Silver Ashley, Vangelis, Desmond... They had decided that Ornette should go back and try her luck with one of the other bears.

  When Ornette walked back into the front entry of the studio dorms, she paused.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Desmond. She trusted him. If he said he had transferred a hundred and fifty of her designs to her, she believed him. She was just curious to see which designs they were.

  She signed herself in with an employee at the front desk who was a stranger to her. He offered to carry her bag, which she allowed. It contained the dress she had left wearing while she wore one of Desmond’s suits for her grand return. Although, it wasn't one of his white suits. It was probably a death sentence coming back wearing his signature look. She had 'borrowed' a gray one that hadn’t fit him for some time.

  Ornette paused at the front desk and sent the bellboy ahead of her with her keys since she wanted to have a moment with the computer that Desmond told her was in the lobby. The Sleeping Beauty Inc. computer was a pink, gaudy thing that was kept in a corner behind a pnt to stop the thing from ruining the lobby’s aesthetic. Ornette chuckled as she brought up her banking info on the screen.

  As Desmond promised, there were additions in her ‘Other Assets’ folder. Not only were the dress designs there, but there were also gifts from Fen, Joel, Hans, Westen, and Varner.

  She pushed all those description links aside and reviewed the designs Desmond had given her. All the ones she saw were garments she had designed when she was owned by Croix. That had been a good period. Most of the designs she made for him were functional, beautiful, and useful for mainstream consumption. Some of the pieces she had designed since then did not have mass appeal because they were designed for people on life-support machines.

  She nodded thankfully and wished she could have spent more time with Desmond.

  Then, she did something she wouldn’t normally have had the opportunity to do. She clicked on the Sleeping Beauty Inc. search engine, Lamplight, and typed Fen’s name into the search bar.

  The information that could be attained through a Sleeping Beauty search was limited. For instance, her file was technically clean, but she had done many things to tarnish it. The fact that it was so clear was obviously a source of irritation to other Sleeping Beauty Inc. employees who hadn’t been as lucky as her. That was why Desmond had been told the truth about her. Someone was grouchy.

  However, if Ornette typed Desmond’s name into the search bar, which she immediately deleted Fen’s name in order to do, his file came up.

  True to his word, he had owned six models. Ornette was the test. The other five women he had owned told tiny one-paragraph stories about how they had been hired to go on vacation with him. The vacation had been cut short, and the models spent the rest of their time in cryostasis.

  Ornette rolled her eyes. Having it say exactly what he told her struck her as a red fg. Obviously, he was rich enough, had enough connections, and had everything a person would need to get the remarks saved by the girls to say whatever he wanted. Suddenly, it occurred to her that perhaps she had not been ratted out by a spiteful client coordinator. Maybe it went the other way. Desmond had bribed the client coordinator to find him the most violent model with the cleanest record.

  Ornette scoffed. She couldn’t be the most violent model. At least, she shouldn’t have been.

  Then she looked up Fen. That was a sudden revetion. Fen had also owned five models before appearing on Goldilocks Zone. The first model said all she did was stand still at events like a real-live dummy. She said it was hard on her feet but completely worth what he paid for her.

  The second expined that while she was working for him, he got obsessed with bathing suits and ocean themes. For the rger part of her contract, she wore a mermaid tail and lounged around in a huge cocktail gss filled with water. Her exact words were, “Even if he wasn’t having guests over, he would have me put on the mermaid tail and hang out in the cup. I had prune fingers for over a year.” Afterward, she had her designation changed from Diva to Domestic Goddess because she did not want another contract that had the possibility of turning into what she had with Fen. She decided she’d rather be a fake Parisian maid than swim the length of a hot tub a thousand times a day for another year.

  The third said Fen was obsessed with birds, feathers, and air when he owned her. She said he kept her in a locked birdcage for almost the whole eighteen months. She wore clothes made of feathers. Eventually, she was not allowed to speak unless she pretended to be a parrot. She was still allowed to sing, but after a while, he stopped tolerating her singing in words and made her work harder to imitate the sounds birds make. When she was finished, she took a job in administration with Sleeping Beauty Inc., even though she was a solid fifteen too young to consider such a job.

  The fourth said that the enormous cocktail gss was emptied for her and, instead, it was filled with sand. She was asked to bury herself in the sand every morning. She was not allowed to speak or sing. She was also not allowed to get dressed. Her clothes were the grains of sand in the enormous gss. During that time, Fen designed some of the most beautiful dresses of gss and rock, but they were not meant to be worn by a person. They had more in common with statues. After the contract was over, the model quit Sleeping Beauty Inc.

  The information on the fifth woman was sketchy. It sounded like Fen wanted to continue the theme of earth, air, and water with fire. The st woman was only in his care for three months when she was removed. The details were absent from public record, but the result was not. Fen was reprimanded and he was given a ban on purchasing new models from Sleeping Beauty Inc. for five years.

  His five years were up, and now he was able to buy girls again.

  Ornette wondered if he had learned his lesson. As she thought it over, she remembered the sketches he had shown her, and something in her throat tightened. She had thought that the blowy wisps of things in his designs were fabric. Now she wondered if they were live fmes that were supposed to be contained on the model’s body. There were so many of them. He’d been making pns for five years, and he was going to get his model to live out his fire fantasy? Was that what was happening? Was he pnning on using her if he bought her?

  She didn’t have much more time at the computer. It was almost supper time, and she needed the food. She sped up her searches. Ornette typed Joel’s name into the computer.

  His ste was clean. He’d never purchased a model through Sleeping Beauty Inc., but Ornette couldn’t do a search to see if he’d bought one through Jewel Girls.

  She didn’t bother typing in Hans. She knew all about him, or enough about him to not want to know anything more.

  She typed Westen’s name. He’d never purchased a model either. There was no information. Suddenly, Ornette got curious about what he’d sent her and hoped it was the dress she’d worn with him on stage before she remembered that it was auctioned off.

  The gift from Westen was a duplicate of the basket she’d given out to his employees. He’d had extra, and he decided to send one to Ornette. For a rich man, he was unbearably cheap.

  Her curiosity got the better of her, and she looked at what Joel and Hans had sent her. Joel sent a complimentary package of his fitness line. Ornette didn’t particurly want it, but aside from the dresses Fen had sent her, they were the best. Fen was a madman, but at least he was a madman who knew how to design clothes.

  Hans sent her a pair of chainmail panties.

  Ornette turned off the computer and went to her room.

  _______________

  Author's Notes: Thanks for reading! See you on Monday!