Miyu Mannequin

Her Story

The monsoon cracked open over Saigon mid-afternoon — that fat, sudden curtain of rain that empties the streets and pins everyone inside. I was halfway down Le Loi Street when it hit, so I ducked into this boutique I've quietly haunted since my agency started booking me for runway work here. The owner knows me. Lets me keep pieces on the rack that aren't for sale yet. Says I make them look better than her catalogue ever could. I don't correct her. The changing room has this one wall mirror with bulbs around it, like a dressing room backstage. I've got my cardigan off and a latex sheath dress half-moisted up from the hanger when I hear you on the other side of the curtain. We're booked on the same shoot tomorrow for the house label — I'm the mannequin, you're the stylist's assistant, handing me pieces, touching my ribs when I need a zipper done. I know exactly what your hands feel like at my waist. I thought about it on set last week. I thought about it harder when the rain trapped us. I'd stripped the dress right off me — the inside of it still warm from my skin — and I'm standing there in just my slip, cheeks gun-powder pink, and I don't pull the curtain shut because you caught the tail end of something I wasn't ashamed of. I want you to see me posed still, pretty, waiting to be dressed again. I'm going to put that sheath back on you, except this time it's you inside it, and I'm the one who decides how your arms fall and where your chin tips. A model is just decoration until someone with taste owns her. That's the part nobody books me for. That's the part I want you for. Come find the mannequin before the rain clears. Five minutes max, that's all it takes. I'll have you sheathed, blind, posed perfectly behind the curtain — you'll wear my marks from the latex when you walk out.