Mimi (Incipit)

Septembers in Florence were surprisingly sunny.

I had expected the grayness of Milan, the kind that led me inside the Plastic club instead of making wiser use of my time. Since my arrival, I had spent my days window-shopping down the paved streets of Via Rome in between meetings and photoshoots. It seemed like the sun shone brighter in this corner of the world, its light bouncing off the ecru-colored walls of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. I pretended I could see the dome from the street I had walked onto, though I knew I was too far away. When I had awoken this morning, my biggest worries revolved around a no-name artist rapping about his intentions to sleep with me, a renowned perfumer possibly pulling out of a project because of a comment I made about Gabrielle Chanel, and my reluctance to answer any of my mother’s calls. So, I could not understand how on Earth I had ended up in a hospital again.

Nurses had whizzed around me since an ambulance had carried me inside, their white and blue blouses blurring into a tightening thread, choking me out and leaving me for dead. A few of them snapped my pictures and pretended to look down at their charts or up at some board when I caught them. Most of them smiled at what they believed to be a joyous occasion in my life.

Against everyone’s better judgment—including my own—I watched the hospital doors close behind me and raised my hand to shield my eyes from the sun. But when I felt her squirm against my chest, I knew she was bothered by the sunlight as well. I lowered my hand to her tiny head and watched her fall back into an immense slumber. The beauty of the sun had nothing on the sleeping baby cradled in my arms.

The taxi I had called in my broken Italian honked once to catch my attention, before stepping out of the vehicle to provide some assistance. He began to offer a genuine smile but stopped himself to give me a once-over. It had not occurred to me that my cherry-red latex mini dress made me look the farthest thing from motherly.

“Erm… congratulations,” he muttered as he opened the door for me. I gave him the address to the new hotel my manager, Vivienne, had moved my belongings to, hoping that she would be well on the way to this hospital by the time I arrived there.

The hotel stood over an hour away, secluded in a cul-de-sac beyond a quaint town square. I immediately understood why Vivi had chosen it, though I wasn’t entirely sure if it was to grant me privacy or to hide me away.

I sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, rocking my baby back and forth to the melody of an Italian pop song the taxi driver had played three times on the way over. I sang the wrong lyrics for a bit, but my voice kept faltering and I had to remind myself that I was not cut out for this. The room’s telephone rang, and I cursed under my breath.

“Mimi, why the hell aren’t you at the hospital?” Vivi chided at the end of the line.

“I’m more comfortable here,” I responded, matter-of-factly.

“So, you thought you’d leave in a 2,000-euro Versace dress without telling me?” She hissed. “Are you insane?”

Of course, it was the dress that had sent her into a frenzy. Not my health, not my pregnancy, not my baby. A fucking dress.

I rolled my eyes. “You can come pick it up tomorrow.”

“No, I’m coming tonight. I can’t be leaving you alone right now.”

Nearly two hours later, Vivi graced my doorstep, armed with what seemed like the entire baby aisle of a supermarket. She sashayed into the room, a waft of Poison by Dior inundating the space. She instantly helped me peel the dress off my body without a word and lay my baby in the cradle the hotel had provided. We exchanged our goods: one red dress for diapers and baby formula galore. She inspected the fabric, and I idiotically assumed the moment called for a joke about the invisibility of my blood against its vibrant color. Vivi looked up from her Bayonetta glasses and glared.

“What? It’s kind of funny.”

“Camille, you were pregnant for eight months without ever knowing about it. Next thing you know, you’re about to give birth in the middle of the Piazza del Duomo, on a Vespa, in front of a hundred staff members and tourists.” She removed her glasses to massage the sides of her nose bridge. “Nothing about this is funny.”

I lowered my eyes. “I know. I’m just not ready to unpack everything now.”

Vivi sighed and sat next to me on the edge of the bed. Her pencil skirt rode up her legs, and she kicked off her stilettos in the process of readjusting it. After a few minutes of struggle, she gave up and allowed the skirt to expose the tears in her stockings.

“I got you something else,” Vivi added before slyly sliding a Vogue magazine across the bed like one would a wad of cash in a back alley drug deal.

Tatiana’s body glistened as she lay in the shallow waters of a dirty swamp, Rapunzel-long hair coiling around her in vines. And those feline eyes stared into mine, challenging me to give in, to submit the sacred flesh to the ravages of mankind. In the bottom corner of the cover, the issue’s title read: “L'elogio di Madre Natura.” I flipped through its glossy pages to find the cover story’s spread and confirmed my theory: the undeniably political edge of the concept photos could only be the work of Stefano Galli, a revered fashion photographer in the industry. I felt a twinge of envy upon witnessing my dear friend’s success: any model would have killed to work with such a visionary, a young but lifelong friendship notwithstanding. I quickly shook away such thoughts and smiled, hoping that it would be a convincing display of the genuine pride I felt for my little Creole nymph. Green had never been my color anyway.

“She killed it,” Vivi said to fill the heavy silence.

I drew a breath and nodded in agreement, absentmindedly fingering the corner of the page.

“Maybe you should go wash up.”

It was then that I realized just how disheveled I looked in my strapless bra and underwear, my tangled hair cascading atop my shoulders. It had not occurred to me that my near nudity could be making Vivi uncomfortable, but something about the events of the day told me we were long past such prudishness. Nodding once more, I pulled an oversized T-shirt from my suitcase and disappeared into the bathroom. Locking myself inside, I did everything I could to prevent myself from crying. I knew that once the tears started rolling, they would never stop.

I foolishly believed a shower could wash away the day I had, but there wasn’t enough water in the world that would ever allow me to forget about it all. When I walked back out in a cloud of steam, Vivi was rocking my baby, occasionally caressing her blemish-free cheeks.

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.”

Her gaze softened. “How about Florence?”

“She isn’t 45.”

“Okay, okay.” She looked up to the cracked ceiling, her mind lost in thought. “Hmm, Talia? Because we’re in Italy.” She seemed even more proud of that one.

But I was unimpressed. “I’ll call her Lily for now… as a placeholder.”

“Mimi, Lily, and Vivi. We’re a dream team already.” But her tone did not match the lightness of her words. I turned towards her and watched as her smile dimmed and her face grew somber. “You really should go back to the hospital.”

I closed my eyes and exhaled in exasperation. “They checked both of us and said we were fine. Lily is fine. My spine is fine.”

“I don’t believe you, Camille.”

“Then, fine! Don’t believe me.” I looked away from Vivi, furrowing my brows in frustration. If I ignored the doctors’ orders, the pain firmly lodged in my back and every single nutritional deficiency I surely passed on to Lily, everything would turn out alright. “It doesn’t matter anyway; I’m not going back there.”

“I know it’s easy to make your health secondary in your line of work, but you can’t do this to her.” She lifted my baby for emphasis, forcing me to look at her defenseless face, daring me to cause her any amount of pain. “We’re not going back to Paris until I know that you and Lily are healthy and safe.”

It took me a moment to think about it, but I knew she was right. I didn’t only have my life to preserve, I had Lily’s. “Okay,” I relented. “But I’m not going back to Paris.”

“Why not?”

“I quit.”