“WOULD YOU HAVE expected any less from a bully like him?” Jin asked as he stirred milk into the mug of coffee in front of him. “I could have guessed he’d find a way to try to hurt my mom and I from his grave.”
“Tell me again what the will stipulates,” his friend Aaron asked, following suit by splashing milk into his own cup before the two friends left the kitchen to sit down on the sofa in the living room. As they had a thousand times before, they both put their long legs up on the coffee table and crossed them at the ankle. The only real difference was that their seventeen-year-old selves would have held game consoles instead of java.
“Wei Zhang bequeaths to his only child, Jin Zhang, full ownership of the LilyZ fashion corporation and all of its interests with the following condition,” Jin said, quoting the document his father’s attorney had read to him an hour earlier. He had a printed copy in his briefcase and one on his phone but this section was already committed to memory. “Jin Zhang must be entered into a legal and lawful marriage before ownership is transferred.”
Jin tried to mentally control the irritating vein that was throbbing at his temple. Death hadn’t stopped his father from continuing to create chaos.
“That’s just bizarre. Did your father really care if you remarried or not?”
“Oh, he cares…cared, plenty. After I left Helene, he knew I would never marry again, no matter what.”
“Understandable after what she did to you.”
“That’s why he had the stipulation written into his will. Because he knew it was something I would never do.”
“What happens if you don’t follow the condition?”
“The business gets dissolved.”
“You either get married or lose the fashion label? Who does something like that to his son?” Aaron shook his head in disgust.
“Wei, of course.” Jin’s temple continued to pulse as he tried to process the information he’d learned that afternoon. “Destroying the company was what he wanted to do. He mismanaged just about everything he could while he was alive. And then thought of a way to ensure LilyZ’s demise even after his death.”
After Jin had met with Wei’s attorney he’d come straight over to his best friend Aaron Stewart’s apartment, as he’d been doing for years. Not far from the Chinatown building that housed LilyZ’s studio and Jin’s living quarters, Aaron’s place was a sanctuary for him.
The two men sipped their coffee in silence, their brains turning over the information as dusk became night.
“Your father was so vindictive he wanted to take down the business his own father worked so hard to build into a respected name in fashion?”
“He hated me. And my mother.”
To Aaron, and to Aaron’s younger sister Mimi, Jin could say anything. The three had been hanging out together for more than thirteen years, had seen each other through a lot of life changes already. Aaron and Mimi’s mother dying. Their father dying a year later. Jin’s parents’ divorce. Jin’s divorce from Helene. Now his father, Wei, dying with this, his last act.
“Maybe you never saw it,” Jin continued.
“I don’t think I ever really knew him,” Aaron said. “I do remember the way his nose would wrinkle in a grimace though whenever your mother was mentioned after they split up.”
“Because she dared divorce an alcoholic, cheating, mean-spirited spouse.”
“He never wanted the business in the first place, did he?”
“No. He resented inheriting LilyZ from my grandfather Shun from the beginning. My grandfather worked eighteen hours a day for decades to create and sustain a legacy brand that would continue past his death but my father felt it interfered with his drinking and womanizing.”
“Then he should have been happy to leave it to you. You’ve been mostly running things, anyway.”
“I’m telling you, he despised me and wished for me to fail because of my relationship with my grandfather. Shun and I were the same. We loved LilyZ and took pride in it. My father was always the odd man out, because he never cared about anything but himself.”
“And it was clear you took your mother’s side in the divorce.”
“So for his final act, he did what he could to leave us penniless and humiliated.”
Jin could hardly compute all of this. For the past few years, he had taken unofficial control of LilyZ, their high-end, ready-to-wear fashion label. He’d had to. Wei hadn’t even shown up to the studio every day. And when he did stumble through, he was often rude to the staff or disruptive of operations. His only son had been forced to take charge.
In addition to the will, the attorney had also shown Jin his father’s many financial misrepresentations.
“On top of it, I’ve only just found out that our books are in shambles. My father withheld information and made one bad decision after the next. If the company were to be broken up, at this point every penny would go to creditors.”
“The will says you have to get married.” Aaron pondered the situation. “Are there any other specifications?”
Jin exhaled with a whoosh of exasperation. “I don’t take possession or have any power over the financials until I prove that I’m legally married. I must remain married for a one-year probationary period during which I’m officially CEO but not yet the company’s owner.”
“Wait, that means that you only have to be married for one year?”
“Theoretically. But he knew I would never get married again so he did this to set me up to fail.”
“What are our options?” Aaron wondered aloud.
Jin’s best friend was always thoughtful and contemplative. With his deep-set eyes and curly hair, Aaron looked like a philosopher whose likeness might be rendered in marble outside of a great library.
Aaron and Jin always worked through things together, considering each other’s problems their own. Even though two heads were better than one, Jin had his doubts that they were going to be able to solve the problem this time. Because not only was Jin never going to marry again, he wasn’t even going to enter into a serious relationship. Never ever. Not after what he had gotten in return for his devotion to Helene. Jin had been married to her for three years, and she had cheated on him the entire time. A selfish liar, she was. Just like his father. It was he and his mother who were left to pick up the pieces after their spouses took a wrecking ball to everything they’d held true.
Jin flexed his hands. After six months, those hands finally looked normal to him without the wedding band that had once sat on his finger. The ring that had symbolized fidelity and partnership and loyalty. What a joke that was.
The dead bolt turned on the front door with a clack and Jin’s eyes shot to it. With a crank on the handle, Aaron’s sister Mimi walked in. She dropped her bag on the side table, not noticing Jin and Aaron were there at first. Suited up for the late winter cold, Mimi removed her beanie hat, her auburn hair cascading past her shoulders in loose waves. Having been friends for so long Jin knew that Mimi’s radiant hair color didn’t come naturally, but that her curls were her own.
Yanking off one glove then the other, Mimi tossed them next to her bag. Her pale hands set free, she next unwound the gray scarf that was wrapped twice around her throat and had played nicely against the navy color of her coat. A small, and wholly inappropriate, twitch surprised Jin’s shoulder blades when the last of the scarf revealed some more of that creamy skin, this time her neck.
Buttons undone, she removed her coat and hung it on the stand by the door. She wore a terrific pink dress, with a belt of the same fabric that hugged her lavish curves. Mimi was the best dresser he knew and, being in the fashion business, that was saying something.
“Aaron?” she called out before turning around to find her brother and Jin sitting on the couch in the very same room. “Oh. Hey, bro.”
“Sis.”
“Hey, Jin, I didn’t know you were here. Have you guys eaten? I’m starved.”
“How did the interview go?” Aaron asked her.
“Lousy. Just like yesterday’s.”
Mimi was a junior fashion designer. Jin had always felt a little bit of personal pride that she had gone into the business herself, having spent many teenage years around LilyZ and learning about the industry. Aaron had chosen the world of stocks and bonds but with Mimi’s innate fashion sense, it was meant to be.
It irked Jin that she was having employment problems after she’d quit her job because working with her ex-boyfriend was unbearable. All she kept hearing was no, and she’d been forced to move in with her brother to cut expenses.
Aaron was stable but Jin and Mimi were both going through an awful time, made worse by the fact that Jin had recently found out that the last affair Helene had had while they were married had been with LilyZ’s lead designer. Who he’d promptly fired.
It was piled up.
Mimi needed a job.
He had to find a new designer for LilyZ. And now, apparently, a wife.
The events for New York Fashion Week Spring were starting up and LilyZ was not presenting anything because, before he’d died, Wei had blocked Jin from finishing the collection on time. Jin would now need to soothe the ruffled feathers of retailers who counted on his inventory. He had to make excuses. Pretend like everything was under control.
Jin’s headache tightened. What an inconceivable mess!
* * *
“Order some food in,” Aaron told his sister when she reemerged from his bedroom. Having taken off the pink dress she’d designed and sewn herself, Mimi had slipped on comfy black leggings, thick white socks and a red pullover.
“That could be considered sexist, you know,” Mimi teased him, “making the woman take care of the meal.”
“When said woman is living in her brother’s apartment for free it could be called singing for your supper.”
“All right, you’ve got me there.”
She glanced over to Jin on the couch, who had changed positions while she was in the bedroom. No longer with his feet up on the coffee table, he sat in his black slacks with one long leg crossed ankle to knee in a posture Mimi found so decidedly masculine it gave her a flutter.
What was more, it occurred to her that Jin was sitting where she slept, as Aaron’s sofa opened to become the convertible bed she’d been unfolding every night. Jin had been over and sat on the sofa before, but for some reason the thought that it was her bed hadn’t dawned on her. She took a mental snapshot and filed it away in her brain. And then moved on, or tried to, from that picture.
“Jin, are you staying for dinner?”
“I want ramen. I need a huge steaming bowl of noodles.”
“Sounds good to me,” Aaron voted in. “From that place.”
“Yeah,” Jin agreed, “get the kind we liked that one time.”
“Okay.” Mimi knew exactly what they meant and placed the order online.
Afterward, Jin explained to her about the stipulation in his father’s will.
“Does your mom know?” Mimi asked. “I talked to her on the phone yesterday and she didn’t say anything.” The Zhangs and the Stewarts had a long history together and she knew Jin loved it that Mimi was close to his mom.
“No,” Jin stated firmly. “As his ex-wife she wasn’t included in the meeting with the attorney. I don’t want her to ever find out about it.”
“What is it that happens if you don’t get married? Do either of you want more coffee?”
Aaron shook his head no but Jin thrust out his large, square hand and Mimi moved toward him to grab the mug he held. While doing so, her fingertips brushed against his and she registered the signature heat that always emanated from his hands.
It was as if fiery little sparks that only she could see ignited every time his hands made contact with her skin. Which, during exchanges like this, or during a hug goodbye, or a hand up an unsteady surface, had happened about a million times in the thirteen years she’d known Jin.
Jin’s sparks were Mimi’s deepest secret.
As she went about making more coffee, Jin explained about the will.
Mimi looked from the coffeepot to the blank wall above it.
“It’s so unjust that your father is still in control,” Aaron piped in. “Even though you’ve been effectively helming the business for years.”
Mimi kept her eyes focused on the wall. Aaron was right. Jin had completely taken over everything regarding the clothing label as Wei’s drinking and carousing got worse. It infuriated Mimi to hear that Wei had invented this disruptive will instead of simply bequeathing the company to Jin as was his due.
And Jin marrying again? The mere thought of that was upsetting.
“You didn’t know anything about the finances?” Aaron asked.
“I didn’t have the information on how bad it was. We all know the last two collections didn’t fly. My father wasn’t on top of trends or fabrics or colors or much of anything, and still wouldn’t relinquish any final decisions to me. Even when he was only attending meetings via telecom he’d always shoot down my ideas.”
“You were captaining a sinking ship,” Mimi said.
“What did I go to business school for if he wouldn’t let me implement changes?”
“You wanted to grow and modernize.” Mimi acknowledged the thoughts he’d shared with her many times before. She knew he wanted to go from retailing in twenty stores worldwide up to fifty. “But you were too busy mopping up his messes.”
“My grandfather would be ashamed.”
Descended from a long line of clothing manufacturers, brave Shun Zhang had come to the United States from Hong Kong with little more than a dream to start a label here. With his own two hands, he’d built LilyZ into a multimillion-dollar company that had once had an impeccable reputation.
Jin’s voice rose to a volume Mimi knew conveyed just how upset he was. “My father hid the debts. He withdrew funds to supposedly pay bills but instead spent the money on himself and his latest arm candy. And instructed his accountant to keep it confidential, even from me.”
“So you were blindly captaining that ship,” Mimi restated. She brought Jin his mug but this time set it down on the coffee table so as not to have physical contact with him again so soon. That was a little game she’d played with herself before. Unfortunately, the hitch of a smile he gave her in receipt of the coffee pinged right into her chest, defeating her strategy.
The upturn of his straight-set lips had the same effect on her as it had when she was fifteen and had first met Jin Zhang. Utter fascination. The same with the high cheekbones that defined the shape of his face. At seventeen, his cheeks were fuller than their sharp angles of adulthood now. The dense slashes of his eyebrows were the same. As were his luminous dark, dark brown eyes. They had held less stress in them then, although the toll of living with an alcoholic and unkind father had always been visible on him.
He regrouped in a more even-keeled voice. “I’m sure that I can turn the company around. I love LilyZ just as my grandfather did.”
Mimi knew that before his grandfather died, Shun had told a teenaged Jin that he didn’t trust his own son. That he’d known the responsibility for the label would rest on Jin’s broad shoulders when he came of age.
Which Jin had regarded as an honor rather than a burden.
Because that’s who he was.
Oh, Jin, with the one button undone on his crisp dress shirt—never more, just enough to call her attention to the length of his throat. Lean and six feet tall, he was effortlessly sophisticated in his tailored shirt and trousers. For a man in the fashion trade, his own look was always understated and polished.
Mimi was sorry for all his turmoil. He didn’t deserve it.
“Plus,” Jin continued, “I have to consider my mom.”
“Does Mamabai know anything about the state of the company?” Aaron asked, using the nickname that he and Mimi used for Jin’s mother, Bai, who had been like a surrogate mother to them both after their own mother had died. While Wei barely acknowledged their existence, Bai had always made sure they knew how much she cared about them.
Bai and their mother, Delia, had been close friends. Mimi couldn’t confirm it, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if on her mother’s deathbed the two women had had conversations about Bai providing support after the inevitable.
“She doesn’t know a thing,” Jin said. “Since her divorce settlement ran out I’ve been giving her money out of my own pocket from what I draw as salary.”
“If the label folds…” Mimi began.
“Not only will I have to worry about how to support her, it will be a public embarrassment to her on top of all the humiliation my father caused with his behavior.”
Mimi hated to think of Mamabai enduring any more pain. Even after the divorce, Wei had been indiscriminate with his carousing. Showing up all over New York, and within the industry, with other women.
Bai had had to see her son’s marriage fail as well, with Helene unfaithful just as Jin’s father had been.
When the food arrived, Jin, Aaron and Mimi used chopsticks to dig into their piping hot containers of Japanese soup. As they slurped and chewed, the conversation turned to her interview.
“It seems as if Gunnar has informed the entire industry that I’m talentless and worthless.”
“I never liked Gunnar,” Jin said. “You were way too good for him.”
Mimi chomped noodles so that her reaction wouldn’t be transparent on her face. Why did Jin always have to say things like that? Things that made a girl, day after day, year after year, question if impossible things might be possible.
Mimi had recently broken up with her boyfriend of two years, well-known designer Gunnar Nilsson. He had also been her boss and, incensed that she had been the one to call things off, he’d made the work environment terrible for her with his constant badgering and criticisms until she couldn’t bear the antagonism any longer.
Yet making Mimi’s life miserable wasn’t enough for Gunnar. He’d gone on to find out what other companies she was applying to work for and then bad-mouthed her to them before she even interviewed.
“I think Francois Boucher met with me as a courtesy to you,” Mimi told Jin. “He told me he was sorry but that because Gunnar wasn’t able to give me a good recommendation he had stronger candidates to consider.”
Jin had been calling in favors all over the New York fashion world to try to help Mimi get a new job. But, so far, Gunnar had undercut every attempt. Apparently he was as ruthless in life as Wei was from his grave, simply wanting to control and ruin things out of spite.
“Did you meet with Kiki and Pietro?”
“Yup. Same thing. No one I’ve met with knows Gunnar and I dated so they assume his negative review of me is based on my work.”
“Did you show them your portfolio? They weren’t impressed?”
Mimi slowed a minute, appreciating that Jin never failed to tell her how talented she was.
He had become something of a professional mentor to her. Letting her use his tools and equipment anytime she wanted. Giving her important feedback on her own designs. Helping her find opportunities to further her career. Cheering her on. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him eat, stopping to rub his temples, which she knew was a sign of his stress.
She could never repay Jin for all he’d given her. Yet every night for the past thirteen years she went to sleep longing for what he hadn’t.
* * *
“What are you actually going to do?” Aaron asked Jin two days later as they went one-on-one at the public basketball court near his apartment. “Is there a way to contest Wei’s will?”
Jin swooped around Aaron’s left side as he tried to steal the ball. Aaron pivoted away to keep his dribble going. “I spoke with my lawyer about it. I would have to establish that he wasn’t of sound mind when he wrote it and that’s almost impossible to do after the fact.”
“You’d have some witnesses.”
“Being an infidel and a drunk doesn’t mean you can’t make decisions. My lawyer said I didn’t stand a chance.”
“So, what then?”
“I’m wracking my brain trying to figure it out.”
Aaron took a shot from midcourt and missed, Jin grabbing the ball on the rebound. He swerved left and right to avoid his friend’s vigorous attempts to get it back.
“Consider this for a minute,” Aaron said with a lunge. “Is there any way you could work something out with Helene to make it seem on paper like you were back together?”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Jin dodged Aaron’s attempt to steal the ball.
“Desperate measures.”
Helene was out of his life forever. He’d never speak to her again. Let alone involve her in something as important as his inheritance of LilyZ. To think, there was a time when he thought he’d always be with her.
When he’d first met Helene Carlson, she was working for an advertising agency with several clients in fashion. She introduced Jin to a New York party world he had never been a part of, preferring to keep his nose down and his mind on work and graduate school. Ironically, the same qualities she said she had liked about him.
With her swinging blond ponytail that was always in motion, Helene was fun and Jin got temporarily swept into her orbit of nightclubs and red carpets. Until the late-night revelries got to be all the same, and not worth the tired mornings. By then they were already married. Busy with the constant job of cleaning up the disasters his father had created, Jin couldn’t keep up with his wife’s social life. However, Helene wasn’t done with that lifestyle, and continued to stay out until all hours most nights of the week.
Word trickled back to Jin that Helene wasn’t spending her time away from him alone. When confronted, she claimed innocence but when photos of Helene with other men appeared on fashion gossip sites, Jin had had to face the truth. That time, she hadn’t denied the accusations. He’d ended their marriage certain he’d never trust anyone ever again.
Jin had had two people in his life show him how easy it was to betray marriage vows. His father and his wife. And both had managed to put a cherry on top. Wei with his will and Helene by having an affair with LilyZ’s lead designer, Javier Ferrer.
Aaron hustled Jin’s attempt at a basket. The ball tipped the rim but didn’t go through the net. Aaron was able to retrieve it on the bounce and regain possession.
It was a fair question Aaron had asked, but Jin couldn’t bear the idea of even calling Helene again, so that was out.
What did make sense was the idea of marrying someone in name only. He knew he’d never marry again for love and he also knew he wouldn’t lose LilyZ. Something had to give.
What would in name only actually look like? Some sort of marriage arranged for mutual benefit.
Jin took a shot at the basket and made it. “He shoots. He scores.”
It wasn’t that weird. People got married left and right for all sorts of reasons.
Aaron overtook the ball and dribbled away from him. “Show-off.”
Jin stole it from him and did a quick-footed spin away.
If Jin was really going to consider this, he could call his cousin Ling in Hong Kong. He and his uncle Fu owned the manufacturing end of LilyZ. Perhaps they employed a young woman who might want to have a career in the States.
In the distance, Jin saw Mimi among the throngs climbing up the steps from the subway station by the basketball court. Aaron must have texted her that they were here.
He had no trouble picking out her face in the crowd with the alabaster skin and plump lips that he’d seen develop from those of an awkward teenager into a full-blooded woman. She and Aaron both had the same light brown eyes as their mother. Mimi’s hair was tousled and tumbled down her shoulders. She spotted him and lifted her fingers to give him a gentle wave.
Once he saw Mimi coming toward them, he realized he’d never be able to go through with an in name only situation with a stranger. It had just been hypothetical thinking. Because if he was ever to do something like that he’d be sharing his life, his mother’s life, and the life of LilyZ. He surely wasn’t going to do that with someone he didn’t know.
Perhaps that’s why, as soon as he’d conjured the idea, he wanted to be sure Mimi never knew about it. It was too preposterous, too dishonest. Despite what he’d gone through with his father and with Helene, he wouldn’t destroy the sanctity of real love for people who still believed in it. People like Mimi. She’d missed the mark completely with that idiot Gunnar. But he knew that she and Aaron thought in terms of the happiness their parents had shared before death took them too young. Mimi and Aaron hadn’t grown up like Jin had, witnessing how little the marriage contract meant to some people.
“Hey, you guys,” Mimi called out as she approached the court. Her hips swung side to side in that va-va-voom way as she walked, her sloping curves sashaying. Jin liked that she always wore fitted outfits and never hid her hills and valleys under sloppy clothes.
“Hey, Mimi.”
“Sis.” Aaron got control of the ball while Jin focused his eyes on Mimi. Was there something different about her lately, or something he hadn’t noticed before?
He wished that she was more successful in love than he had been. She was the total package. Men should be lined up around the block.
“Are you done, do you want to walk home together?” Mimi asked as she reached the chain-link fence separating the court from the New York sidewalk.
Jin and Aaron moved to the bench where they had their bags. Each located their water bottle and took in big gulps. Then found their towels and wiped the sweat dripping down their faces. Jin mopped up his hair as well and when he pulled the towel off noticed the side-eyed way Mimi had watched the whole maneuver.
“I’ll walk part of the way with you but I’ve got a cocktail reception thing tonight at Boutique Charli.” New York Fashion Week Spring was upon them, when the international fashion industry converged on the city. Buyers, media, VIPs, celebrities and invited members of the public gathered for event after event that showcased the latest creations.
The major design houses mounted elaborate runway shows and extravagant parties. Exclusive ready-to-wear labels like LilyZ tended toward private showings. Boutique Charli was an influential shop in Chelsea and Jin had to make everyone he encountered believe it was business as usual for LilyZ. That while they didn’t have a collection to show this season, which he could blame on Wei’s death, they were still on track.
To redeem the lies he’d be telling, Jin needed a new designer. Immediately. Of course, it couldn’t be just anyone. He’d interviewed five people in the past two days and none of them were right.
Even though shooting hoops with Aaron had helped clear his mind, his to-do list came flooding back into the stress points of his temples.
After he bid farewell to Mimi and Aaron, he went home to shower and dress. When he arrived at the Boutique Charli party he was distracted, and it wasn’t as easy schmoozing with the crowd as he’d hoped. He accepted the cocktail a waiter offered and struggled with the chitchat he needed to do.
A runway model trotted toward him. He couldn’t remember her name. With a kiss on each cheek she almost choked him with her flowery perfume.
“Hi Ji-in.” She somehow made his name stretch out to two syllables. “You remember me from the De La Costa show.”
He didn’t, but smiled politely. Looking ready to swallow him whole like a snake would, she had no reason to know that women were off-limits in Jin’s life. That he’d never put himself out there and chance getting burned again.
A typical rail-thin, six-foot-tall fashionista, the model wore a blouse made of peach-colored rayon. Styled after a man’s shirt, it had buttons down the front. On one side the shoulder was cut out completely, revealing the wearer’s bony clavicle and her bare arm down to the elbow. The other side of the blouse was a regular cut with silver trinkets shaped like bunnies sewn down the line of the sleeve. Jin knew that rabbits were part of Milan label Fortnight’s theme this year so guessed it was theirs.
Fashion was so subjective. That blouse could look ridiculous to one person and be the height of couture to the next. When Shun Zhang started LilyZ, he’d never had aspirations to see his clothes on the catwalks of Paris or in wild editorial spreads of fashion magazines. His intention was to create expertly made clothes that a woman could wear for decades so Jin’s grandfather chose the finest fabrics and used time-consuming craftsmanship.
Shun had an innate sense of how to foreshadow or interpret a trend but work it subtly into his collections, so that his clothes never went out of style when the fashion winds blew in a different direction. Customers responded and LilyZ became a multimillion-dollar enterprise.
To uphold those traditions, Jin needed a designer. While he himself occasionally generated ideas that ultimately became finished pieces, he was not a designer and couldn’t develop a sketch into a pattern and then into a sample and finally to perfection. What he needed was somebody talented and trustworthy to come into his troubled company and turn it around. Somebody like… Mimi!
Looking at the model’s rabbit trinket shirt, Jin thought of that smashing pink dress Mimi was in the other day. She had a real knack for sensing what would look good on someone. It wasn’t just that she was a woman with hips and an ample bosom, a shape that was still outside the norm for the industry. No, what Mimi had was real artistry in merging a classic look with a mood, creating something that made a statement with delicacy and grace.
If only everything was happening a few years from now. If Mimi had more experience, he could hire her as his designer. She was part of the family already and, as a unit, they could take LilyZ as far as it could go. He could count on her.
But a company of LilyZ’s standing couldn’t name a junior designer to lead. He, and she, would be the town’s laughingstock.
Unless? An idea popped into Jin’s mind.
It was too crazy.
But what if it wasn’t?