CHAPTER TEN: THE NIGHT BEFORE THE SHOW
Vivian’s son, Nathan Price, knocked on our door shortly before eight.
He was thirty-two, wore an expensive wool coat, and looked as though he had been awake for several nights.
“I heard about the pipe,” he said.
“I came to apologize for my mother’s behavior.”
“She needs to apologize herself,” Adrian answered.
Nathan nodded.
“She says you’ve organized a campaign against the studio.”
“Ask the people who work for her,” I replied.
I showed him nothing without their permission.
Instead, I gave him Celia’s public office number and the event’s own promotional materials.
He read the catalog standing in our hallway.
“I wrote that introduction,” he said quietly.
I stared at him.
“You described a training program that the workers say doesn’t exist.
”
“My mother told me the apprentices were paid and supervised.”
“Did you ever meet them?”
“I live in Seattle,” Nathan said.
He looked ashamed of how weak the explanation sounded.
He had returned because a major retail agreement depended on the next day’s presentation.
Nathan had a financial interest in the company, but he had never handled production.
“If the show fails, we could lose everything,” he said.
“The people who made the clothes have already lost part of their wages,” I answered.
He ran a hand over his face.
“Can I speak to them?”
“You can ask, but they decide.”
Rosa agreed to a short conversation at the hall, and Hawa came with her.
Nathan listened as they described the deductions and unanswered questions.
Then he showed them a payment summary supplied by the workshop.
It listed amounts much larger than the women had received.
“Where did the difference go?” he asked.
“That’s what we’ve been asking,” Rosa said.
He studied the page.
“Trevor signed the figures.”
“Your mother approved every deadline,” Hawa replied.
Nathan did not defend her.
He took out his phone and asked his company’s accountant for the original remittance instructions.
The accountant refused to discuss them without authorization from Vivian.
Nathan looked at the women.
“I can’t promise to fix this tonight.”
“Then don’t promise,” Rosa said.
“Come tomorrow and listen when we speak.”
CHAPTER TEN A: THE REHEARSAL THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
Keira called Maisie late Monday afternoon because she had been summoned to an additional rehearsal that was not on the published schedule.
She was frightened that speaking to us would cost her contract, but she was more frightened of repeating claims she knew were false.
“They’ve hired a presenter to interview us as though we are the seamstresses,” she explained.
“They’re going to record our answers before the buyers arrive.”
Maisie asked her to describe exactly what she had been instructed to say.
Keira read a line from the script about learning embroidery from her grandmother in a village she had never visited.
“My grandmother was an accountant from Cleveland,” she said.
“I don’t know why they’ve invented an entire family for me.”
The script gave two other models histories of forced migration and poverty that belonged to neither of them.
Hawa listened when I called her, then asked that Keira make her own decision about what to do.
“She isn’t responsible for the lie merely because they gave her a script,” Hawa said.
“But she will be responsible for whether she says it.”
Keira decided to attend the rehearsal and tell the presenter she could speak only about the modeling work she had performed.
Mina went with her as a relative and waited outside the room.
I did not attend because the company had not invited me, and a crowd at the door would have done Keira no good.
At six twenty, Keira called again.
“Trevor says I will be replaced unless I memorize the biography,” she said.
“He told me nobody would ever know.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I asked him if he’d be comfortable telling the same story in front of the real maker.”
“And?”
“He told me to stop making trouble.”
She gave a small, shaking laugh.
“Then he handed the script to somebody else.”
I offered to take her to the bus stop, but Mina already had her car outside.
The following morning, Keira met Rosa at the community hall before the show.
She returned a scarf that the wardrobe assistant had given her to wear.
The scarf was still marked with Rosa’s chalk fitting lines.
“I didn’t want them to say I’d stolen it,” Keira said.
Rosa looked at the chalk and smiled without amusement.
“They can return everything else they’ve borrowed from our lives.”
Keira asked whether refusing the role had helped anyone.
“It helped you keep your own name,” Hawa answered.
“And now I know which part of the story is yours.”
They discussed whether the young model should speak publicly.
Keira agreed to describe only the rehearsal and her own experience.
She refused suggestions that she should accuse every employee of knowingly lying.
“Some people were just doing their jobs,” she said.
“I want to be fair even when I’m angry.”
That sentence changed how I understood her courage.
