“CAN I TAKE a shower, please?” Mimi poked her head into her brother’s bedroom. It was inconvenient that she had to go past his bed in order to get to the bathroom but that was the price paid for camping out on his sofa bed while she was unemployed.
“Gaaaaah…” was Aaron’s half-awake reply as he rolled over and pulled the blankets over his head. “Get. A. Job.”
“Working on it, bro.”
As she showered and dressed, she knew she was at the point of overstaying her welcome. Aaron’s place was, plain and simple, a compact New York apartment meant only for one person or a couple at most. Minimalist and sleek with black furniture, it was perfectly detailed for the up-and-coming lords of Wall Street such as her brother.
Aaron had offered to lend her money to get her own place when she broke up with Gunnar and moved out from the apartment she shared with him. But a junior designer didn’t command a very big salary and she didn’t know how she’d pay her brother back. She knew he’d absorb the cost if he had to, but she also knew that he was saving money to buy an apartment rather than continuing to lease, and she didn’t want to derail his plans.
After showering, she made breakfast.
“You interviewing again today?” Aaron asked when he emerged clean and suited up for his workday.
“Yep.”
“Maybe you’ll get this one.”
“We’ll see if Gunnar has managed to ace me out of yet another job.” Mimi shrugged as she portioned out the eggs she’d just scrambled, handing one plate to Aaron.
He went to sit down at the table but there was nowhere to put his dish. The surface was piled high with everything from Mimi’s sketch pads to her electronics to her sewing machine. She rushed over to make room, stacking things on one of the chairs and the sofa bed. “Sorry.”
The coffee table had been moved aside in order to open the sofa bed, which was not yet folded up for the day. Mimi’s clothes and shoes and whatnot were also spilling out of two suitcases in the middle of the floor. There were fabric swatches and sewing tools everywhere, and even a pair of slippers on the end table. In short, Mimi’s life lay in front of them.
“Honestly, Mimi, I don’t know how much longer I can live like this. You know, Jin asked me again if you’d want to stay with him. He’s got the huge flat all to himself now and there’s plenty of room.”
“No, I, no…” Mimi tripped over her words.
It was true that the whole third floor of Jin’s Chinatown building was living space. The showroom was at street level and the second floor was the studio. Shun had bought the building when he’d started to make some money with LilyZ and it had never been occupied by anyone other than the Zhang family ever since.
When Bai finally couldn’t stand Wei’s disrespectful ways one minute longer and divorced him, she moved to the Upper East Side to be near her sister. No one knew where Wei had stayed before he died. Jin had lived in the Chinatown flat by himself until Helene moved in, and was now alone there again.
However, Mimi staying with Jin would be intolerable. How could she ever tell him or her brother that just the proximity she typically had with Jin was, and always had been, enough of a struggle? Seeing him several times a week, sharing meals, hovering together over a garment, confiding their joys and sorrows.
Feeling his sparks.
It was all already too much.
If Jin was behind her in a room, even if she didn’t see him she’d know he was there. She could recognize the sound of his breathing. Knew what size shirt he wore. His favorite movie. Song. Flavor of ice cream.
But while they’d shared cottages in the woods and summer beach shacks, moving into his flat would be another matter entirely. Going to sleep under the same roof, waking up to each other day after day, night after night.
That would be skidding too close to thoughts that were only allowed out in the wee hours.
Aaron and Mimi finally sat down at the cleared table with their breakfast. Changing the subject, she reminisced, “Remember how Dad used to snip fresh chives onto eggs?”
“I like that you always put cheese in them. But yeah, he’d bring the little potted plant from the windowsill over to the table.”
The siblings had grown up in a happy home full of warmth. Delia and Benjamin Stewart walked arm in arm together down the street just as they did through everything in their lives.
Until the death do us part bit came too soon.
“Mom and Dad had something very special.” Which is what Mimi longed for. That kind of union, a friendship and a romance all mixed into one.
“Unlike Wei with Bai.”
“It must have been so hard for Shun, to have an alcoholic son he didn’t know how to help.”
The siblings forked up their eggs.
Shun had only recently died when Aaron first met Jin. The two teenaged boys played together on the high school basketball team. Their moms got to know each other while cheering on their sons during games.
Mimi was two years younger, fifteen at the time, and not that involved in her brother’s life. When she’d come home from her after-school babysitting job, her pulse would pound to see dark, handsome Jin sitting at their kitchen table eating her mother’s food.
Little did she know at the time that the Stewarts’ apartment had become a refuge for Jin, a place to escape the negativity of the Zhang home. Nor did young Mimi understand how to interpret the intense stares Jin always gave her. Over the years, she’d come to learn that the look in his teenaged expressive eyes was pain and emotional fatigue.
Aaron put his fork down. “I wish there was a way we could help Jin.”
“That’s what I keep thinking.”
* * *
“Can I show you something?” Jin asked Mimi while she was sitting at a sewing machine in his studio a little later. “Just a couple of new things I was playing around with.”
“Sure, just let me finish up this seam,” Mimi said as she turned her head toward him and then back to the dress she was doing in muslin as a prototype. She’d come in after her interview to use one of Jin’s industrial machines, as she had been doing for years.
He kept a few machines near his office in the back, along with a cutting table, tools and shelves with fabric set aside for special projects. Now with his grandfather and father gone, nobody but Jin used the office.
Employees busied about in front creating virtual models on the computers, fulfilling back orders and doing alterations for the customers who had bought pieces from the showroom downstairs. While the major manufacturing was handled by his uncle Fu in Hong Kong, there was always plenty of activity at Jin’s building.
He pulled out some drawings he’d done.
“I was toying with this,” he explained as she got up from the machine to join him. Pointing to details on the sketch he explained, “Wouldn’t this be kind of a practical look? Comfortable separates but with fine tailoring so that a woman can wear them anywhere? Business casual. With this maybe,” he said as he pulled over some fabric swatches.
He handed Mimi a twill he was considering. Their fingers brushed in the process. The Jin sizzles that were as familiar to her as her own heartbeat crackled up her spine.
A smirk she fought to hide reminded her of Aaron’s suggestion of her moving in with Jin. Living with this man, who occupied her dreams day and night, was out of the question.
Although, really, she’d have nothing to worry about because in all the years she’d known him, he’d never done anything to encourage her secret feelings. There was no reason to think he ever would. The big brotherly hugs, chaste kisses on the cheek and the professional cheering on was the way they were with each other. For so long now it was set in stone.
She rubbed the fabric between her fingers. “This would be wrinkly by the end of the day. Can you go with something stiffer?”
“Will you work it through with me? I can’t meet my retailers with nothing to show.”
“And you have no designer.”
“I haven’t found anyone suitable to hire.”
“You’re thinking of doing your own collection?”
Jin slowly nodded as he looked over his drawings.
“Was I wrong to fire Javier so hastily? Right before Fashion Week?”
“Once you found out about him and Helene, how could you be expected to work with him every day?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Mimi lifted one sketch off Jin’s desk and inspected it carefully. Then she reviewed another. She trailed her finger along the drawing of a blazer jacket, commenting, “You could run a curved seam here, and here, and give it a little flare at the hem.”
Maybe this was how she might help Jin. Offer what assistance she could in pulling together some pieces without a designer.
“I like that,” he said, understanding her concept.
“Kind of a nineteen-seventies vibe.”
“Hmm. You’re good.”
“I know! If I could ever get a job.”
“How did it go today?”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
Mimi had always wanted to be a fashion designer, even before she met the Zhangs. Whereas others loved music or books, she loved clothes. The artistry of fashion. The details. The variety. The act of personal expression that had to be combined with an almost science-like approach to construction. She’d taught herself to sew as a young girl and sitting in front of the hum of a machine was her happy place. For birthdays or holidays, she’d ask for gifts of fabric and supplies. Her parents encouraged her to chase her ambition so she’d gone to design school.
Now here she was, unemployed.
“Gunnar Nilsson is not going to bring me down.” Mimi grabbed a pencil from the holder on Jin’s desk and was quickly drawing a revised idea for his casual suits. “Didn’t your grandfather do a collection like this way back when? I feel like I’ve seen some photos.”
“Yeah, it was a big hit in the eighties. With exaggerated shoulders and peg-leg pants but the same theory. I’ve heard that half of New York produced imitations after that.”
“It will be a tribute to him, then.”
Mimi continued making adjustments to the sketch. “See, I’m saying do a subtle pouf at the shoulder. A little all-business and a little rock star.”
“That is fabulous, Miss Stewart.”
Jin moved toward her for a hug that included three friendly pats on the back, like someone might give their long-lost uncle. Never did he give her the kind of embraces that Mimi fantasized about. “You’re a pal.”
A pal to Jin, she was. Always would be.
She pointed to her sketches. “Can I apply for the designer job?” she kidded. Was she really kidding, though?
* * *
“Good night, Cynthia,” Jin called out to the last employee to leave the studio. He leaned back in his desk chair and clasped his hands behind his head. Closing his eyes for a moment, he listened to the unusual din of nothingness. With equipment running, and people collaborating and coming in and out, the LilyZ headquarters was never a quiet place.
As his staff walked or took buses, subways and trains back to their homes for the night, Jin experienced urban solitude. Something he might have enjoyed after the chaos of his marriage. Right now, though, he had too much on his mind to relax.
His eyes sprang open again.
The drawings he and Mimi had been working on earlier were scattered at the side of the desk while Wei’s will sat front and center. Jin read the words legal and lawful marriage a couple of times, as if he’d find something different in the words than he had before. A new solution.
He was still musing on that marrying in name only concept. He’d ruled out any strangers because he couldn’t take any chances with LilyZ. Whoever he chose, that was if he chose, would have to be someone he already knew well.
The prospect seemed impossible.
Jin glanced over to Mimi’s drawings. She was really so bright and intuitive. Like today when she’d made such fabulous improvements on what he was imagining, the two of them talking in the shorthand of two people who had known each other for a very long time.
Known each other for a very long time.
Mimi had asked him straight out if he could hire her as his designer. The weird thought that had been nagging at him for days surfaced again. His brain focused on it, on seeing it all the way through.
What if? How desperate was everybody at this point? No! It would never work. A nice fantasy, though.
A new notion popped into his head out of nowhere. If there was any hope of him finding some kind of pretend wife that was someone he already knew, what about an ex-girlfriend? He’d dated women before he married Helene.
How about Leslie Wang, his college sweetheart?
Leslie was a nice enough girl. They’d broken up on friendly terms, after which she’d left New York.
So, what, Jin was going to abruptly call her out of the blue and ask her to be his phony wife? Even if he did, what would she gain from the deal? Was she a person who needed money? What if she was unattached and wanted children? Would Jin be willing to give that to someone in return for LilyZ?
Of course not, the voice in his head shouted with certainty. The ruse was to stay married for a year after which time Leslie, or whomever, would carry on with the rest of their lives. He couldn’t father a child and then not be part of his or her life.
Pondering how he would even get in touch with Leslie, he grabbed his laptop.
He’d search for her on social media.
With Wang being a fairly common surname, he located an unruly amount of possibilities. Fortunately most people had a profile photo so that he could eliminate the majority of them. When he found her photo, Jin knew he wouldn’t be reuniting with Leslie Wang, who also used the name Leslie Franklin. No, she clearly had her hands full in the photo, surrounded by three young kids who resembled her. Behind them stood a proud-looking man, his thick arms encircling his brood with a hug.
All Jin could do was laugh out loud, the sound ricocheting around his empty studio. Whatever would have made him think someone from his past was available and waiting for his call?
Mimi’s drawings next to the will caught his eye again and that crazy inkling, and it was definitely crazy, picked at him.
He scanned a panorama of the studio, all the machinery dormant and only the night-lights illuminating the cavernous space. The tall windows up front facing out to the Manhattan night. This company meant the world to him.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, didn’t they? Aaron had said those exact words himself on the basketball court the other day.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to talk it through.
He called Aaron’s cell phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Tripping over Mimi’s stuff that’s all over my apartment.”
Mutually beneficial agreement?
“Can I buy you a beer?”
“You bet.”
“The place on that corner.”
“Fifteen minutes.”
Jin reached for one of his favorite possessions—one of his grandfather’s thimbles. While Jin had kept many of Shun’s tools, this was the most special to him. Made of heavy bone china, it had an intricately painted scene on it. A Chinese Junk boat sailed in blue ocean waves at sunset. The sky above was purple then red then orange. As a young boy Jin had thought it was nothing short of a miracle that someone could have done a painting on an object so small.
That thimble was a sort of talisman for Jin. Shun did not travel to the United States on a boat. He’d arrived on a plane to a New York airport. But the thimble’s depiction of a lone vessel under the sunset always filled Jin with respect for perseverance and risk.
He placed it back in the caddy on his desk that held loose items—a button here, a spool of thread there. After he collected his phone and wallet to go meet Aaron, Jin changed his mind and grabbed the thimble again, slipping it into his pocket.
At the crowded bar, the two friends stood close in order to hear each other. They each nursed a long-necked bottle of beer. Aaron looked Jin in the eye after he’d laid out his plan. “So you’re asking me a question?”
“I suppose I am.” He’d never go forward if Aaron objected.
“How old school of you.”
“With your father long gone.”
“Have you actually talked to my sister about this?”
“I wanted to discuss it with you first.”
Aaron snickered. “It would solve my housing problem. Although there must be a simpler way.”
“Consider that a bonus.”
“You’re sure this would be a good business move for her?”
“I’d be giving her an opportunity she could never get elsewhere at this point in her career.”
“We go back a long way,” Aaron said, tapping his bottle on the bar. “But I’ve got to say it out loud. I think she might be in…”
“She might be in what?” Jin tried to coax him into finishing.
“Are you sure you and she could pull this off without anything…you know…physical happening between you?”
A fair question. One Jin was ninety-nine percent sure he had the answer to. He was only human. Mimi was very beautiful. And they’d be saying good-night to each other under the same roof, night after night.
With everything that was at stake, though, Jin would never do anything that would risk harming her. “I could only do this with someone I trusted.”
“Right?”
“It would be all business. Wouldn’t change anything between us.”
“I’m not sure it’s that easy. But talk to her about it. I’ll support you both either way.” Jin tipped his bottle toward Aaron’s and they clinked. Although Aaron finished the toast with, “You might be my best friend. But she’s my blood. You do know that if you hurt her I would have to tear off every limb of your body piece by piece?”
Jin chuckled. “Understood.”
When they got to Aaron’s apartment, Mimi was in pajamas, hand stitching a pair of pants. She looked sweet and pretty in her baby-pink T-shirt and matching leggings. Aaron excused himself to take a shower.
“Mimi.” Jin inhaled deeply to muster up his courage as he moved toward her. He pointed to her sewing. “Would you mind putting that down for a second?”
She placed it beside her on the sofa and gave him her full attention. “What’s wrong, Jin?”
Even though she didn’t find it with Gunnar, he knew Mimi believed in love—she’d grown up surrounded by it—but what Jin was offering was something quite different.
Just talk to her about it, he coached himself. She can say no if she wants to. Do it. Now.
He dropped to one knee in front of her. Then reached in his pocket for his grandfather’s thimble. Picking up her hand, he placed the thimble on the top of her ring finger.
She shot him a baffled look.
“Mimi, would you marry me?”
* * *
“Would I what?” Mimi’s heart thundered against her chest. Jin was in front of her on bent knee, having just asked her to marry him!
Was this actually happening? She may have dreamed of this happening before, albeit in softer focus. But she definitely wasn’t asleep now. If it was a dream she’d be dressed better.
“You know I’ve been trying to figure out how to satisfy the condition of the will,” Jin began, still on one knee in front of her with a wrenching look of vulnerability on his strong face that was so unlike his usual sureness. “Which led me to think about motives for why people get married. That it isn’t always for love. How nobody but me would know if I got married to someone for a different reason.”
Mimi deflated.
This wasn’t the moment she’d been holding out hope for all these years. Just the opposite. He was making it clear that he wasn’t in love with her. Stating up front what she already knew to be true.
Which made perfect sense. Jin never had an inkling of what she held inside, so he wouldn’t know to be sensitive with his choice of words. It was his business that he was concerned about.
Rightly so.
“I see,” was all she could scratch out. Still, the hairs on her arms stood at attention.
She indulged a quick fantasy. Her Jin had finally come to claim her. To begin their life together, at last. Children. A home filled with joy. Like her parents had had. She’d show him the meaning of loyalty, and the wounds cut into him by his father and his ex-wife would heal. He’d learn to love again.
Reality check.
That wasn’t the proposal being offered.
“You know I’ll never marry again in earnest. So I got to wondering,” Jin continued as he rose up from one knee and gestured for Mimi to make room for him on the sofa.
Suddenly self-conscious about the skimpy jersey fabric of her pajamas she scooted across the cushions, as far as she could, as a matter of fact. She folded her arms across her chest in modesty. Jin had seen just about every inch of her body over the years, but not while he was proposing marriage.
“Wondering?”
The thimble was still fitted over the top of her finger as it pressed against her other arm.
“What if I married someone for practical purposes and then divorced a year later after I fulfilled the requirements of the will?”
“Uh-huh.” So that was his scheme. Disappointment rang through her.
“Then I thought about that from a realistic standpoint and realized it couldn’t be just anyone.”
Mimi’s breath sputtered at the acknowledgment that she wasn’t just anyone to him. There was a bit of satisfaction in that.
His eyes seemed to be pleading for her to connect the dots so that he didn’t have to lay it all out for her.
They might be friends but there was no way she was going to make this easy for him. Not after all she’d had to swallow for the past thirteen years. She’d hear out his proposition before issuing a resounding no. After all, she might as well stretch the moment out. It was the only time she’d ever hear those words coming out of his mouth.
What a thought. Fake married to Jin. To live as man and wife except for the love part.
A fate worse than death.
“I see.”
“We’re practically family already, Special Agent Mimi,” he said, referring to a silly taunt he and Aaron had used as teenagers when she would disclose to them school gossip they knew nothing of. “Would you consider this ultimate con to help me save LilyZ? If not for me, could you do it for Mamabai?”
She scrunched up her face at him. If he was trying to draw on the loyalty they had for each other, he was doing a pretty good job. It was just this morning that she and Aaron had been talking about finding a way to help Jin out of his predicament. But marriage! That was beyond a line she could cross in the name of duty or anything else.
“There must be another solution.”
An image passed across her brain. She was in an elaborate lace wedding gown with a long train, the type she wouldn’t wear in real life, walking down an aisle toward Jin in a tuxedo. She strode in rhythmic paces, each one taking her closer and closer to her beloved.
Wait. It wasn’t her in that mental picture. It was Helene. The woman Jin had actually married. In reality, on that fateful day Mimi was cast off to the side with two other women, the three of them in pewter-colored bridesmaids’ dresses. Later, when her brother, who had acted as best man, asked Mimi why she had dabbed streaming tears from her eyes during the ceremony, she’d told him it was because she was so happy for Jin.
It had been one of the hardest days of her life.
“I’ve considered it left, right and center, and I can’t come up with any other way,” Jin said, bringing her attention back to the here and now. “Hear me out. I’m trying to think logically about a way this could be a good step for you, too. You could come stay with me. You could have the master bedroom and bathroom all to yourself. I’ll take the guest room.”
The master suite. Where he slept. Again he was making crystal-clear that his proposal had nothing romantic attached to it. He wanted to be sure she received that message loud and clear. Separate bedrooms.
“You’ve already offered to let me stay with you,” she quipped, perturbed by this whole suggestion.
“Why haven’t you said yes?”
She uncrossed her arms and twisted the thimble on her finger, studying its painted details. Unable to answer Jin’s question.
To tell him anything would be to tell him everything. Which she never had and never would. She’d decided years ago to settle for the friendship, the concern, the trust and the fun.
It had never been easy but it had always been worth it.
“We could make it quite simple,” he insisted. For him maybe. “No one would know that we were living apart under one roof.”
“I’d like to help but…”
“Please—” he glanced at the thimble then back to her eyes “—let me finish. As I said, I know this is a huge thing to ask of someone. I’d want it to be worth your while. What if we got married and I named you as LilyZ’s new designer?”
“What?” Lead designer for his prestigious label? Otherwise known as an ultimate career goal? Her eyes bugged at the suggestion.
“You could do it. I know you have the talent. I’ll teach you everything else you need to know.”
Like thousands of others who go through design school, Mimi’s goal was to have her own fashions manufactured, sold and actually worn. It was the carrot every young designer was chasing. Not to merely assist a company with their ideas, but instead to be the one creating the vision. Only a few made it that far. Others adjusted their expectations into other occupations in the industry. Some left it altogether.
Be careful what you ask for, the saying went. Because you just might get it.
Life had a sense of humor, though. Offering Mimi what she’d always wanted.
In more ways than one.
Except the most important.
“Look, if I could, I would hire you as my designer with no strings attached. But the industry would crucify me for appointing an apprentice as my lead. And I’ve got employees with far more experience than you. They would feel betrayed and overlooked. I could never do that to them.”
“And this way?” Mimi was still trying to process Jin’s idea.
“We’d be a team. I’m mentoring my wife and we’re designing together. It may not be fair but at least it’s understandable to people.”
“So everybody would think I got where I was simply because I was your wife?”
“I’d make sure you got credit for all of the designs.” Unlike Gunnar.
“I’m sorry, Jin, but I have to say no.” Could he let her leave it at that?
“Aaron said that…”
“You talked to Aaron before you…” Comprehension stopped her. “You asked my brother for his permission? For my hand in marriage?”
“So to speak.”
She wished it didn’t, but Jin’s old-fashioned chivalry tugged at her heartstrings. With her father long dead, Jin went to Aaron. Even though the discussion was about a charade of a marriage, Jin had thought to discuss it with her brother.
Mimi’s lungs ached. The hour was late, the proposition enormous. Yet she knew that pretending to be Jin’s wife would be the end of her. She’d just endured a horrible disappointment in Gunnar. Which left her much too raw for something as emotionally risky as a fake marriage to Jin.
Of all people. The man against whom she measured all others. The only man she ever truly…
“You know I’d like to help you. But I can’t.”
She recalled dancing with her brother at Jin’s wedding. The newlyweds were on the dance floor as well. Jin had spun his bride under his arm until she circled back into his hold. Despite the well-wishers and the photographer, their smiles were only for each other. Mimi had watched them for as long as she could stand it and then had to look away. Peered again out of the corner of her eye. Gulped back her emotions. Until the wee hours when she had cried herself to sleep.
Her fingers stiffened with tension as she absentmindedly stroked the side of her face with the bone china thimble.
“Think about it, Mimi. Please.”
For reasons beyond his control, Jin had set out to marry. If it wasn’t to her, it would be to someone else. One way or another, Mimi would have to dance at another one of Jin’s weddings.