Natalia: Part 5

Natalia Porter pretended to sleep, lying in bed near Alan.

Today had not gone well.

The order of dates mirrored the popularity poll, and she was second to last. That meant the hotel wasn’t just watching them—it was ranking them, sorting them, deciding who deserved attention and who deserved to be ignored.

She had needed to impress.

Instead, Alan had been injured, tried to untangle whatever had blown up between the host and her ex-girlfriend, and then had a small breakdown under the weight of it all.

It was not what Natalia had needed.

Natalia didn’t sleep anymore.

She reset.

It wasn’t time travel so much as a practiced slide into a scene she could inhabit cleanly—one where her body felt right. She’d found that Garden State was the sweet spot: energy, but not wired energy. Young enough to be sharp. Old enough not to feel like a child. Before the health issues she’d accepted for roles. Before decades of accumulated tension, two pregnancies, and the slow grind of aging.

Being able to lie down and think without carrying all of that in her joints and muscles was glorious.

She wished she had Xanax. Not even to escape—just to take the edge off the constant vigilance.

But even if she could get it, asking for it would show the wrong kind of vulnerability. Even a hint of substance dependence would give the Audience something to latch onto—a defect they could hold up like a justification for whatever ugliness they wanted to express.

Alan might be irrelevant to her long-term survival, but admitting anything worse than mild intrigue would be another mark against her. This wasn’t the first time Natalia had been trapped in a situation where she needed a strategy.

And appearing to have a strategy would hurt her.

It reminded her of her divorce more than her public persona. Everything had become material. Every word could be used. Every emotion could be edited into a narrative. Nothing was allowed to be natural, because “natural” didn’t test well.

The others weren’t threats, exactly.

Ariadne seemed to be in over her head. Joan needed time to find herself, and time was the one resource the hotel rationed most cruelly. The twins were strangely calm, which probably meant denial, or something worse than denial.

Natalia didn’t see enemies.

Not yet.

Well, Laurel was different. Laurel was hiding something—or failing to realize something she thought was obvious. A wild card. Not necessarily a danger. But Natalia didn’t like wild cards.

So she waited for morning and kept her breathing even.

Alan woke up in the middle of the night.

Natalia’s breathing beside him was steady, slow. Sleeping.

Or good at pretending.

Tomorrow was Joan’s date. After that, a challenge. More transformations. A week of whatever bullshit the show cooked up to keep things “interesting.”

Alan exhaled quietly. He felt himself relax in the dark, despite everything. If things kept up like this, the harem might actually be safe.

And if not—

He got out of bed without waking Natalia. The door was locked for the night. That was fine. Locked meant contained. Contained meant predictable.

He went into the bathroom and stared at himself under the flat light.

He looked better than usual.

His face seemed slightly hardened somehow. Older, in a way he didn’t hate. He liked the look. The stubble made him look a bit too young, though—too boyish for what he was doing, too soft for what the hotel wanted from him.

He opened drawers, then the cabinet under the sink.

A straight razor lay there like it had been placed deliberately, waiting.

Alan picked it up and turned it in his hand. The blade was too clean. Too heavy. It looked less like a grooming tool than a polite weapon pretending to belong in a bathroom.

Maybe it was just an old-fashioned accessory.

Maybe the hotel thought he’d like the aesthetic.

Alan shaved.

When he was done, he rinsed the blade, dried it carefully, and then—without quite deciding to—slid it into his pocket.

It probably wouldn’t help.

But it made him feel a little better.

That was the problem.