“I’m worried I’ll shake,” she admitted.  

“I am too, but I’m also worried that you won’t look very good when your cryochamber is opened.  It would be a shame if you didn’t look your best.”

Ornette glanced at herself in the mirror.  “I thought this was my best.”

“You’re very pretty,” he said in a tone that was reserved entirely for softening a blow.  “But if your cryochamber is opened with you looking like that, it won’t be good enough.  Nowhere near enough.  I can leave your hair the way it is, but your makeup must be ripped back and redone.”

“Are you a makeup artist, then?” she probed.

“Uh… No.  I sent your picture to someone I know who is a makeup artist and they told me what they would do for you instead of what your makeup artist has done.  Here.”  He brought up a hologram of her face. 

It was a picture she knew well because it was the one that was used on her profile page when Sleeping Beauty Inc. sold her.  She was wearing the same makeup at that very moment because Sleeping Beauty Inc. wanted her to look exactly like her picture.  They didn’t want to sell a product that looked different when it was delivered.

“This is what you’ll look like with my friend’s suggestions.”  He scrolled the picture out of view and brought up a new hologram.

She raised her eyebrows.

That was what led to her lying all the way back like she was in a dentist's chair.  Desmond didn’t know how to do makeup the way his friend did and it was easier for both of them if she lay all the way down and he leaned over her.  She didn’t shake as much and for some reason, the whole thing was a thousand times more comfortable for her.  She felt like she was in his lap, next to his heart, and the object of all his attention at the same time.

It was very comforting.  She didn’t shake.

And when he messed up and had to try again over and over, she was very understanding.

“What do you really do?” she pried.

“I do everything.  I do everything so much that I find it completely fascinating that I’m so bad at this.”

“Have you ever done makeup before?” 

“Lots of times,” he admitted, “because I do everything, but it has never been this important.  Your makeup has to be perfect.”

When he rose her up in the chair and she saw herself in the mirror, she saw how completely he’d nailed it.

“Well, your friend should be gratified that you know how to follow instructions.  I guess that was why they went through the trouble of giving you instructions at all.  They knew you could follow them.”

Desmond smiled.

“I wish you were my owner,” she said dreamily as she looked at the bluish sparkles like mermaid scales on the sides of her cheeks.  

His face hardened, giving him the look of a stranger instead of a friend.  

She didn’t know him after all.  She thought she did because she’d heard his heartbeat next to her ear.  Also, she didn’t normally get that kind of attention from the men who bought her.  They bought her to be the woman on their arm and be a workhorse on the design floor.  They didn’t pay her any attention unless something was wrong.

“Do you want to put me back to sleep now?” she offered.

He nodded.

“Do you want to kiss me before I go to sleep?  Some owners like to do that at the end of our contract.  I imagine that when I wake up, I’ll have a different owner.”

Desmond led her to the cryochamber and helped her inside.  

Once she was lying down he leaned in and said, “It’s probably better if you don’t tell anyone about our little meeting.”

Ornette smirked.  “If that’s what you want, Master.”

He didn’t get the joke.

He didn’t get what was funny about his request.

However, he did kiss her.  He kissed the back of her right hand before he closed the lid. That way, he didn’t spoil her makeup.

Ornette did not even bother to keep her eyes open as the chamber filled with gas.  She had been put into cryostasis so many times, she knew there was no point in hanging onto what could not and, most of the time, should not be kept.  

He didn’t get it.  Every single master she’d ever had wanted her to keep ten thousand secrets.  Even if Desmond had only been her master for a few hours, he couldn’t escape asking her to keep just one more secret.

The best way to keep a secret was to forget completely that there was a secret to keep.

Therefore, Desmond was out of Ornette’s mind like he had never been there before she took her last breath.