.”
Georgie spoke a few soothing words in French, and to my surprise, the woman responded in equally quick French. Well, damn. Here I was with a PhD in invertebrate paleontology and I couldn’t even speak a second language. Again, my model twin was better at the traveling thing than me.
Reluctantly, the woman pulled something out from under her table, and I nearly clapped my hands (mud and all), thinking it was the clue.
It was, instead, a paper bag.
She handed them to both of us, speaking in French, and Georgie nodded then looked at me. “We’re supposed to put this over our hand to keep it from smearing. If we do that, she’ll let us go.”
I nodded, excited, and jammed my hand into the bag. She immediately handed me a rubber band, and I obligingly put it around my wrist.
“I feel the overwhelming urge to make a puppet,” Georgie said, moving the fold of her bag like a mouth. “He-llo Clemmy,” she said in a weird voice, moving the bag. “How are you today?”
“I’m about to punch a paper puppet unless I get my clue,” I warned my twin.
Georgie chuckled and spoke to the woman again, and she produced our clue. With an excited shriek, we raced out of the hammam and back to our waiting cab.
~~ * * * ~~
“T
he clue says to skip the line to get in at the Saadian Tombs and go straight to the front, and someone will be waiting to let us inside from there.” Georgie scanned the rules again. “Inside, we will need to be respectful but also look for our clue.” She snorted. “Here’s a thought – if you want everyone to be respectful, maybe you don’t make a tomb part of your gameshow?”
I peered around. The plaza we were standing in was full of people and booths and lots of pinkish-beige tall stone buildings, but I was blind as a bat and didn’t feel like holding up my ‘monocle’ to see things. “Do you see any other teams?”
“Nope,” Georgie said. “Think it’s been an hour yet? My hand is sweating inside my puppet.”
“Not yet,” I chided her. “Let’s just go in and find our clue, okay?”
She grabbed my un-bagged hand and dragged me forward, past the blur of people. “Come on, then. I think I see the entrance.”
Five minutes later, we were inside the Saadian Tombs. The interior was cool and dark, and if I peered hard at the floor, I could make out incredible, vibrant designs. “I bet this is so beautiful,” I breathed, fishing in my pocket for my monocle anyhow. “Georgie, is it pretty?”
“Yup. Gorgeous,” she said in a bored tone. “I don’t see anyone in this room with a clue. Let’s keep going.”
She led me through room after room, and even though I protested our speedy trek through the tomb, I couldn’t argue that Georgie got results. Several rooms later, someone greeted us and held out the clue. I automatically turned to my twin and waited for her to read it, holding my monocle with my non-henna hand.
She squinted at the disk and read aloud. “Look for a wide open area two streets over that has been roped off for the game. There, you must select which member of your team will be ‘Puzzle’ and which will be ‘Painter’?”
“Oh boy,” I said, dropping my monocle back in my pocket so I could hold on to Georgie’s hand. “I don’t know if I’m going to be any good at painting considering I can’t see.”
Partner Games Page 17
