Ornette had a small neck.  She had such a small neck that one woman's watch band could be put around her throat and tied with a ribbon.  The ribbon was half her neck, and the bracelet covered the other half, but it was more than sufficient.  

Hans looked at the gorgeously fat red silk ribbon tied around Ornette’s neck and said plainly.  “This is not what we will use for the day of the show, but it gives me a host of ideas.  Do you have an opinion, Ornette?”

“I love the red.  Isn’t there a way to keep the red in the design?”

“I will think on it,” he said without warmth.

“I think we should do a necklace, a bracelet, and a ring,” she told Hans.  “We need to choose options that show the classical nature of your brand.  What do you think?”

“Very sensible,” he replied dully.

That was the moment when she thought that she was going to get through the week without having a romantic encounter of some kind with Hans.  Surely, he didn’t want anything like that.  Surely, he was an old withered man who had lived his life as a gentleman and he would die like that.

That was what Ornette thought, but she was wrong.

He came and stood behind her, fiddling with the red ribbon encircling her throat.  His gaze was on her reflection in the sparkling mirror in front of them.  He tried the ribbon one way, then pulled it loose.  He tried the ribbon a different way, then he took a moment to really examine her reflection.  He placed his hands on her shoulders.  

She tightened the muscles in her body on instinct. 

His touch traveled down her back.  One hand lingered at her waist while he grazed her bottom with his fingers before grabbing her fully with fingers as bony as a skeleton.

Ornette gave no reaction.  

Clearly, he was looking for one.  His eyes were on hers through the medium of the mirror, but Ornette did not look like it concerned her.

The moment hung, his grip as strong as the metal he worked with.

She wondered if she’d have a bruise.

He let go.

When he finally spoke, he said, “You’re more beautiful than I thought you were.  Perhaps these odd pieces of jewelry will not work for a woman like you.  Fenrir and Mr. Fitness gave me the impression that you were a foolish creature who bubbled and giggled on her way to the guillotine because she didn’t know any better.”

“They were wrong?” she asked, with a coldness in her voice that matched his.  She could have been colder.  She just chose not to be.  She chose to match him.  That was what he wanted.  

He wanted to look into a mirror, see her face, but also himself.  He wanted to feel her body, not like she was a woman, but like she was a racehorse and he was considering whether or not he ought to buy her.

Ornette wasn’t sure if she passed the test regardless of what he said.  The compliment he offered her might be all he planned to give her.

Hans sent her away that night with a dismissive wave of his hand.  She was the first to be picked up by the helocarrier.  

The next day, it was clear that she had impressed Hans.  He showed her sketches and plans for the collection of pieces he was having made and asked her if there was anything lacking from them.

More tests.

Those kinds of men couldn’t stop putting the people around them through hoops to make them test their worth and their loyalty.

Ornette looked at the designs.  They were beautiful, but they were incomplete.  Well, they were complete to the untrained eye, but to Ornette, they were incomplete.  He was giving her an opportunity to join in the design phase, which was what he was supposed to do as part of the competition, but he could have chosen to discard her opinion.  Even still, she might be too cowed to give an opinion.  

Ornette straightened her back and said, “The basic design for the flowers is really beautiful.  I love the metal edging with the red underneath, but I think it’s a shame to have them be the same on all three pieces, even if they are part of a set.”

“How would you change them?” he asked without emotion.

“The bracelet and the necklace look almost identical with a thick chain and one flower with four petals.  When I think about it that way, the ring is the same too.  I think they need to be distinctive and beautiful in different ways even as they are beautiful in the same way.”

“How so?”

“The ring is the best of the three.  It just needs more petals.  It should have as many as it can have sensibly without losing functionality.  We don’t need to make something that’s cumbersome.  It should be a statement… Especially because you’re setting bits of ribbon into the metal like tiny embroidery hoops.  It gives a completely different impression than rubies.  It will still be light even if you add more petals.”

“The bracelet?”

“Give up the flower altogether.  Instead, place the petals of the flower into each of the elongated links of the bracelet.  At first, I thought we should do whole flowers all the way around, but when I started to think about what would make the ring cumbersome, I thought flowers all the way around would be awkward and too high off the wrist.  The ornament should lie flat.  Flat petals like a lover’s trail into a bedroom.”

Hans touched her hand.

Ornette gave him a cold stare.  “What is it?”

He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it with his cold lips.

She closed her mouth to stop herself from gaping and waited for him to finish.  When she directed her gaze at him in that way, he seemed to realize that he was interrupting their work and that was actually the last thing he wanted to do.

He removed his hand and said, “Continue.”

She drew in a breath to collect herself before explaining her design ideas.  “What I want for the necklace is tricky.  I hope you have an idea to counter the problem I’m seeing.”

“What problem?” he looked instantly concerned.

“There’s no problem with the sketch you’ve presented to me.  There’s a problem with what I want to do.  I want the bloom to rest on my jugular.  Right here,” Ornette pointed to the place at eleven o’clock on her neck.  “Nothing wants to stay in a place like that.  If I wear a necklace with a flower there, it weighs more than any other part of the necklace and it always falls forward.  How can we keep a heavy blossom in that asymmetrical position?”

“We put a weight on the back,” Hans supplied.  “I can’t tell you how exciting I find that.  We use weights like that when we make grandfather clocks.  If you wear a dress with a plunging back and your hair up, I think we can create something that’s quite exciting.”  He took the tablet from her and began sketching a new design.  “You want more flowers on the necklace?”

“I want a single flower dropping petals.”

“Like a vampire lover has bitten you?  The flower is the place bitten and the dropping petals are the drops of blood?”

“Yes.”

He nodded.  “Then we understand each other.”  

For a man who didn’t really have emotions, his expression appeared shockingly satisfied.  “I will send this sketch downstairs for them to make a prototype.  Let me take you to lunch.”

***

Lunch was in a cold restaurant where precious little food was served.  There was sparse conversation and all Ornette had to do was hold her head up and keep her reactions neutral.  It would have been delightful with the arched ceilings over her head, the classical music playing in the background, and the high profile of the restaurant, except for the elephant in the room.

Hans was not an elegant man.  He only pretended to be so.

He did not eat in a place like that.  He ate on his own privately.  He had to.  Not even he could maintain his skeletal body on what he consumed at the restaurant.  He came to be seen and to see others.

He wanted to be seen with her.

It was probably the finest compliment he could offer anyone.

After lunch, he sent her back to the studio and he did not call her back until two days before the show.