I’m Dating A Mannequin

I hadn’t had much luck with meeting people I wanted to date and who wanted to date me. I hadn’t touched the dating app on my phone in a few weeks when a notification appeared. I clicked the notification and it brought me to a profile I had looked at a few weeks ago. I remembered her picture immediately. She was pretty and she enjoyed visiting museums according to her profile.

I’d completely forgotten about her by the time I got a notification. Rereading her profile it said she traveled for work and frequently took a few weeks to get back to people on the app.

She had sent a message: <<Hi, I’m Sarah. I just saw you liked my profile. If you’re available, I’d love to meet you tonight or tomorrow night.>>

I replied: <<You don’t want to chat for a few days first?>>

Over the next day we had this conversation:

<<I’m not interested in a fast hookup. But I find when I chat like this I’m not really getting to know someone. Body language and the way someone speaks tells you a lot.>>

<<That’s very direct. Okay. Do you like Thai food?>>

<<Yes. But I prefer Southern Indian.>>

<<Are you near Gentry Park? There’s a nice place near there and it’s not far from where I work.>>

<<Sounds good. I can be there tonight. Are you available?>>

<<Sure. Meet me outside of the Hendricks Gallery on Warren Street.>>

<<I know where that is. See you there.>>

What I hadn’t told her was I work at the gallery.

She arrived on time. I stepped out of the gallery and said, “Sarah? Hi. I’m Niles.”

“Did you just come out of the gallery?”

“I did. If you aren’t too hungry I’d love to walk around the gallery with you.”

“That would be wonderful. Do you know a lot about art?”

“My boss thinks I do. Jerry, do I know a lot about art?”

“I thought you had a date. Don’t talk to me when you’re on a date.”

“You work here?”

“I do.”

“Sneaky.”

I showed her some of the better pieces from up and coming artists. We were still talking about some of the pieces as we walked over to the Indian restaurant a few doors down.

After placing our orders, I said, “Now you know my boring job. What do you do for a living?”

“Your job isn’t boring. Not like mine.”

“Is that a challenge?

“You’ll lose. I’m a mannequin.”

“A mannequin? Like in a store?”

“Yes. The store I work at has this machine that turns people into mannequins and back again. I work most of the month. On the third Tuesday of the month, they turn me back to normal and I have off until Friday morning.”

“So you don’t actually travel, like your profile says.”

“It’s a little fib. I’m completely out of touch most of the month. If I explained why in my dating profile it would take up too much space.”

“Today is Thursday.”

“Yes, I have to go back in the morning. I won’t be available for another date until next month. I had to tell you so you don’t think I’m ghosting you when you don’t hear from me the next four weeks.”

“You think we should have another date?”

“Sure. I’m having a great time. And you seem to be into me. Why shouldn’t we have another date next month?”

“I’ve never scheduled a second date a month in advance before.” I pulled out my phone. “So, Tuesday or Wednesday?”

“I’ll be available after four on Tuesday.”

“Okay, I work until five. Can you get to the gallery by five?”

“Sure. Tuesday the eighteenth at five?”

“It’s a date.”

“Here’s my number. If for some reason, any reason, you need to cancel. And I mean any reason. If you meet someone else in the next month, I’m totally fine with that. It’s happened before. Just text me that you have to cancel so I don’t waste time preparing for a date that won’t happen. After all, I only have three days off.”

We left the restaurant and I waited with her while she waited for her gig taxi to pick her up.

I told Jerry about my date Friday morning. He said, “Ya’ know. That woman last night looked familiar. Maybe I’ve seen her in a store window.”

“Maybe.”

“And you have a second date a month from now? That’s odd.”

“It is. From what she said, she gets to save a lot of money only being alive three days a month.”

“’Being alive three days a month.’ There’s something you don’t hear often. Does she pay for an apartment?”

“That’s the funny thing. She said her and a couple other mannequins share the rent on a room with a couple other people. For her, she pays like two fifty a month for a bedroom she shares with two other women she never sees.”

“If my sister ever stops by, don’t tell her about that arrangement. She’d probably try to find a job as a mannequin to join them not existing for most of a month.”

“You don’t want Barb to be a mannequin?”

“I suspect she’d like it too much.”

Two weeks later, Jerry sent me a text pic in the evening. It was Sarah standing in the window of Dust Rag Diamonds. It was a clothing boutique on Thirteenth Avenue about six blocks from the gallery. On my lunch break the next day, I walked over there and took my own pics of her in the window. I noticed there were a couple other mannequins that were much higher quality than normal and took pics of them too.

Two weeks later on Tuesday, I received a text mid-afternoon: <<Are we still on?>>

<<You bet. Stop by the gallery after five.>> I texted back.

She arrived on time. She entered the gallery to find me this time. I was in back at the time. I didn’t know she’d arrived until I heard Jerry talking. “Hello. You must be the mannequin Niles is dating. Never thought I’d ever say that.”

She laughed. “People often say things they never would have thought they’d say when referring to me.”

“He’s in back. Oh, no, he’s right there.”

“Hello, Sarah.” As I got close she stepped toward me and we shared a chaste kiss.

“Hi. I think you found me a couple weeks ago.”

“Jerry remembered seeing you and told me where to find you. I hope that isn’t a problem.”

“No. If I had seen you outside the store a bunch of times, I might not have come today. But, you were probably just curious.”

“I was. Actually.” I took my phone out and showed her the pics of herself and then swiped to other two mannequins. “Are these those roommate you share a room with?”

“Yes. This one is Nastya. She’s originally from Belarus. And the other one is Georgia. I think Georgia’s three days off are during the fourth week of the month and Nastya is off during the first week of the month.”

“Shouldn’t there be four of you?”

“We asked that of Margaret, the owner of the store. But she said she would need more window footage to make it practical to hire a fourth mannequins.”

We went to dinner and she invited me to her apartment where I met her non-mannequin roommates.

“Hey, Pamela, this is the guy I told you about last month.”

“Giles?”

“Niles,” I said, shaking her hand.

“So how was your month between dates?”

“Not really any different than the month before I met Sarah.”

“Oh, right, this is a second date, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “Where’s Hilary?”

“She doesn’t want to meet your new friend. You know that.”

“Right.”

“What?” I said.

“She made a rule that she won’t meet any guy I bring here unless he’s spend three months between various dates. So far she hasn’t met anyone I’ve dated the last two years.”

“She has the same rule for George and Nastya.”

“Is that because she called that guy Nastya met by Georgia’s boyfriend’s name?”

“Probably.”

“Hey,” said a woman stepping out of one of the bedrooms. “If you’re going to talk about me behind my back, I’m going to come out here.”

“His name is Niles.”

“Don’t care. No offense.”

“You do you,” I said.

“Are my bedroom mates dating?” Sarah said. “I never get to talk to them.”

“No, I think you’re the only one on a second date among the house mannequins,” Pam said.

After some more chit chat, I finished my beer and stood up. “Sarah, I had a lovely time. But I have to be up early tomorrow. Are you busy tomorrow night?”

“Third date? Hear that Hilary,” Pam said

“It’s the months in between that matter,” Hilary said.

“I have no plans yet,” Sarah said. “Should I meet you at work again?”

“It’s worked so far. Nice meeting you Pamela. And you will owe me a friendly greeting in May, Hilary.”

“If you last that long, you’ve got it.”

I gave Sarah a kiss and left.

The next couple days were dates three and four and we really clicked. A month later, we had another gallery date on the Tuesday she was off. There had been enough changes since two months earlier to make it worth while.

We went back to my place that night and she stayed the night. The next night I went to her apartment right from work. She made dinner. Hilary said goodbye to me as she left for the evening. Pamela also wasn’t around. We watched a bit of television after dinner before Sarah invited me to her bed. We lay in bed afterward, her head resting on my shoulder. She twirled a few of my chest hairs in her fingers.

“So, what in this room is yours, what’s communal property, and what’s off limits?” I asked.

“Well, the furniture is shared. It’s technically my vanity and bureau, Nastya’s bed and bedside table, and Georgia’s headboard and chair over there in the corner. The hard part is clothing. We’ve each pared down our clothing collection. The dresses, tops, and skirts that are left we share because we can all wear nearly the same size dresses. Nastya and I could share shoes and I think she’s worn my red pumps and I’ve worn her black ones. The three columns of drawers on the bureau are each of ours and contain underwear, bras, stockings, etc.

“We each have a different laptop that are stored in the bottom drawers of the bureaus. Sometimes Hilary remembers to charge mine, and I assume the other girl’s laptops, the Monday night before I’m back. Oh, and over there on the wall is a dry erase board. It’s usually how we remind one another who’s turn it is to dust or vacuum. Public complaints use to go there as well. But we’ve got a good rhythm going the past nine or so months. No complaints.”

“I don’t know if I could live such a simplified life.”

“Well, part of it is also liking being a mannequin. All three of us like doing it for basically the same reasons. It is about as low a stress job as there is.”

“Yes, I suppose the boss can’t get on your case about goal expectations. By the same token, there isn’t much room for promotion.”

“But all we do is promotion.”

“Cute.”

The following month I surprised her by taking the three days off. We went to a bed and breakfast on the shore. When we got back to the city, I took her home and Hilary was willing to get to know my name.

We had been dating a little over seven months when she didn’t call on Tuesday like she usually did. In the evening, I went over to the clothing store and all three mannequins were in the window. The store had already closed for the day. On my lunch break the next day I went to the clothing store and met Sarah’s boss, the owner of the store, Margaret.

“Can I help you? Buying something for a girlfriend?”

“I here to ask about Sarah.”

“Sarah?”

“The mannequin.”

“Oh, yes. The mannequin machine is broken. The repair guy won’t have it back to me for at least a week. How do you know Sarah?”

“We’ve been dating for half a year.”

“Really? The one thing those three are always complaining about is its hard to meet someone who can put up with their limited availability.”

“I have a few hobbies that keep be busying on weekends. And I think I appreciate my time with Sarah more because it is so limited.”

“That’s very sweet of you, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Niles,” I said and we shook hands.

“I’ll be sure to tell her that you came by.”

“Thanks. Good day.”

I received a text from Pamela later that day asking if I’d seen Sarah and I told her about the device needing maintenance.

It was three weeks later that she got five days off. Her next normal week off would have been the following week so she was off an extra day the next off period. It amounted to nine days off in a three month span but with only two periods off instead of three. To me, it felt like she was gone much longer each time.

Things were starting to feel serious after she meet my sister and brother-in-law. My father was also in town during one of her time off periods. Everyone enjoyed meeting her.

I wanted her to move in with me but she couldn’t do that without giving the other two mannequins warning that their rent would go up by fifty percent. It had taken two months to coordinate setting a move out date three months after that.

It wasn’t to be. In the middle of November, once again, she didn’t call on Tuesday. When I went to ask what had happened at the store the next day. The store was boarded up and looked cleaned out when looking past the boards. When I called Pamela, she knew nothing about the store closing. She said Nastya had been home two weeks earlier and had gone back to the store as she normally did. So the store had closed between last Friday and Tuesday.

Pam and Hilary invited me over to help them go through their roommates’ room looking for contact information for the owner of the shop. We eventually found a phone number that was disconnected. Hilary had a friend who could turn a phone number into an address. I headed over there and found their boss packing and planning to move.

“I have nothing left to give you.” She said through the door when I knocked.

“Margaret, open the door.”

“Go away.”

“I’m Sarah’s boyfriend, open up.”

Silence. I knocked on the door for several minutes before she opened it and had me come in quickly.

“I can’t help you,” she said.

“Where is Sarah and Nastya and Georgia?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I owed some people a lot of money. I liquidated the store assets and sold them. My lease ended. I’m going far away.”

“What about the mannequins?”

“If I didn’t sell them, I wouldn’t have been able to get the loan shark off my back. I’ll give you the number of the guy I sold to. You can get them back from him.”

“And what would have happened if I didn’t track you down.”

“Not my problem.”

“It will be if I have any trouble with this phone number you’ve given me.”

“No, it won’t.” She found a box and pulled some papers out. “These are the purchase contracts for the mannequins. They are property and I was within my rights to sell them.”

“What? Did they know that?”

“Probably not. It was part of the liability waver they all signed for using the mannequin device.”

“You’re fucking evil.”

“You opinion is duly noted.”

“Where’s the device?”

“I sold it separately. It was worth much more than adding it to a general liquidation sale. Guy I sold the merchandise to wouldn’t have known what to do with it.”

“He could restore the mannequins with it.”

“Not in his interest, I’m sure.” She handed me a couple other papers. “This is the card of the salesman who sold me the device originally. And this is the guy who bought it used.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“Now either help me move or get the fuck out.”

The phone call with the liquidator wasn’t much better. He wasn’t interested in selling just three mannequins to me. And I couldn’t afford to purchase the contents of the store.

I stopped by Sarah’s apartment. “I had an idea.” I told Pam and Hill. “If we could get into the bank accounts of the three mannequins, they could probably pay the cost to buy them from liquidator.”

We tried for hours trying to get into their laptops. No luck.

I spent the next five or six weeks calling the liquidator daily from a handful of different phones trying to get him to sell me the mannequins. At the end of each call I told him to call me if he ever had an auction.

I’d basically given up hope. Pamela and Hilary wanted to rent the room to out since they needed the money for the room. I paid the full one-third the first month. But the next month, I helped them pack up the room and put it in storage. It was much cheaper to pay for a storage bay than to rent one-third of an apartment. I prepaid for a year and figured if the year went by, I’d let it all go to auction.

Five months passed and the liquidator called me to tell me he was having an auction. I had been saving money on the chance this would happen. At the auction, the three mannequin women were divided between three lots that included the dress inventory they were still wearing.

I had little competition for Sarah and Georgia. But I had to bid a bit more than I wanted to for Nastya. I have no idea why I didn’t just bid on Sarah. But I couldn’t stand the thought of restoring her and her asking me how I could abandon the other two.

The dresses ended up in the storage locker and the mannequins in the living room of my apartment.

I didn’t have the mannequin device. The person who had purchased the device from Margaret didn’t want to talk to me. And the company that made the device couldn’t sell me the same model device. The worst part was I couldn’t buy their current devices. None of the current models could restore the women and they didn’t have older models to sell me to restore them nor any facility in their offices or warehouses where I could rent three uses of the older model.

I had alerts set up on various websites. I posted once a month to various forums looking for anyone having a working device they would rent or sell to me. I discovered the model Margaret owned was a piece of crap that broke nearly every fourth use after the first year or two. I had no idea mannequinizer devices had been available for sale for the past fifteen years. And this was one of the first models.

I did manage to get into the women’s bank accounts eventually. After charging their phones, the facial recognition on the phone thought they still looked like themselves. And I could use their banking software. I used the money to continue paying for the storage locker and to pay me back for the auction.

They had been mannequins for well over a year when I finally saw an auction of the correct model mannequinizer. The auction didn’t end for another thirty days. Another delay. I did manage to win the auction. When it arrived I didn’t know what to do. Could I trust it to work? Could I use one of the other mannequins as a lab test dummy?

I called the manufacturer and the tech was kind enough to walk me through a maintenance check before using it to see if it was functional. Good thing I called. I had to order a part before trying to use it.

What was one more delay at this point, I guessed.

With the part replaced, I put Sarah on the machine and started the restoration cycle. It lasted ten minutes, which was normal. In the ninth minute smoke leaked from the machine. She leaped off the disk just as a huge spark jumped four feet from the machine to the television. Neither device survived the discharge.

I didn’t notice. Sarah was in my arms and we held one another for a long time before she started saying thank you far too many times. I hushed her and she insisted we go to the bedroom.

In the morning, I awoke to breakfast being cooked.

“You’re up early,” I said.

“I wasn’t really tired. I’ve been resting for over a year.”

“Don’t think about it.”

“I no longer want to kill Margaret,” she said, flipping over some bacon. “Just stab her gently once or twice.”

“Move on.”

“How do I move on with those two mannequins in the living room? I can’t imagine you can get someone to fix the burnt out wreck of a device. And it took you months to find it.”

“I know. Just don’t get worked up about it. It doesn’t help them for us to be angry or agitated.”

She turned off the stove and gave me a hug. Her body was shaking. “What if it hadn’t worked out between us? What if you couldn’t afford to buy us at auction? What if...”

“Easy. It’s okay. That’s mostly in the past.” Looking at the living area, the two mannequins happened to be looking my direction. I sighed.

After another phone call and a video upload of what remained of the mannequinizer. support confirmed it was dead forever. I had been telling the mannequins about whatever progress there had been. I wasn’t looking forward to telling the remaining two they were still stuck. Though they were probably already aware.

When I came home from work, Sarah was reading a story to the mannequins.

“How was your day?”

“Boring. I have nothing to do. The replacement television is on order. And I have no job.”

“I didn’t order a television yet.”

“I know. I did. It was destroyed rescuing me. I’m responsible.”

“You weren’t responsible.”

“Semantics. You purchased the mannequinizer with my money. It was mine. It broke your television.”

“Technically, I haven’t charged your account yet. I had hoped the three of you would split the cost of paying me back. It’s still on my credit card.”

“Details. I’ll pay you for the mannequinizer.”

A couple days later, I came home from work. The new television was showing some series I didn’t enjoy with Sarah. As I passed the three mannequins viewing the television from behind the sofa, I said, “Good evening, Ladies,” as I usually did when I got home. I was in the bedroom unbuttoning my shirt when I realized what I’d just seen.

I returned to the living room. Georgia stood to the right of Nastya who stood to the right of Sarah. All three of them were dressed in identical dresses, which we had plenty of still in storage.

We had moved the sofa away from the wall so there was a good place for the mannequins where people wouldn’t bump into them. Beneath Sarah was a flat silver and chrome disk, a Mannequin Disk 3000. He looked at the display and she was due to be restored in twenty minutes.

I showered and put on pajamas. Sarah walked into the bedroom as I was putting the pajama top on. “How was your day, Niles?” She said, stepping up to me for a kiss.

“I had thought normal until I got home,” I said, kissing her.

“I was bored the past few days. I’ve spent the last three years as a mannequin most of the time, with eighteen months non-stop. Despite nearly being stuck forever, I missed it.”

“I’m not complaining. I wonder if the other two are happy you’re spending time with them.”

“I don’t know. Georgia usually tries to sleep when she’s a mannequin. It’s entirely possible she doesn’t even know how long she’s been stuck. Nastya is like me. She’s into the vibe of the world passing before you. Though she had wanted to visit her home country last summer. Oh. I just remembered that. I need to see if I can find a phone number for her family to tell them what happened to her.”

A few weeks later, while I was at work, Jerry’s sister arrived. She had some artwork for Jerry to put on display. She didn’t technically work for the gallery. But Jerry trusted her eye when it came to purchases.

“Niles, my dear, I heard through the grapevine that you have a Mannequin Disk. Why haven’t you invited me over to get stiff?”

“Barbara, I’ve told you no quinning.”

She laughed. “You’re my brother, not my mother.”

“She’s the one who begged me to keep you away from those things.”

“If I remember correctly, I’m also thirty-four, not fourteen. Your advice is noted.”

While they continued to argue, my cell phone rang. The contact said Nadir. I couldn’t remember who Nadir was. “Niles? I’m having an auction for a few fashion merchandise lots and I thought of you.”

“Oh, Nadir. I wasn’t sure who this was. I’m not really interested in purchasing anything at this time.”

“I figured that. There are five extremely high quality mannequins among the lots that reminded me of those mannequins you bought a couple months ago.” As he was talking, a couple texts arrived.

I put the call on speaker and looked at the texts. It was a couple pictures of high quality mannequins that had to be formerly living women. They weren’t my responsibility. Still…

“When is the auction?”

“About an hour. Same location as before. Hope to see you there.”

“Thanks for calling.”

He hung up.

Barbara and Jerry were looking at me. “Do you mind if I leave early?”

“Building a collection?”

“I don’t know. You want to come with me, Barb?”

“Sure.”

At the auction, Barbara became excited by a few of the lots that didn’t include any of the mannequin women.

“You still have a bunch of clothes in storage, don’t you?” she said. “And you will have eight mannequin soon?”

“Yes.”

“If you buy the five lots with mannequin, these three lots of clothes and a couple of the rack lots, you would be well on your way to having a clothing store.”

“What are you saying?”

“Those poor women in your living room. If they were standing in a store, being stuck might be a little less depressing. Sarah would love to have a store owner she can trust and who would let her indulge her fantasy. And you should be doing something better than working for the gallery.”

“All of that is great, except I know nothing about purchasing fashions. And I suspect buying these lots of clothes is a losing move since they were last seen in a store that closed.”

“You can’t blame the failure of a business on the merchandise. It’s usual the owner who fails.”

“And that makes the idea even crazier. Why would I be successful whereas the person who use to own all this stuff wasn’t?”

“If the person who failed here were still in the picture, would there be five living mannequin up for auction?”

“It happened before.”

“Sarah’s old boss had to be an outlier. I need to believe no one else would do what she did.”

“Fine. How am I going to move all this stuff?”

“I know a guy who will certainly lend us a delivery truck for free. I’ll call him. You might want to call the storage facility to see if you can upgrade to a larger bay.”

In addition to calling the facility, I left a text on Sarah’s phone saying there’d be a few people coming by for dinner.

At the end of the day, Barbara, her friend Tony, and I moved ten circular clothing racks and six linear racks, over a thousand articles of clothing and a row of locked lockers into a storage space. We moved all the clothes in the old space into the new space. I didn’t consolidate the spaces because the furniture didn’t belong to me. With Tony’s help and a crowbar from his truck, we broke into the lockers and found the personal belonging of five women.

Tony drove Barbara and me to my home. Jerry met us there. The four of us carried five mannequins and a box of personal effects up the stairs to my apartment. Sarah was cooking dinner for the five of us.

“I can’t believe you bought more mannequins. We aren’t puppies that you ask your parents if you can keep them,” Sarah said as we ate.

“Are you really going to open a store?” Jerry said.

“I need to run the numbers. I can’t afford to take a lease on a storefront by myself.”

“I’m going to miss you at the gallery.”

“I’m not leaving the gallery. I hope you’ll be able to keep me part time. I have an art history degree, not a business degree. I plan to hire a manager to run the store as soon as I can.”

“What about them?” Barbara said of the mannequins.

“I’m hoping we can find out what kind of device was used to turn them into mannequins. With luck, it’ll be compatible with Sarah’s device.”

“Oh, speaking of which,” Barbara said. “Can I give it a try?”

“Sure. Any time.”

“Barbara!” Jerry said.

Barbara stuck her tongue out him and made a raspberries sound.

Tony looked up from his phone. “Rita Icoula,” he said. “I’ll hook you up with Rita. She can run a clothing store.”

“Really?”

“She can also give you a second opinion on your merchandise. Not that Barbara would steer you wrong.”

“I didn’t think of Rita. She has her fingers deeper into what’s trending in fashion than I do,” Barbara said.

The next day, Barbara was wearing the same dress the other mannequins wore. She was standing in the line of mannequins to the left of Sarah. Jerry had not been happy, especially when Sarah took her off the Disk so she could join the party.

The other five mannequins had also had their clothing changed to the matching dresses. When one of the mannequins had been placed on the Mannequin Disk, the readout indicated no compatible mannequin was present on the disk and an error code.

When I called support, they had good news. These mannequins had been transformed by a Mannequin Disk 4, which hadn’t been manufactured in almost seven years. While not compatible with the MD 3000 Sarah had purchased, the MD 4 was still sold by licensed resellers. We would be able to restore these women once we purchased another Disk.

I was going through the purses and phones from the lockers I’d purchased. The facial recognition trick still worked so I was able to get into their phones. I was making some notes about how much money they had and how many “Where are you?” texts each woman had.

Surprisingly, not many. Each of these women had signed contracts of one year, two years, or, in one case, five years with the store that had closed. No one was expecting them to be available for half a year in the shortest case, based on his reading of the texts.

Technically, I had purchased these contracts and all of them had been paid in advance. I was under no obligation to restore them any time soon. That mitigated the urgency to find an MD 4. While all the current resellers could legally support the MD 4, there were no units available in the states. I found only two resellers with stock and all that stock was in warehouses in South America and southeast Asia. It would be two to three months for one of them to be shipped to me unless I wanted to pay almost eight times as much for the Disk. Instead, I purchased one from each reseller and hoped that if the first to arrive didn’t work, the second one would.

Jemma Nelson had the five year contract with three years remaining. She had signed the contract the day her divorce had finalized. She would be chronologically forty-one years old at the end of the contract. She had a sizable bank account that had scheduled transfers into an investment account. Assuming there wasn’t a financial crash, she could be worth several millions when her contract ended.

Two of the women were twins, Bridget and Blythe Piersol. At the age of eighteen, the twins were six months into a two year contract, hoping to use the money to pay for college. They shared a joint account with a nice nest egg already accumulated.

The other two women were women of color. Kazandra Smitt was in her early thirties and also had a nice portfolio working for her as she spent a couple years as a mannequin.

I felt sorry for Nimala Riddhima. She had a joint account with probably her brother. That account had nothing in it. The contract she had signed was for a couple thousand dollars. Had he stolen the money from his sister? Her contracted ended in six months.

When I met Rita, she was eager to help find a space for the store. She loved the clothes and when we returned to my apartment to discuss financing everything, she loved the mannequins. She sketched a store front featuring how the mannequins would be used to draw people in.

Rita’s enthusiasm had me excited.

The Mannequin Disk engaged and Sarah was restored while Rita and I were still working out the details. I introduced them to one another and Sarah invited Rita to stay for dinner. Sarah had me restore Barbara, who also joined us for dinner.

I’m not sure how it happened but when I went to bed, the number of mannequins in the living room had swelled to ten and I slept alone that night.

Sarah’s Style opened a few weeks later. It was a semi-soft open, with moderate advertising. As customers entered the store, a circular platform was near the front door. Sarah was the mannequin featured on the platform. She looked amazing. Georgia and Nastya were the permanent window mannequins until a solution for their condition could be found. There were six other mannequins around the store displaying the hottest merchandise, Barbara was the sixth one.

Rita didn’t tell me before the store opening, but she had ended her lease and was planning to be a mannequin every night in the store. She and the clerks would sweep the store and after they left, Rita would lock the store and do any bookkeeping that was needed. When she was done, she would pose on the Mannequin Disk and wait for me to revive her before her shift.

Sarah’s Mannequin Disk was setup in the back office. Several of the sales clerks were interested in taking turns as the featured mannequin when Sarah had time off. Unfortunately for me, Sarah wanted to stay in the store the first three months before taking any time off. We developed a daily routine:

I would go in around eight and remove Rita from the Disk and place her outside of the office. I’d take Sarah from the central display to the office. After removing her display clothes, I’d put her in a simple jumpsuit. After restoring, she was usually very frisky and we had sex on the sofa in the office. Most days I didn’t bother putting the jumpsuit on her. No one ever sat on the sofa because they were well aware of why the sofa was there.

After she got dressed, we would leave the store and eat breakfast together. Afterward she would change into her display outfit and after settling on a pose, she would turn back into a mannequin and I’d place her back in the central display. Some customers actually noticed the central display mannequin had different clothes and a different pose every day.

Around eleven I would restore Rita. She would leave to go to a gym, workout, and shower. She’d eat something and be back before one o’clock when she took over as manager. I’d usually hang out until three or four. I liked to visit Jerry at the gallery before it closed at five.

A couple months in I started finding one or another of the sales clerks as mannequins with Rita in the morning. Rita would restore the clerk and the two or three of them would go workout, eat, and return.

Around the same time that started happening, the first Mannequin Disk 4 arrived from Burma. It worked. The five new mannequin were extremely grateful to me and wanted to continue the contracts they already had or similar ones. From overhearing my telling Sarah and Barbara about the newly acquired mannequins financial status, Jemma and Kazandra convinced the twins to take a longer contract so they could go to school debt and loan free. All of them pooled their financial arrangements. They ended up spending a couple days contract free while they formed a company to contract them out to my store. The company, Mannequin Mavens, would invest their money for them. Jemma called a friend to become the fiduciary manager for them. In the end, the paper corporation had a thirty year contract with the store requiring payment annually depending on how many mannequins the company provided the store, pro rated by month.

I insisted Nimala open a new bank account without her brother and before joining the others in their investment scheme. She disappeared for a couple days before returning to sign a two year deal with the investment company. I didn’t have to pay out any money as the Mavens bought out the five contracts in lieu of annual payment for three year of five full time mannequins. For me, this meant I wouldn’t have to pay the mannequins for a decent amount of time.

Barbara was an independent contractor. She only wanted to do it for a while, or so she said. After the first month, when I restored her, she stood on the Disk glassy-eyed, a slight sway to her. She didn’t respond to her name, finger snaps near her eyes or ears, nothing. I had read about this while researching the Mannequin Disks: Mannequin Personality Disorder. Some people, after spending time as a mannequin, would remain mannequin-like afterward. Their normal personality replaced with that of a mannequin. People for whom, being a mannequin allowed them to zone out or sleep were more likely to experience MPD than people who were aware the whole time they were mannequins. Most MPD events last less than an hour. But Barbara had Severe MPD. Without help, she would remain mannequin-like until she became dehydrated.

I had noticed Barbara would never let Sarah set the Disk to automatically restore her. She always insisted on being removed from the disk and put back on to be restored manually. She must have been aware she had MPD from before meeting us. I guess this is why Tony was worried about her using the Disk.

Tony was surprised when I told him Barbara was on a week to week contract with the store. When he asked why he hadn’t seen her since the opening, I laughed and told him every week he restores her and she insists on staying another week starting immediately. I didn’t mention she would generally have an MPD event lasting no more than an hour.

“I did ask you not to tell her about the Disk,” he said. “How’s Sarah?”

“Well, I see her everyday. But I’m alone every night. That kind of thing, though, is to be expected. I’m dating a mannequin.”

Author’s Note

It’s funny. I wrote about 300 of the nearly 6.7k words of this story a year or more ago, in a file called “snippets”. I would occasionally open this file read the two snippets therein (The other snippet may have influenced some scenes in Marriage Counselor.) and close the file. A couple days ago. I opened the file. Read the two snippets. And I realized the snippet should be told first person and two characters should meet on a dating app before he finds out she’s a mannequin.

The rest just spilled out into this story.