I.

Mandy was very quiet for a long time. It was, Shannon decided, a very good thing that she had the sketches in her long-nailed hands, because if she had them, she would have been twisting them into knotted messes in her nervousness. Not much help, all things considering, especially if all those concerned decided that they actually liked them.

Mandy blinked while reading, and Shannon noticed that that blink seemed very different from the others; long, and slow, drawn out and dragging on. Her eyelashes seemed to be trying to carve gouges into the air. And then her eyelids lingered shut a moment longer, as though she were casting a net around inside of her head for memories. When her eyes opened finally, Shannon found that she had looked in her direction sometime during that long blink: Mandy's eyes were right on hers.

'They're good,' she said blankly, her voice jarring. Then she tossed her eyes up to the top of her head and made a fake little yawn, lifting one hand to her open mouth and fanning it lazily. 'And I'm so extremely tired. It has, I assure you, nothing to do with you, Shannon dear!' She gaze Shannon a lazy, indulgent smile that felt like a smirk. Before Shannon could speak, Mandy deposited the drawings down upon the table and walked around her jauntily. As Shannon gathered them up hastily, she realized that Mandy's voice had jarred her simply because it hadn't been jarring; not nearly so high, not nearly so strange. And her accent…it hadn't been anything remotely British…

The expression of blankness. Had she been dumbfounded? Had Mandy Slade, for the moment, forgotten her image in shock at Shannon's sketches and spoken in her natural voice?

Shannon looked at her as she paused in the room, dragging the tip of her feather boa down Trevor's chest, then laughing. She didn't seem to know Shannon was watching her, and the girl wondered what on earth could have surprised Mandy about the costume ideas.

Shannon had been surprised. A pen had been drooping in her hand and a pad of paper she'd picked up from one of the drawers on her way out had lain propped up against her knee as she had sat on her bed for minutes and minutes, wracking her brain for ideas, her heart sinking in the process. Finally she'd hastily drawn out something she thought that, perhaps, Dorian Gray might wear in this modern time. And then she'd shut her eyes, scrunching them up very tightly as she always did before she felt she might panic.

When she'd opened them, she'd been surprised at her ability to see her surroundings more clearly. The fog of earlier had evaporated, and she was simply staring down at a pad of paper with a man's outfit drawn on it.

And then she'd blinked, and moved to write in the names of colours down, little arrows pointing. Inside fabric that pattern, coat made of this material, so on and so forth until she was actually somewhat surprised at how the image appeared in her mind.

The outfits, she recalled, had all been drawn one by one, and each one of them flowed more from the pen than from her, it felt like. Each was absolutely alien to her and not a one struck her as being artistic or personally pleasing. And every one of them, she had been sure at the time, was a pretty passable costume. When she'd finished, she'd been pleased with herself, surprised by how much time had passed (nearly 11 o'clock, Shannon, it's really time to sleep), and then, as she'd tried to sleep, disturbed that each design seemed mechanical to her. A creative endeavor should have been fluid and almost seductive, shouldn't it have been? And here it had all been utterly uncreative. It had been like a formula in her maths class. X is a function of Y. If X equals this, then Y equals this. She supposed X was inspiration; the modern Dorian Gray idea. And Y was something Mandy had been shocked by as she held it in her hand.

She hadn't really needed to show Mandy, though, had she? Shannon turned back to the papers and thought about this briefly, before she realized that Mandy had just said that the previous day as a way to stop Shannon's ceaseless staring. She felt guilty about thinking that the moment it occurred to her. No, Mandy might have truly meant it, mightn't she? There was no reason to believe that she hadn't really wanted to see the outfit sketches once they were finished. After all, Shannon mused as she headed towards the door into the next room, where she believed Jerry was (and he was the one who needed to see the designs before they started to sew them), Mandy had been Warddrobe Mistress for Brian first…

II.

Shannon made a slight sound in her throat as she stumbled backwards, nothing articulate, of course. And immediately she dropped to her knees, eyes widening, to gather up the papers as she'd just dropped them.

She hadn't meant to walk into anyone on her way into that room, she realized, and felt like a complete fool. Pray let it not be Brian, she pleaded with higher forces silently. Or Freddi, or Micki…well, it had probably not been Micki. She had been fairly sure it was a man at the time, or at least had one's body.

She saw someone else's hand touch one of the papers a ways away from her, and then she glanced up, pausing. It was Cooper. She'd stepped right into him just as she'd turned into the doorway, and he had apparently bent down to lift up one of the drawings closest him.

He was looking at it with an unreadable, unfazed expression. But there was something about it that reminded Shannon of the way Mandy had looked at them, totally silent. Shannon pulled the rest together and stood, shuffling through to make sure that they hadn't been torn or dirtied or crumpled. Then she approached Cooper tentatively.

He looked at her and handed her the paper without so much as a second glance at it. His lips were smiling almost grudgingly, as though there was something funny he knew but felt he'd best not tell her.

'Fab,' he said briefly, and then his head went over to the side, a dark curl slipping into his eyes. Shannon felt a sudden impulse to reach up and push it away, but it was a madness. "A place for everything and everything in its place;" well, possibly not here, in this context. And perhaps someone in Cooper's situation needed stray strands of hair to blind him. She thought about that in just a moment before he continued to walk the rest of the way into the room.

Remembering the formula and the things she'd put into it suddenly, she made a small shuffling step after him and, hesitantly at first, reached out her hand to touch his arm and grasp it, pull him back. She touched skin, just above the elbow and beneath the tight t-shirt sleeve. He seemed surprised, but just looked back at her and lifted his head slightly with a grin. He looked curious at first, then almost pleased. Shannon began to feel the dizzy-headed feelings of being awkward that she often was visited by.

'Theuh…Thanks,' she managed, and then flashed a slight smile, shyly at first. 'For the suggestion. That I read Wilde.' And making me talk in short sentences. 'It's been an experience; I must not have been really reading it before.'

Cooper's smile just widened. 'Been a pleasure,' he said, his voice less sharp than usual, a little more of a drawl. He sounded like he'd just downed a glass of wine.

She remembered that her hand was on his arm and pulled it back, stepping away first; then she turned around and walked into the other room.

III.

Jerry stared down at the designs long and hard, leaning forward to tap the tip of his cigar into the ashtray. Shannon coughed slightly into the crook her wrist made when held at an acute angle with the rest of her arm, then felt slightly appalled for not having a handkerchief. She might ask Angel for one later. It would undoubtedly be white with red embroidery, if not outright sequined; but it would still be a handkerchief, and as long as she didn't use it on the bus, it needn't incriminate her.

She still wondered where people thought she was going when she got off at the bus stop. At least she no longer glanced around to see what sort of people were walking by before she entered Bijou Music. If anyone hung around there, it was usually someone of the bejeweled, beglittered sort, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone important, and wondering, most likely, what a girl in tweed who was conspicuously not wearing platforms was doing there. She might have been mistaken for a journalist. Shannon only wished.

Finally Jerry put the designs down. His expression was different; he looked very content, as though things were playing out just as he wanted them; but he did not look cruel, or manipulative, in this respect. Expectant, perhaps. 'Quite right,' he said to her. 'You'll have to decide on a precise design for each person on this list—' said as he slid a piece of paper towards her—'and get their measurements, which are in the file—except for two, which, I'm sure you will note on the paper.'

Shannon picked it up and only glanced at it, noting Brian's name in large letters before looking back up at Jerry, who took a drag from the cheroot before continuing to speak, in the same languourous tone he had used before. 'To have them sewn, you'll have to decide on fabrics—'

'I can't pattern,' Shannon cut in suddenly, a panic seizing her. In fact, she could barely sew, either, and especially not the things she'd drawn. She glanced around wildly, her breath coming in shallow. 'I can't pattern, and I can't—'

Jerry waved his hand dismissively. 'That's all right,' he said. 'You're not the one who'll be doing that. Just give the measurements and designs to the right people—'

'I don't know any people,' she said quickly.

'All on the list,' Jerry continued, almost reassuringly, except he was stating secure facts, and not offering any sort of support. 'I guarantee you, just do that, and then once they've figured everything out, they'll know how much fabric they need for everything, and you've just got to pick that fabric out.'

Shannon's head felt a little like spinning, and she rested one elbow up against the tabletop and rubbed at her temple with her fingers. 'How long should I give them?'

Jerry turned his head slightly. His eyes seemed to contemplating something very insignificant to him. 'Two days,' he said after a moment. 'And so I would suggest, in the meantime, that you do the detailed versions of half of those today, and give those sketches and the measurements to them tomorrow.'

'The more important half,' she cut in, lifting her head suddenly, to find him nodding.

'And during those two days, work on the sketches for the other half.'

Shannon nodded, but her mind was already elsewhere. Two people didn't have their measurements, and she supposed she'd be doing that tomorrow. Brian, Jerry, the band, and possibly Mandy—everyone else later: her mind was already trying to plan out the best way to do things.

Jerry's name was shrieked over in the next room by Mandy; still playing with the boa, possibly? Shannon only blinked as Jerry stood, tapping the cigar against the ashtray once, and walked out.

She glanced down at the list in her hands. There at the bottom, the names of those to contact—finally, someone in this strange group of people who was truly business-minded, and gave her something to really file. And yet, there was something about Jerry too loose, too imformal, to be very professional. Certainly he took the profession seriously. But not quite so seriously as any boss of Shannon's ought to be, she felt. He wasn't aloof enough.

And then, at the bottom of the list of names—right after Mandy's, oddly enough, though why she should come after Angel, Shannon couldn't guess—were two names, marked as being WITHOUT MEASUREMENTS.

Curt Wild.

Shannon Hazelbourne.

She blinked.

She was supposed to have…a costume?

IV.

She had lost her place in the book and it made her, for some reason, extremely frustrated, so that she went and worked on costume sketches for an hour straight before she came back into her bedroom and tried to find where she'd been before she'd left the book, open, on her bed (and then walked out of the room; no wonder she'd accidentally lost her place).

Before getting even more frustrated, almost to tears, she attempted to skim through the book and reach her place.

'…sketch from him. Of course I have done all that. But he is much more to me than a model…'

'…next time he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it will alter you. What you have told me is quite a romance…'

There was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are suddenly awakened…

'…sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life…'

'…the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate, seemed to give his wit keenness, and to lend colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible.'

Shannon stopped, frowned, shook her head. Too far. The words meant something to her, surely, but not to her memory…and yet, somehow, seemed to say something to her. She bit her lip and then dropped the book down, rushing into the other room, where she sat down heavily in a chair and picked up a pencil, freshly sharpened (others lay on the table and those that had become blunt, she dropped upon the floor. Though she knew it would drive her mad, she was partly interested in what her response would be if she went through all the sharpened pencils).

Before beginning, she caught a glimpse of herself in the dark window in front of her. For a moment, the image of the girl she saw was barely recognizable, despite those long, straight locks she was so proud of, and the high-collared white neck of her nightgown. It was the face, she realized suddenly. It was intense and completely different from the timid smile that she had worn in every school picture since the second grade. It was pale, and there were smudges of makeup around her eyes; difficult to say which was the makeup and which was the lack of sleep. Difficult to tell if it was either, in fact. Might have been bruises. Shannon touched her face.

"Who are you?" she seemed to be whispering to her reflection. But already she heard an answer: "I'm Shannon Hazelbourne," the memory echoed; "I rang up about the position..."