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CHAPTER 3
One thing that I’dlearned very quickly about Mortie Williams was that he had the look of a sweet old grandpa, but the mouth of a sailor.
The man in question was currently in the middle of what was turning into an hour-long rant. “These fucking assholes at the Sacramento Daily have no idea what they are talking about.”
Mortie slapped a print newspaper down onto the desk in front of me, and the headline read ‘CARTER’S STANCE ON OMEGA RIGHTS ENTERS DANGEROUS TERRITORIES.’
I raised an eyebrow at that. I’d madeoneoff-the-cuff remark last week at a fundraiser about how I felt that Oregon and Washington did a better job of supporting their omega population by giving them more basic freedoms. That one comment had started a media shitstorm that was responsible for the headache that was currently forming in between my eyes.Mostpeople agreed with me that the Omega Academies tended to have more problems than solutions. We had socialized omega care over a hundred years ago, and over those hundred years there had been many instances of omega abuse stemming from the Academy system. The comment itself had come from a place of experience. Most people thought that omega abuse was a thing of the past, that because the government handled everything, that the omegas were being protected. But I knew two omegas: Tibby Sinclair and Eloise Taylor, who had had issues with the San Francisco Omega Academy in the lastyear,and SFOFA was responsible for that. Not to mention that SFOFA was probably one of the more relaxed Academies in the entirety of California. The Sacramento Omega Academy didn’t even let the omegas leave their premises to go on dates with the packs that were courting them. They had special rooms where an omega could meet with a pack under the watchful eye of the Academy.
All of those things had culminated in my comment at the fundraiser, and now alpha-rights groups had begun to protest me and my campaign. Normally it wouldn't bother me, they were just a small percentage of the population, but some of the death threats that I’d received in the mail had been disconcerting at best. The issue with any group that felt strongly about something was that it tended to have its fair share of nutjobs. The media wasn’t helping much either, in fact, they were probably getting an abundance of clicks and shares with their misleading title.
“The whackos are going to target Adair for this.” Elena Savoy, my spokeswoman, said and looked just as irritated as Mortie did.
“I’ll work on beefing up security,” I finally said with a sigh. I hated being surrounded by bodyguards. It reminded me of when I was on Capitol Hill, and I had a Capitol Police Officer following me around nearly twenty-four hours a day.
“Why don’t you call your friend....” Mortie began snapping his fingers as if that would help him conjure up the name that he was looking for.
“Theo Nilsson?” I provided.
“Right! That’s the one. Doesn’t he run a security firm?”
I thought about that for a moment, Theowouldbe the perfect person to handle security for me...I could probably also get him to outfit the apartment with better security.
“Should we be worried about the Alphas-First group?” I asked, drumming my fingers on the desk in front of me. They had become increasingly more vocal and angry over the past six months, ever since I had put my bid in to be put on the ballot for next year. They didn’t like my policies, and I didn’t like their attitudes. Alphas were a part of society, but they weren’t over anyone else just because of the lottery that was genetics. It was my goal to change that for California. It had become abundantly clear to me as soon as I made it to Capitol Hill that changing things at the Federal level took decades. Things moved at a snail’s pace in The House, and it had become increasingly more frustrating for me as my term went on. That was, at least, until Mortie had approached me at a charity dinner. He had seen my frustration and advised me that, if I wanted to instill change, I would need to do it at the state level. He had then told me that if I ever wanted to run for Governor, to call him. Two and a half years later, and now we were sitting in our campaign office, just over a year out from Election Day.
“Nah,” Mortie finally said with a sigh, coming down from his angry outburst, and flopping onto the couch that was next to my desk. “These whack-jobs are just that, whack-jobs. Most are harmless, and if we just beef up your security things should be okay.”
Mortie pointed a finger at me. “No more comments that aren’t vetted by me first, young man. You have a very good chance at winning the election, and I don’t want you to muck it up with your stupid-as-shit comments. You hear?”
I gave him a mock salute, “aye-aye captain.”
The cheesy taste ofCheetos nearly made me moan with delight as I hunkered over my desk, and shoved them into my mouth. It was just after five o’clock and, other than my coffee this morning, these Cheetos were the first thing that I’d eaten all day.
As soon as I stepped into the office this morning, it had been go-go-go all day long. We had a few drop-in clients that were too important to turn away, and I had three new clients who needed to be measured, and to get their clothing profiles completed. I also had two out-of-office trips that required me to go into the clothing rooms, pick out and rack up several different outfits and shoes to match, and load all of that plus the clothing rack into the van. Poleman’s had a fleet of vans with drivers to take their stylists wherever they needed to go within a two-hour radius of the city. Lucky for me, all of my clients were only a fifteen to twenty-minute drive away from the office today, but sometimes I would be out of the office all day driving all over the Bay Area.
Once we made it to the client’s home or office, I had to unload everything, get it hung up on the clothing rack, and wheel it to wherever the client wanted me to be. One of my clients was fifteen minutes late to their appointment, and he was still talking to someone through his headset as I handed him clothing to try on. He ended up just telling me to put orders in for anything that made him look ‘imposing,’ which was no easy feat considering the fact he was five-foot-four and had a beer belly. The other client was an older woman who had rejected every option that I brought to her without giving me any direction as to what she was actually looking for.
So by the time I finally made it back to the office, lunch had already passed and I had a full schedule of meetings with two potential clients, both of which had gone really well. But in all of that chaos, there had been absolutely no time to eat.
I was just shoving the last of the Cheetos into my mouth when I heard my manager’s voice call across the office. “Zhao, get in here!”
All of the stylists worked in a bullpen-style office space with cubicles made of white frosted glass, and ringing around the bullpen were the manager’s offices. We had several managers who handled things like ordering, technology, client acquisition, etc., but June Follet was the one who handled the day-to-day when it came to us stylists. She was also the niece of Felicia Poleman, the founder of the company, so pissing her off was generallynota good idea.
Grabbing my water bottle, I took a long swig and swished it around in my mouth. As I stood up from my desk, I hoped and prayed that my teeth weren’t orange from my snack, and headed for June’s corner office.
June’s office was an immaculately decorated space, with green and blue walls and cream-colored furniture that gave off the feeling of zen. Too bad June Follet wouldn’t know what zen was even if it bit her in her elegantly dressed ass. June was as beautiful as a knife, with high cheekbones, shiny brown hair, and a pair of icy blue eyes that were so cold that they could cut you to the quick if you pissed her off.
Today, she matched her office walls. She was dressed in an ice blue wrap dress that hugged her skinny frame and really added to the whole ‘ice queen’ persona that she was going with.
“Hi, June.” I pasted my go-to cheerful smile on my face and sat down in one of the cream leather armchairs that was sitting in front of her desk.
June wasn’t really one for pleasantries, so it didn’t surprise me when she got right to the point. “Amelia Bells fired her stylist this afternoon and needs a replacement.”
I knew the name, I’d heard it enough when Tibby or Eloise were discussing the academy. Amelia Bells was the chairwoman of the board of the San Francisco Omega Academy. I combed through my memories of our client lists, trying to figure out which stylist had gotten the boot today, and realized that it was Zoey, one of our top stylists.Shit, that didn’t bode well for me at all.
“I’ve noticed that your stylist reviews are always high—something that isn’t easy with our picky clientele. I’d like to offer you a chance to be Amelia Bells’ stylist.”
Surprise settled into my body as I registered her words. All of my clients, up to this point, had been mid-level fish. I’d had a few B and C-list celebrities in the last couple of years, but nothing that was ever consistent. Amelia Bells had been on contract with Poleman’s since the eighties, and she was currently married to a state senator; she was—in essence—a big fish. I was suddenly feeling like a character in Moby Dick, having finally found my White Whale, and my initial surprise was quickly turning into the excitement that only the challenge of styling Amelia Bells could bring.
