Chapter Twelve:

For an hour or so I tried to sleep beside Jackie, but the twin sized bed was just too small and I was a little too restless. I would roll over onto my side, then onto my stomach, crinkling with every movement, until we both gave up. Jackie helped me into the crib and I held my stuffed elephant tight to my chest. Looking up at her, outside the crib bars, at her bright, sleepy smile... I thought maybe this was what babies felt when they looked up at their moms. It was... a nice feeling. But before I could give it any more thought, I'd drifted off to sleep. It had been a long day.

"Now this just won't do, will it?"

I'd woken up to the sounds of that awful woman’s voice and her narration to the camera, chiding Leona over... something?

"Have a close look here everybody, see how awful the tapes are aligned? Why it's any wonder she didn't leak right on through the night. That's a bad girl, Baby Luvs, we're just going to have to punish you for changing your own diaper."

I sat up in bed and yawned, rubbing my eyes and watching what was happening. Would it be a diplomatic incident if I killed this poor excuse for a British Nanny? She was simply awful.

I kicked at the woman's hand as it came near my diaper, but she took me by the ankles and flipped me over so she could examine the dry padding between my legs.

"Tsk tsk..."

I sleepily fumbled to my feet, but Betsy didn't give me time before picking me up and setting me on her hip.

"Not now," I wiggled, struggling to get down. "I need coffee."

"Sometimes," Betsy began, talking to the camera, narrating her charge’s condition, "little Baby Luvs here forgets who she is, sometimes when she first wakes up, she slips back into the role of that bratty and stressful college girl she once was. She's better now, though, aren't you Baby Luvs?" Betsy pinched the back of her thigh, just out of frame of the camera, and smiled saccharine sweet.

She pinched my skin, just below the leg band of my diaper, and I winced. I looked at Betsy, at the camera, and at the bed where Jackie was sitting in her pajamas with messy hair.

"Y-yeah... I all better..." I mumbled. Five more days, I reminded myself, and I wouldn't ever have to see this horrible woman again.

"That's what I thought; you must try to stay ahead of things like that, though, Baby Luvs, because your adorning fans deserve the best of you." Especially for the pricing that Abe had discussed with Betsy over wine last night - a premium buy once package buried under per view charges for individual scenes, and then different tiers on top of that. Betsy had been quite impressed, although with the sponsors arriving in the next hour to upgrade the hotel room again, she scarcely had the time to focus on that. "Up you get, little one, dry for now but not for long~"

After we got our room key on that first day, Betsy and I always went in and out the side-door of the hotel. We never bumped into anyone or shared an elevator with a stranger. In and out. Simple. Like the previous days, she buckled me in the children’s car seat in the back seat of her car, dressed in only my diaper and onesie, but I wasn't feeling it today. I hadn't had coffee since Sunday and I was still upset about the day before. When I got to work, I'd have a serious talk with Abe.

"Baby Luvs, welcome home." Betsy deposited the girl in her made up nursery studio, right there on her diapered butt, and went to confer with Abe over the schedule for the day. Bottle feeding. Storybook. Solid food feeding. Lap bounces. Diaper usage. Then nap time. Change would come after the nap, because it would be a more erotic thing for the audience to think of this helpless baby not even being changed immediately. Then lunch break.

"Doing alright?" Jackie asked me, as she played with her camera. She looked good for getting ready in five minutes.

"Fucking splendid," I said sourly and got to my feet. First order of business: coffee. But no one had put the coffee on that morning. I groaned and went through the motions of making a pot, and while it was brewing, I went to Abe's office.

"Baby! Long time no see; this shooting schedule's keeping you busy, eh? Busy like a worker bee, only you're the queen, Baby, the Queen Bee and instead of making honey, Baby, you make money, which might sound the same but its oh so much sweeter, sweeter than honey or sugar or success itself." He kicked back against his desk, leaned in his chair, put his feet up, and inhaled from his fat, stubby, cigar.

I walked over and took the cigar out of his mouth and smushed it into the ashtray on his desk. All the shame and humiliation of yesterday had converted to anger.

"What. The. Fuck. Is your problem?! Huh?! How dare you let that bitch do that to me!"

"Baby, be reasonable here. That woman is making us both very wealthy people and all you gotta do is literally nothing, how hard is that, Baby?" He would have been more annoyed, usually, but obviously he'd been thinking about money when he was so rudely interrupted and that always seemed to leave him in a pretty good mood.

"Nothing? NOTHING?! I am acting my ass off out there! Do you think this is fun or something?! Why don't you go out there and shit your pants, you ugly hack!" I slammed my hands down on his desk. I was so... so angry! It was unbelievable! But a short girl yelling in a diaper and a onesie... well, it wasn't very intimidating.

"Because thousands of perverts with one hand in their wallet and one hand in their pants don't want to see me acting like a helpless little baby, Leona." Leona. He called her Leona. Which was a serious thing; he never did that. More serious still was the fact he stood up, something the portly man rarely ever did unless he was going somewhere or otherwise to drive a point home. "Need I remind you, I'm paying you exactly what you asked for?"

"That was under different conditions! I said I'd wet myself, but not-"

"Then I'll double it."

I blinked. What?

"...you'll..."

"Double it. Not to mention your equity."

...how much money was this making him, exactly? He couldn't afford that...

"I... I don't want to do that again..."

"You'll do it again, Baby, you'll do it again today and twice on some days. And by the time the project is done, you'll do it whenever and wherever because you'll realize that for doing nothing at all, you're going to be making yourself a very rich little girl." He pulled down on the edges of his vest and flicked open his cigar tin from the tables surface, using his stubby fingers to pick up a new stogie along with his cutter.

He shut the door behind me and I stood shyly against the wall. It was so much money... but even the thought... I bit my lip and looked down at my frilly socks. Nothing at all. I didn't do nothing! I acted! I was a good actress, I thought...

"She seemed upset, Abe." I was polishing the lens on my camera, sipping coffee from the pot that Leona had put on, and the stout man chewed on his cigar with a big grin.

"Everybody has a price, Jamie, money is the only true thing worth worshipping in this world, that's what I always say. She'll shit her pants on command and dance to my tune, and by the time this is done she won't remember being an adult anyway, that's what I think."

Far be it from me to think the worst of people, or to think that he could possibly have been being sinister on purpose... but I couldn't help but consider it. Was this... an investment? Was he hoping that after this week, he'd just go back to paying her what he used to and she'd do all of this freely?

"She's a Baby, that's right there in her name, Baby Luvs. She's a baby and she loves it."

Whatever punishment Betsy talked up that morning didn’t come up again. She fed me a bottle and let me play with blocks. She read me a story and made me a plate of chicken nuggets for lunch. This part was so easy - almost natural. Being a little girl. Smiling for the camera. Talking in baby talk and letting adults do things for me. After eating my chicken nuggets, my hands were covered in ketchup.

"Mommy," I whined and held my hands out to Betsy, who rolled her eyes and promptly cleaned them off. Maybe Abe was right... maybe my job was easier than I thought.

I watched that woman like a hawk when she prepared the bottle, when she prepared the meal later in the morning; I wasn't going to let her go off-script and fuck with Leona again, because... because why, Jackie? Because you're going native and you have this weird lesbian crush on a girl because she dresses and acts like an infant? I clicked a few photos and did my damnedest to ignore myself.

"And what is your favorite coloring book, Baby Luvs? Maybe some of your fans might want to buy your coloring, which one is your favorite?"

Listening to Betsy talk just made me so mad.

"Ummm I like dis one, 'cuz it's got ponies, 'an I wuv My Little Pony, an I like dis one 'cuz it's got bunnies and..." I got distracted halfway through showing my coloring books to the camera and grabbed a crayon.

I was taking everything too seriously. I was making a crazy amount of money and all I had to do was act like a baby. I could really do whatever I wanted, as long as it was something a baby would do. Well, I wanted to color. So that's what I would do.

I didn't get it. I didn't get how she could have been so angry before and so serene now. Abe was pleased, chewing his cigar. Betsy was pleased, gently bouncing the girl on her lap. Leona seemed pleased, babbling about her pictures, then messily coloring one in with crayon. Was I the only one upset here? Well, there was Abe's assistant over at her desk in the corner, running numbers and muttering angrily to herself. I looked back at Leona, a giggling choir of happiness coming from her lips, and instantly I felt warm. Click. So stinking cute…