I can't believe I'm actually writing this. I've had scraps of it squirreled away in this notebook for a couple of months but now it's like fifteen pages and I'm weirdly serious about it. Anyway, I almost titled this lovely piece "No One is Going to Read This" because no one is going to read this. I wouldn't read a novel's worth of Nancy Drew fanfiction. But apparently I would write it.
So, here ya go.
Minette is a total and complete wreck.
Well, more of a total and complete wreck than usual. She's screamed at Sonny twice today, launched at least six projectiles (one of them, an ugly blue mug, at him), and now she's stepping outside for a quick cigarette.
Heather once told him that she smokes when she's especially stressed.
Minette does a lot of things when she's stressed, Sonny has discovered. Hopefully one of those things is getting drunk and making a particularly bad choice with one of her employees.
Sonny follows her outside, hopes high. Of all the people that he's encountered in his scrambled days of various employment, Minette is the most unstable, and thus probably the most likely to hear him out. Sonny opens his mouth to speak as he leans against the wall, but Minette snaps at him before he can begin.
"What?"
"Just came out for some fresh air," Sonny improvises, realizing the flaw in his lie as the bitter smoke from Minette's cigarette hits his nose.
"I don't pay you to get some fresh air. I pay you to work."
Sonny shrugged. "Very well. Maybe we could get some fresh air together? Tonight? Grab a drink or two?"
Minette turns to look at him with a deadpan face. "Fresh air? Nice segue, new guy," she says sarcastically before facing her cigarette again.
"Offer still stands."
A moment of silence, then "Sonny Joon, are you asking me on a date?"
"No! No, no, no," Sonny exclaims quickly, defensively. "You're dating Dieter."
Minette looks oddly forlorn at that fact, then simply grunts "Fine."
"Cool." Sonny smiles, then frowns and furrows his eyebrows, confused. "Wait, really?"
"Sure, why not? Seven o'clock, you know that bar a couple blocks from here?"
He does.
"Good. See you then. Now, please get back to work," she orders, though makes no move to return to her desk herself.
Still, Sonny obeys and retreats inside, leaving Minette alone on the sunny French rue.
Good.
She likes being alone, mostly. It's why this is her first time going out in… A month? Two months? She can't remember.
(Her memory, she recalls, was less than trustworthy even before the Institution.)
No matter. All four of her therapists agree that she has to get out sometimes, so she does. Sometimes. They also order that alcohol not be involved, but one step forward and two steps back isn't bad. Plus, Sonny Joon isn't her first choice for company, and without a drink, the night would be unbearable. If her first choice in company were to come…
Whatever.
"Are you insane?" Heather asks, her voice a mix of angry confusion and amusement. "Minette's a bona fide madwoman."
"I know." Sonny grins.
"She's dangerously unstable even in the workplace."
"I know."
"She threw a birdcage at you last week."
"Very fortunate that there were no birds inside of it, hmm?" Sonny muses.
"And you actually want to bring alcohol into the mix?"
"Damn straight."
Heather holds her tongue. Secretly, she somewhat admired Sonny's fearlessness. The boldest thing she'd ever done had been months ago, during Christmastime, when Sonny had been brave enough to deck the halls of the tiny office, despite Minette's distaste for the holidays. Still, Sonny had gone all out. A fake tree, evergreen boughs along the wall, all generously flocked. Green and red glass ornaments, silver bells, and goddamn mistletoe. That had just inspired her.
She was in the holiday spirit, so when Minette stood in front of her and demand she take down all of Sonny's folly, Heather couldn't help but note that they were standing directly below the mistletoe. So she did what any idiot drunk on holiday cheer would do. She leaned forward and kissed her employer briefly on the lips.
It actually turned out okay, because though Minette's face went bright red, she didn't yell or reprimand or otherwise humiliate Heather. They even got to keep the decorations up.
Sometimes, no consequences ensue.
So maybe Sonny will be fine, Heather tells herself. She's never actually seen Minette drunk. Maybe drunk Minette is somehow better than sober Minette. Maybe Sonny will even survive the night and let her know.
Sonny sits quietly at the bar booth. With every sip of scotch Minette takes, she gets further and further away, so Sonny allows himself to take more and more risks.
She has quite a few drinks in her when Sonny starts to notice that Minette is speaking with some sort of drawl… Southern. Texan, maybe?
He's fairly confident that she won't fire him while drunk in a bar on a Friday night, so he remarks that she sounds a smidge like the squirrel from Spongebob Squarepants.
"Texas," she replies simply. "Born there."
"Did you like it?"
"Naw."
Naw. It sounds inelegant, but not in Minette's usual style of tactlessness. It's not blunt or mean, it's just gaudy. Oddly wholesome, Sonny realizes.
Now is the time.
"Do you know what you should do?" Sonny begins.
Minette takes in a long sigh, then a sip of her drink and scowls. "Break up with Dieter?"
This catches Sonny off-guard. "What?"
"I should break up with Dieter, right?" Minette repeats. "Dieter. Dieter von Schwesterkrank. Schwesterkrank. Sch-vest-errr-crank… Stupid name."
"That's… not what I was going to say."
Minette stares him down, squinting at his face. "Why'd you ask me here?"
"Just wanted a few drinks. Figured you might, too. And I can see you've gotten them so…" Sonny trails off, intimidated and prepared to abort his plan, hoping his drunk boss would just leave.
Minette snorts. "Are you attracted to me, new guy?" She's leaning across the table now, her face mere inches from his.
"N—No?" Sonny's not sure how he's supposed to answer. "You're fine, great. Good-looking and… everything… But you're my boss. So…"
"You're not bad looking yourself, Sonny Joon."
"I'm no Dieter von Schwesterkrank," Sonny smiles, trying to push her back to her boyfriend.
"No. You're not." Minette closes the gap and touches her lips to his, bites down on his lower lip and pushes her tongue into his mouth, just slightly. She smells like alcohol and smoke and the distinct scent of the moulin where she works and he rots.
Sonny is surprised by how much he enjoys it.
He's not kissing back but he's not pushing away, either, and he allows her to slide one slender hand up his cheek and grab a fistful of his green and pink dyed hair.
He's finally kissing back when she pulls away abruptly.
"Fuck it," she growls.
Sonny clears his throat, runs a hand through his hair, and recomposes himself. He opens his mouth hesitantly and, for lack of a better responds, blurts out, "I'm sorry, what... uh, what just happened, what was that?"
In response, she takes another swig of scotch.
"Okay, I have to go," Sonny says. "This was stupid, I'm sorry."
He's rustling around in his wallet for an appropriate amount of money to throw on the table when Minette asks, "What did you think I should do?"
"Hmm?"
"Earlier. You said you thought I should do something. What was it?"
He wants to leave, he does, but she's looking at him with wide icy eyes, her mouth is hanging slightly open and he knows he at least should give her an answer. "I," he laughs at how stupid it is. "I thought you should get a tattoo." When she neither breaks eye contact nor presses, he continues. "Of an alien. Little green guy. Tasteful. Small. Like on your ankle or hip or something."
"Stupid," she says dismissively, turning away.
"No no, alien tattoo's cool." Sonny chuckles. He's wanted to do this for a long time, he has. Give someone a permanent reminder of who he was, of his presence.
Sonny wuz here.
"Alien?"
"You know why," Sonny says slyly, though he didn't know why himself, much less Minette. He was just hoping she'd make something up, some reason she should go through with his stupid plan.
He'd failed many, many times. On his friends, on his coworkers, on people he'd just met on the subway... None would hear him out. Except Henrik, oddly. Damn, if Sonny hadn't been close to getting that dusty old anthropologist to tattooing his back. Minette was crazy enough to do it, but his lips are still tingling with the force of her lips and his hands are shaking and he can barely look at her…
"It was stupid. I'm going to leave, I think."
She doesn't argue as he puts down the money but just before he stands, she gives it a second thought. "Do you think Heather would like it?"
"Maybe," he sighs.
Still cradling her drink, Minette snorts a laugh and forgets the idea. Sonny can't help but feel disappointed, despite himself. He considers staying and trying to sway her, but as he's debating it, Minette changes the subject again.
"Did you know that the First Lady commissioned me to make a dress for her? The First Lady."
And before Sonny can reply, Minette is on her feet, telling everyone in the bar about the commission.
The First Lady is going to wear one of her dresses to the World Summit? Well, that's actually pretty impressive, Sonny thinks.
Unfortunately, Minette also knows that this is damn impressive and she's creating kind of a scene.
Now, if Sonny had had a little more courage or slightly better foresight or if he hadn't been prone to creating messes and failing to clean them up, he may have talked Minette down or maybe dragged her ass out of the bar and the entire trajectory of her life would've been drastically different.
This, however, is not what Sonny does.
No, Sonny sees the bartender giving him a stern look, demanding Sonny to take responsibility for his drinking partner and do something or else get out.
Sonny chooses the latter.
The moment the bartender's eyes stray, Sonny sneaks off to the bathroom and lingers. For him, the situation resolves itself when he steps out ten minutes later. The bar is quiet again, the bartender doesn't give him a second look, and his boss is gone.
He's not too concerned—mostly curious, actually—so he asks the bartender where she went.
The bartender shrugs, still not too keen on Sonny's irresponsibility, and tells him that the bouncer had taken her outside.
When he steps outside, however, she is nowhere to be seen. He combs the block a few times but gives up quickly; he's still not too concerned. Minette can hold her own in a Parisian streetfight. She is a dangerously unstable drunk woman with several fairly serious mental disorders, after all.
Yeah, okay, he should have listened to Heather McKay.
Of what is now known to her as "The Night of Biblically Bad Decisions", Minette remembers almost nothing.
There's the utterly disappointing feeling of Sonny's lips, his hair, his tongue. Her hoping that he would be different from Dieter, and the
There's the scary-ass face of Ernst Schmeck and the sinking feeling of sobriety as he pulled out his gun.
There's the vivid image of the gun, far, far too close to her face.
She remembers few of the silky accented words that fell from Ernst's mouth, except for the way he called her Miss Minette, but she remembers taking note of his charisma, his could-be innocence, and the fear he instilled into her very bones.
Okay, fine, Minette has moderate paranoia, so most people instill some sort of fear (or at least suspicion) into her very bones, but Ernst Schmeck looked and acted like he could kick the collective asses of ever scary as hell person she's ever met.
She remembers the sum of the money they promised if she cooperated and the gruesome death they described if she didn't and then she remembers very quickly deciding to just work with the Germans.
She doesn't remember drunkenly stumbling into the tattoo parlor, but she can't seem to forget how it felt when she saw the alien on her face in the morning nor the phone call that came, putting Ernst's steely cold voice back into her brain.
Minette spends a great deal of her time in the Institution trying to remember The Night of Biblically Bad Decisions. It marked her two different lives: Before and After.
Before working with the goddamn German spies.
Before Nancy Drew.
Before being charged with treason, before the trial, before being told by her lawyer that her best bet was to plead insanity. She remembers, tragically Heather vouching for her; not defending her with caring words but discussing how hard Minette was to work with, how unstable she is, how she forgot that happened and remembered that which didn't… God, the list went on and on.
There was no affection.
And of After, there is very little to remember. Three years in the Institution, a therapeutic, medicinally-induced blur. There's fear. Lots of fear, in the beginning. There's talk therapy and medication—God, the medication…
The drugs that made the fear go away.
The drugs that made everything go away.
Or the drugs that made her sick, made her worse, made her delusional…
But eventually they find her perfect prescription and and finally, finally, she improves. She's able to read and write and do her own laundry and have pleasant conversation with the nurses and she's moved to a nice low-security unit.
And soon she's free to go.
Minette's not sure how she feels about that.
She spends the weeks leading up to her discharge anxiously trying to remember. She starts in her childhood, of which she remembers much too much, then moves into her brief college life. Her first commission—her first real commission, from someone with money, actual money—and how that so quickly lead to her life as a designer.
The times it was just her and Carol struggling to meet deadlines.
The times she spent with Dieter, trying to meet deadlines between pathetic dates.
Her times with Heather, who helped her meet deadlines better than anyone. Who she appreciated, she really did…
Though apparently Heather holds no love for her in return.
But the feeling of Heather's lips on hers, warm and soft and damn smooth despite the chilled and grey and bleak winter…
How could her affections be unrequited?
God, she's stuck on Heather. She shuffles through most of her memories of her, spending too much time on that fucking Christmas memory and trying to find anything else that might suggest that Heather returned any sort of feeling Minette may have offered.
"Uh, hello. Is this Minette's House of Design?" Heather asks, poking her head into the office building bearing the name plate.
"Can you not read?" A redheaded woman says without looking up, clad in black slacks and a green collared shirt, a scowl plastered firmly on her unblinking face. She can't be much older than Heather—and Heather's just out of college—or maybe she's a smidge younger.
"No, no. I can read. Just wanted to make sure."
"Well, can you please 'make sure' without wasting my time? I have a lot to do," the redhead says, still staring down at a pad of paper.
Heather's mouth hangs slightly ajar at the redhead's tone, but then she realizes. "Oh, you must be Minette. You are younger than I expected."
That catches her attention. Minette straightens up and squares her shoulders. "How do you know that? Why are you here?" There's an edge in her voice; she's clearly uncomfortable by Heather's extremely limited knowledge of her.
"Pardon me," Heather extends one hand for Minette to shake. "I'm Heather McKay. I'm here for the assistant position."
Minette glances down at Heather's hand but refuses to shake it, then her eyes come back up and meet Heather's. They're big and blue and cold. "I didn't ask for an assistant." Her voice is equally cold.
"You didn't? I saw an ad in the paper, though. Now hiring? Did the position already get filled?"
Minette narrows her eyes. "Show me the ad."
"I didn't bring it with me," Heather mumbles, growing increasingly uncomfortable with every passing second.
"Why are you really here?" Minette asks loudly. She's almost yelling and for the first time Heather realizes that people in the fashion industry are just as bonkers as she's always been told.
"I'm here for the assistant position," Heather repeats, trying to keep her head.
"I didn't put out an ad for an assistant position!"
"Well, somebody did," Heather persists. "American fashion designer looking for an assistant? Fashion background? Flexible hours? For Minette's House of Design!"
Minette's face is frozen. "I wrote that," she says softly.
"What?" Heather fears she misheard.
"I wrote that," Minette repeats confidently.
"So there is an assistant position open?"
Minette doesn't so much as acknowledge the question. "I forget things. A lot. So you're going to want to remember most of them for me."
"Um, pardon?"
"Since you're going to be my assistant," Minette says simply.
"Don't you want an interview? Or... or want me to apply in some way?"
"You want the job, you've got the job," Minette says turning to the dress that's just barely begun to be draped.
"Really?"
"Yes." Minette doesn't look up.
"Are you crazy?" Heather regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth, but they just slipped out.
To her surprise, Minette answers as if Heather was just asking the weather. "Yes, actually." She's still fixated on the dress. "I am. And I'm also very, very busy and very pressed for time and," she finally looks up, "I'm not great at functioning on my own. So here you are."
So here she is.
"If you let the phone ring for too long, Minette will flip and you, naturally, will be fired." After just a few long months, Heather is oddly at ease around Minette.
Yes, she's insane, unpredictable, angry, and sometimes violent, but dealing with her is almost a science and soon becomes second nature.
"She'll fire me for not answering the phone?" The new assistant's face is twisted in fear, tan face falling a bit pale under his pink and green hair.
"Sound of the phone ringing drives her crazy," Heather explains. "Well, crazier."
"Uh…" The new guy seems to want to say something, but can't think of what it is.
"She's not that bad," Heather lies. "You can meet her in a couple hours."
Nothing Heather says about Minette from the time he steps into the office to the time he has to meet the boss makes Sonny feel any better. He's a slacker. He is. And if his boss is liable to hurl something at his head for squirreling away some Koko Kringles of fire him for not answering the phone, he'll be gone in a flash.
And then the hour arrives when he must meet Minette, when he's sure he's going to be fired before the job even begins or, worse, he's not going to be fired,
"Are you Sonny Joon?" Minette has shoulder-length red hair—red red, not orange red—plain facial features and piercing blue eyes. She's tall but not lanky, kind of graceful, really.
"I am," he answers simply, shakily.
"Good. You really don't have a set job around here, as I'm sure Heather mentioned, so right now I just need you to not make any noise. And stay out of sight. Just make yourself scarce."
Make yourself scarce? Sonny can hardly believe he heard that right. He's stumbled upon his dream job. Within the hour, he's changed the screensaver, completed a few extravagant doodles in his personal sketchbook, and read a handful of SPIED articles on recent alien news.
But when the phone rings and Minette's voice is right there urging him to answer the phone, Sonny is in the midst of an ingenious sketch—an alien in one of Minette's dresses fighting off a coati with a coathanger—so he doesn't pick up the phone right away. He lets it ring once. Twice. Now she's yelling at him, actually yelling, and he springs to pick it up.
Sonny is back to thinking he's not going to last very long.
It's fine. He's just here to cause trouble anyway.
On the morning of her release, Minette is trying to recall addresses, mostly.
Her own is written down, as is her phone number, her social security number, her birthday, and all the other things one must not forget.
She can remember Heather's address, God be praised, but not Dieter's, nor JJ's, nor the street of the house she grew up in.
But it's okay. Heather's address is all she needs.
Because when Minette steps outside with the knowledge that she is now free, that she can go or do anything she wants—within reason, of course, she's legally bound to stay out of any kind of trouble for six months—she's overwhelmed and keeps herself mostly focused on the thought of Heather.
On her first day of freedom, she just goes home to an empty apartment which has been vacant for the better part of three years. Her stuff is coated in a generous layer of dust. Everything feels alien, unfamiliar. She once had a rabbit, she thinks, but it's not here now. Someone must've taken her while Minette was gone.
She hopes whoever took the rabbit is treating her well. Or him, they, whatever…
Minette carries one suitcase back from the Institution. Inside is her toothbrush, her papers, and her clothes, including a few pieces she apparently made while there.
She hangs the pieces in her closet—dusty and outdated now but crammed full of her own designs— but draped one black and grey trench coat atop her bed.
She can remember little of the coat's creation, save for the incredible pain that was trying to get her massively drugged hands to sew properly. Tunnel vision, numbness… Minette barely knew where her hands and fingers were relative to each other, much less how they were guiding the thread.
She'll wear it tomorrow.
Lying in bed beneath her long unchanged sheets, Minette drills the address into her mind, desperate not to forget.
See you tomorrow, Heather McKay.
Heather McKay doesn't realize that her former boss is already fee, Had she known Minette was declared (relatively) stable, no longer a threat to herself or others, she might have rethought inviting Dieter von Schwesterkrank in for a drink.
But Heather didn't know and she still doesn't, so she's unbuttoning Dieter's pristine dress shirt as Minette is falling asleep.
Heather McKay just had the best night of her goddamn life. She's glowing in the morning,
Having woken up next to him… For the better part of five years, he'd been the great unrequited love of her life. And for five years, he'd ignored her.
And finally, finally, she's a fashion star and Minette's gone and he's opened his eyes and she's finally lying next to him.
Heather runs through the events of the previous night, frazzled with ecstasy.
The classiest fashion function she'd ever been to, even under Minette; the photographer complimenting her pieces; the praise from the masses; the fact that Dieter was still there, still complimenting her…
The sex.
It's all perfect. It's all going according to plan.
Until the doorbell rings and Dieter is the one to answer it.
When the door swings open and reveals Dieter von Schwesterkrank's perfect fucking face, Minette is caught totally off-guard.
By his face, Dieter is too.
"Minette… You're back!"
She can't think of anything to say, so she just stares, dumbfoundedly stretching out "Uhh…" as Dieter raves about the time she was gone.
Finally, she truthfully manages "I think I got the wrong address; where does Heather live?"
That's when Heather comes to the door and Minette notices that Dieter is wearing a girly pink bathrobe.
Fuck.
She can see that Heather's face is just as mortified as her own, Dieter is smiling stupidly, but there's a sort of regret in his eyes. He's probably weighing the consequences of his night with Heather. God, or maybe a whole relationship. She doesn't stick around to find out.
Minette, not wanting to deal with stupid, perpetually love-struck Dieter and Heather, turns on her heel and stalks off without another word.
She liked it better in the Institution; when she was an alien watching from an isolated room on a faraway spaceship.
"I heard she's here. Tonight."
"Really? I heard her new line is coming out soon."
"Do you think we'll see her?"
"Oh, if she's really here, we'll be sure to."
A couple of months have passed since Heather found Dieter gawking at Minette in her own foyer, and he hasn't spoken to her since. So naturally, she's bitter that at the next function she attends, five hundred mouths are buzzing about Minette.
Heather doesn't believe Minette's actually here; she always hated any sort of public affair and Heather can't even count the amount of times she's had to force Minette into the car before something like this.
The press doesn't keep off her tail completely, but she's just not in the mood for interviews or comments. She's pissed, and the few idiots that still want to talk about Heather she's eager to lose. She's ready to be done by eight-thirty, after she sees Dieter and he doesn't even acknowledge her, but it's too early to leave so she ducks into a broom closet the second she's alone.
Heather presses her head into her hands and growls and sighs and does something in between. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," she hisses.
"Yeah, it was," Heather hears from inside the dark closet. She searches for who, but her eyes haven't adjusted to the darkness. "You know, it kind of ruins the solitary sanctity of the closet if someone else is inside. Next time you're hiding from peoples, you're going to want to check to make sure that there isn't one already in your hideout."
Minette. Of course.
Heather lifts her head from her hands and faces the terribly familiar voice. "I'm not hiding," she says defensively, "I'm just—"
"Doesn't really matter. The point is that I'm hiding and you're ruining it."
"You don't own this closet," Heather says childishly. She can see Minette glaring now, but she doesn't say anything, just sips from a wine glass she's cradling.
They stay in silence for a long time, long enough for Heather's contempt to wear off and an odd sort of nostalgia to kick in. Minette wasn't always terrible, not constantly.
She tries to edge into a conversation. "What kind of wine is that?"
Minette offers her the glass and Heather takes a sip.
"Hmm, that's really sweet. I like it. What is it?"
"Grape juice."
Heather smiles, confused. "Why are you drinking grape juice from a wine glass?"
"I'm really not supposed to have alcohol," Minette says. "But I want to maintain an image."
They're laughing. They talk. They're… friends? Or just competitors bonding in a broom closet while hiding from the press? Heather can't tell.
"Minette?"
"What?"
"This is kind of nice."