Tiara Contracts, Part 2

New readers joining the story will benefit from first reading Tiara Contracts, Part 1 for background and foundations.

“Fashion sweeps are always fun,” Kona offered into the afternoon porch air.

“No fashion show ever got more than three thousand views,” Tonya replied. It was brainstorming time. The gear had been unloaded, everyone supplied with a beverage, and the plotting had begun.

“We need a hundred forty thousand views. We need something that goes big. What have we done in the past for those kinds of numbers?” I was searching my own flawed memory.

“Keys of Life concert,” Sharon offered.

“That took over a month of prep. We have two days.”

“Kona’s auction,” Callie said.

Gus, Sharon, and I elbowed each other out of the way, trying to be the loudest. “NO!”

“Still views…”

“RainGasm,” Gus offered. “But it’s edgy.”

“Why are all of our best producers also our worst disasters?” I was fishing for a connection.

“What happens if we don’t deliver on time?” Louisa asked.

“We lose the money that’s in escrow. We lose operating funding. And we lose the house. And we’re liable for whatever is in the red when we go under.” Sharon was remarkably calm with the details. I looked at her, wondering if there had been an alien visit or something.

“Millie won’t have the time to write for free. We’d all have to get real jobs. Probably in a winery.” Gus looked glum. “Which means ‘not here’.”

“So, like the end of the world.” Louisa was somber. “I don’t want to go back to being a concierge girl.”

Kona pursed her lips, rocking back and forth with her knee clasped in her hands. Quiet.

"Let’s focus. We need something big, and we need it tomorrow and Thursday. We don’t have the weekend, and we don’t have Friday night.” I tried to paint “hopeful expectations” on my face as I looked around.

“I think Millie’s gonna hurl!” Kona said, searching for a trash can.

“I’m not.” I abandoned looking hopeful. “At least, not yet.”

“I’m out tomorrow,” Myrtle said. “Mayor’s promotin’ gettin rid of resident parking. Normal people are doin’ a sit-in in city hall.”

“All politics are local,” Tonya said. “Not that it helps us.”

“A cruise ship’s here tomorrow,” Kona said. “We could do interviews.”

An awkward pause joined us, sitting next to Myrtle.

“Let’s do the fashion sweep. And interviews. And anything else that gets views.” I was completely out of ideas, but as the de facto decision maker, I was the one who had to stamp the plan. “Plan to be out all day. But we still need to be thinking about what’s going to work to bail us out.” I sipped and looked around, wondering how many more days I’d have my porch.

I woke up to echoing bass rumbles.

A crack of thunder had startled me awake. The flash of lightning had seared through my eyelids, leaving me seeing spots. Rain hammered down on the metal roof, and I realized three things.

I wasn’t going back to sleep. The rain was going to kill our idea of doing a live fashion sweep on Duval. And I was almost alone.

Gus snored like a freight train, but Kona and Sharon were absent.

I padded downstairs and stepped onto the porch. Streetlights in the pre-dawn lit the tropical downpour. It was wet. Like marathon-running wet. Water streamed off the porch roof like cascading dolphins. I retreated back inside.

The kitchen revealed coffee in the pot. A smell of cinnamon. And Tonya, leaning against a counter, sipping.

“Wet this morning.” Tonya’s greetings are sometimes forecasts too.

“I didn’t see your cart outside.” I selected a mug and poured.

“Louisa borrowed it. Cream?”

“I thought she was upstairs. Yes, please.”

“She was.” Tonya sipped, eyes taking me in. The thing about marines is they know about studying a battlefield. My battlefield was more like a used catbox.

“Was. Hmm. Sharon and Kona aren’t in our room.”

“Supposed to stop raining by ten.” More recon. “Still have a window to stream.”

“Do you know where the girls are?”

“Ship docks at 0800, if they’re on time.”

“Tonya.” I gave her eyes.

“A doctor may be able to help with that.”

“I’m fine.” I stopped looking at her and sipped. “Where are the girls?”

“Out.”

In our house, we don’t have secrets. Well, I don’t have secrets. And I’ve been operating under the ‘All For One’ principle since we got here. Doubts niggled at the base of my skull in my hippopotamus.

Sharon’s mac was on the table. Closed. Beside the crime scene of Kona’s laundry. Somehow, these seemed like clues.

“140,000 is a lot.” I floated the concept out to see if there were any takers.

“It is. Improvise, adapt, overcome. We have a big day ahead of us.”

“Without Myrtle.”

“Not as big of a loss as it might seem.” She refilled her cup and took a seat. “You seem stressed.”

I processed this newsflash. “I’m feeling something, that’s for sure.”

“Have a cinnamon roll.” She pushed the tin of pastries toward me. “I’ve had two. We’ll need carbs today.” She smiled at me and the crinkles came to her eyes. Loyal. Faithful. Secret-keeper.

By nine, the girls still weren’t back, and my worry had escalated from mild niggle to full-blown knot-in-stomach.

I nibbled at a roll, the sweet icing a temporary balm against the storm raging outside - and inside my chest. The rain showed no sign of letting up, but Tonya was right; we had to push forward, somehow.

The three hurricanes returned around nine thirty. I was scrubbed, dressed, and twitching from anxiety, studying Sharon’s spreadsheet of doom at the kitchen table. The screen door squeaked, and they blew in, looking like drowned kittens hunting for a hairdryer.

“Morning, Mills.” The three of them were effervescing with cheer and pooling puddles on the floor. I handed out towels from the pile.

“It’s almost noon.”

“Time is just a construct.” Louisa bent over, working the water out of her hair.

Callie made a wordless appearance in the doorway and secured a seat at the end of the table. She looked rough.

“Callie bones!” Kona sprinkled ambrosia around the room. She hugged the matrix manager.

“Wet,” Callie said, protesting and shoving at the kitten.

Kona pulled off layers, dropping her soggy outfit on the floor.

“We had an errand. It’s all good. And we brought you something!” Sharon placed a soggy paper bag on the table, her towel working the side of her head.

“More carbs? I had a cinnamon roll already. You know, for breakfast. On stream day. Which would be today.”

“Not carbs. Promo beads!” She pulled out a sample. “See? And it has a free one month membership on this QR code.” She showcased the latest from the marketing team.

Kona toweled the wet off, revealing her thousand watt smile.

I studied the group. Three happy campers. One sleepy data girl. One marine. Zero clues. 140,000 views.

“Floor’s wet, too,” Callie added, lifting her feet. She wrinkled her nose and blinked several times.

“Want to catch me up?” I tapped my Mac, giving Sharon the one-raised-eyebrow treatment. “While you’ve been out playing, I’ve been worrying. Normally that’s your thing.”

Callie dipped her roll in coffee as she watched the drama play out.

The washer lid thunked and Kona returned. “Just doing errands. Nothing big. No need to worry, it’ll all work out.”

Alien Sharon nodded. “We were checking on stuff. Went up to Mallory. Duval’s gonna stay dead until the rain lets up. Nobody was getting off the new ship.” She pushed a towel around the floor with her foot, mopping up drips. “And I needed to pick up the promo beads.”

Louisa avoided my gaze as she re-entered the kitchen, drier and in branded shorts. She started a recon on the fridge. “Gonna be a bad day for mascara. Rain’s letting up soon. Should be good to go in a half hour. Is there any cheese left?”

“Bottom left drawer.” I narrowed my eyes. This was not the house I knew. But with the clock ticking and our lives hanging by a thread, I didn’t have energy to pry. “Fine. Get branded.” I looked at Kona. “And legal for being out in public. We can park someone by Mallory for interviews. And hand out beads.”

The rain did taper off by ten, turning the streets into a big steampot as the sun broke out, dialing the humidity to full drench. We hit Duval like a bad memory with minimal makeup, deploying three feeds with cameras rolling. Kona, Sharon, and Louisa worked the crowd in their not-hiding-secrets Momositas uniforms. Kona had foot-wide, pink framed sunglasses. Louisa was in mirrored aviators, and Sharon’s Ray-bans were mostly clear, letting those eat-your-soul eyes draw second takes like a surprise iguana in your ice cream.

We handed out the free trial Mardi-Gras beads like we had inventory to move, shot more selfies than ever, and even started advertising “Free Hugs for your Wife” on cardboard signs as we swarmed every corner up and down Duval.

Fashion citations were issued for long pants, socks, crocs and wife beaters. Kona had ‘borrowed’ three panama hats from an open-air shop ‘for ambiance’. We were sweating desperation along with last hopes as the clock crawled toward one PM.

“Anything to share from the data department?” I asked Callie as I fanned myself with my cardboard sign.

“1427 current viewers. 3607 watch hours as of eight minutes ago.”

“This is worse than selling life jackets,” I said. The sweating continued.

“Our connection just dropped,” Callie alerted. Everyone wearing an earpiece looked around like chickens hearing about a ‘free fries’ special at Wendy’s.

“What happened?”

“Gathering data. Satellite failover is rate limited. Island just went dark. Standby.”

We clustered in the shade of the La Concha and conferred. Without words. Gus cleared his throat and extended the tripod on his camera. Tonya flopped open a folding chair and sat down. Kona preened. Sharon sweated. Louisa fixed her pony.

“Anything?” I queried the sky.

“Dark web is synthesizing facts.” I don’t know how Callie does what she does. She doesn’t share. Mostly because nobody knows what she’s saying. And it’s safer to have plausible deniability.

Kona took off her sunglasses and started patting sweat off her face with a towel.

“What does she mean?” I looked at the others, eyebrows raised. Sharon made a face and did finger signals to Kona, shaking her head.

“You raccooned yourself,” I said to Kona. Gus handed her his phone with the camera flipped and she studied the mascara damage.

“Hernando reports a fiber cut on Marathon,” Callie reported in my ear.

“Who’s Hernando?”

“My local AI. I adapted a Mistral version and executed training based on…”

“Callie! Never mind! Are we dark?”

“Yes. Our Starlink failover is 93% failed. It is throttling from the load. Standby.”

“Standing by is what we do,” Louisa said. She slugged water and disappeared inside the hotel.

Eight minutes later, we got the update. “Fiber cut on Marathon confirmed. ETA for connection patch is between 2 and 10 hours. Full repair may take 3 days.”

“That’s just perfect.” My stress level went up six notches.

“Could be worse. Darkweb is spinning the cut as a deliberate action to isolate Key West from the island to reduce coverage of the protests and rioting at city hall.”

“What?!?”

“They’ve started calling the mayor ‘Mad Max, Emperor Supremeo’.”

Louisa popped out of the hotel lobby, moving fast. “I bet it’s Myrtle’s sit-in!”

“Nobody is rioting in Key West. People are just making stuff up. We need to focus on what we’re going to do.” I made finger circles for emphasis. “Ideas?”

Kona stopped mopping and wiping. She had ‘the look’, which was wild since she was also still raccooned on one eye. “We could go cover ‘The Riot’. Be the news feed.”

“We can’t be a news or any other type of feed without a connection.” I may have been trending into overload. “And stop saying there’s a riot!”

“Miami KFB4 news has picked up on the story. Just posted a breaking tagline. Hernando estimates a 53% probability the Mad Max story is true.”

“It’s not true. We know Max.” I was exasperated by Callie’s AI nonsense.

Kona suddenly whooped and threw her towel in the air. “This isn’t working. We’ve still got 7% of a connection. Let’s use it on the riot, reporter-etts!” Tourists flowing by, sidestepped the erupting fauna.

“There isn’t any riot! It’s just Myrtle’s sit-in.”

I cataloged six rude gestures and one open solicitation, which Sharon deferred with the grace of a movie star reading for the part of Hermione and the heat of an erupting volcano of desire.

Four minutes later, our carts pulled up in front of City Hall on White street and we piled out.

Read more Tiara Life stories here:  MilleTorres.substack.com