Just Another Damn Love Story (22 page)

“You should allow me to take care of you also,”  Sterling told her.  “Let me give you a little money each month to help out.”

“I’m fine, Sterling.  I’m a New York corporate attorney with a degree from Harvard Law, and a business degree from Wharton.  I bill my clients out the ass.   Besides, if I ever want your money, I'll take you to court, whip your attorney’s ass, and bleed you dry.”

Again Sterling laughed.  He loved Carmela for precisely the reasons she named.  She had always been smart, confident, and strong.  His love for strong women was something he inherited from watching his mother and his nana work and raise families.  They were powerful women, and so was Carmela.  He knew it the moment he met her on the yard in Cambridge.  He hoped that his son would get lucky and marry a woman like his mother.

“I’m still looking for someone to run the women’s line at Vespasian, interested?”

Carmela shook her head.  “Not a snowball’s chance in hell.”

Sterling laughed.

“I hear that the new love of your life is a pretty talented designer, and that she’s already in the industry.”

Sterling lifted an eyebrow.  “You’ve been talking to Wilson, haven’t you?”

“You know that I cannot
stand
Wilson,”  Carmela said dryly.

“Who’s been filling you in?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,”  Carmela said with a smile.  “You know I can’t reveal my sources.”

“Your source has a pretty big mouth.”

“That’s the way sources usually are.  So, are you going to make nice with her or what?”

Sterling shrugged.  “What was that you said about not looking back?”

“Touche,”  she said with a smile.  “You got me on that one.  But then again, I don’t think that this girl is looking back.  I think that she’s about moving forward.  Not often that we professional negroes find someone in our age, income, and education brackets.”

“Is that why you’re rooting for her?”  Sterling asked with a smile.

“Who says that I’m rooting for
her
?”  She said, leaning over and nudging his shoulder with hers.  “I’m in the Sterling Williams cheering section.  I just want you to be happy, babe.”

Sterling nodded.  “I’m happy.”

Carmela rose.  “I’ll tell you what.  You hang out here with him, and I’ll go home and cook us all some dinner.  You come by, have dinner with us, help him with his homework, and help him get his things together for school tomorrow.”

Sterling closed his eyes and shook his head.  “Thank you so much, Mel.”

“Don’t mention it.  Besides, you look like you could use a good meal anyway.”

Carmela turned, and strutted away with her Manolo Blahnik heels clicking, leaving him wafting in her Chanel No. 5 perfume.

Chapter Twenty Eight

Kimberly lifted her feet onto the bed, and brushed on another coat of nail polish.

“That color is so pretty!”  Mia told her.

“I can’t wear that color, and I hate you for being able to!”  Brittany told her.

“Why can’t you?”

“Because, orange, or peach, or pink just makes me look like a pale, bleached Barbie!”  Brittany whined.  “I have never been able to wear those colors.  I would die to be able to die my hair orange or red.”

“Why?”  Mia asked, staring at Brittany as if she were crazy.  “You have the most beautiful blonde hair in the world.  Chicks would die to have your hair.”

“And pay good money for it,”  Kim added.  “Blonde is in.”

“Is not!”  Brittany told them.

“Is too!”  Mia said.

“I saw Mary J. at Carnegie during the Wyclef charity show.”  Brittany told them.  “That orange with the blonde tips that she was rocking in that pixie cut, was off the charts!”

“Chain, Brittany,”  Mia corrected her.  “Off the chain.”

“Charts, Mia.  You say chain, I say charts.  How about that?”  Brittany leaned forward, and applied a liberal coat of red to her toenails.

Mia began to place tiny diamond studs on her freshly painted toenails in a funky design pattern.

“That is so cute!”  Kim told her.

“Thank you,”  Mia smiled. “You want me to hook you up when I’m done?”

“Do you have enough diamonds?”  Kim asked.

Mia lifted a tiny plastic container sitting next to her and shook it.  It rattled.  “Girl, I got a whole box full.”

“I want some!”  Brittany said excitedly.  She leaped from the couch and raced to where Mia was seated on the floor and plopped down next to her.  “Girl, that is so pretty!  You need to open up your own shop!”

“Bitch, that is so racist!”  Mia shouted.

“What?”  Brittany asked, turning up her palms and staring at Kim.

“I’m Asian, so I need to open up a
nail
shop
?”  Mia asked.

“I wasn’t saying it because you were Asian, but because you’re were good at it,”  Brittany explained.

“And maybe I should talk like this,”  Mia said in a thick Asian accent.  “Ahhh me so horny!  Me love you long time!”

Kim and Mia burst into laughter.

“What?”  Brittany asked, staring at them with a lost look on her face.

“Relax, bitch!”  Mia shouted.  “Stop being so sensitive.  We don’t wear that shit on our shoulder around here!”

Brittany joined in the laughter.  “Okay, you got me.”

“Besides, if there is any one of us who needs their own business, it’s Kimmie here,”  Mia told them.

“Me?”

Mia nodded.  “I saw your new sketches on the table.  Girl, I would rock those new peasant blouses that you have.  Especially the ones with the neck piece connected to them!  That shit is live and in effect!”

Kimberly and Brittany stared at one another for several moments, before Kim shook her head.  “No more BET for you, Mia.”

Mia pointed toward Kim.  “Stop playing.”

Brittany walked to the table and flipped through Kimberly’s new sketches.  “Girl, Mia is right, you need your own shit.”

“Get out of here!”  Kimberly said, waving her hand and dismissing them.

“I’m serious, Kim!”  Brittany told her.

“Me too!”  Mia nodded.  “Your designs are better than anything in the stores right now.  I haven’t seen anything in Elle, Ms., Vogue, Essence, Town and Country, Harper's, or Mocha that can touch your stuff.  You should really do it, Kimmie.”

“It’s not like you have anything else to do right now,”  Brittany reminded her.  “You’re not getting up and going to work anymore.”

“I wouldn’t know the first thing about getting started,”  Kim told them.

“You said that it’s your time, right?”  Mia asked.

Kim nodded.

“Well, you have to make it your time, you just can’t speak that shit into existence,”  Mia told her.  “Get off your ass and get on the internet.”

“Go down to city hall and get some information on starting a business,”  Brittany told her.

“Yeah, I know that the city has business incubators that’ll help you along,”  Mia added.

“And do what?  Design, and then what?”

“Have your designs turned into reality,”  Brittany told her.

“You send them off to Canada or Mexico or The Philippines and have someone make them and ship the finished product back to you.”  Mia told her.

“Send my designs to a sweatshop in the Philippines, and have someone bootleg my designs?”  Kim asked, lifting any eyebrow.

“Girl, you copyright your work, and if you’re not comfortable with Mexico or Thailand, or Taiwan, or The Philippines, you do Canada,”  Brittany told her.

“Oh, I know!”  Mia said, bouncing up and down excitedly.  “You do Africa!  You can find a garment manufacturing firm in Senegal, or the Ivory Coast, or even Liberia, because they could use the money to help them rebuild after the civil wars they've just had.  The United States has zero tariffs on textiles and garments imported from Africa in order to help their economies.  You can get a great price on the work, and have it shipped over here at a reasonable price, and you won’t have to pay any tariffs on the goods!”

“Why do you always have to get political?”  Kim asked.  “Besides, I’m not sure if I want to support some African sweatshop, any more than I want to support a Philippino one.”

“Okay, well then have then sewn in Italy, big money!”  Mia said sarcastically.

“Which brings me to the next line on the agenda!”  Kim said.  “I don’t have the money to pay anyone to manufacture my designs.  And even if I did, I would have to spend a great deal of time trying to get buyers interested in my products.  That would take up all of my time, time which I don’t have.  Time that I need to run the business and design other ensembles.”

“Screw that!”  Brittany told her.  “Don’t do it that way.  Take your designs straight to the streets.”

“The streets?”  Kim recoiled.

“The mean streets of Manhattan, baby!”  Brittany said, hi-fiving Mia. 

“You can open up your own boutique to sell your own products!”  Brittany told her.

“I know a perfect little store front, right in the fashion district!”  Mia said, clasping her hands together.  “It’s so quaint.”

“And how much is this quaint place in the middle of the fashion district going to cost?”  Kim asked.  She held up her hands.  “Wait a minute.  It doesn’t even matter.  I can’t afford a place in the middle of the worst neighborhood in Jersey, so it doesn’t matter.  We’re just dreaming.”

“Why, Kim?”  Mia asked.  “Why are we just dreaming?”

“Reality starts off as a dream!”  Brittany said excitedly.

“I don’t have the money!”  Kim told them.

“We can get the money!”  Mia told her.

“How?”  Kim asked.  “I’m not going to my parents!  Not for that.  There is no way I could ask my mother for that money.  She would have a field day gloating.”

“I’m not saying go to your mother,”  Mia told her.  “I’m saying, go to your sisters!”

“My sister?”  Kim asked.

“No, your
sisters
!”  Brittany said, understanding what Mia was getting at. 

“I have some money saved up,”  Mia told her.

“Oh, no!”  Kim said, waving her hand and dismissing Mia’s offer.  “Money and friendship, and business and sisterhood do not mix!”

“We wouldn’t be giving you the money,”  Brittany told her.

Kim shook her head.  “I couldn’t let you loan me that type of money.  God only knows why, or how, or if I would ever be able to pay you back!”

“We wouldn’t be loaning it to you either.”  Mia told her.

“What are you talking about then?”  Kimberly asked.

“We would be investors,”  Brittany explained.

“Yeah,”  Mia said nodding.  “We would be partners in the boutique and the clothing line.”

“Partners?”  Kim asked skeptically.

Brittany nodded.  “The three of us would be equal partners.  We would put up the money, and help out on the weekends and after work.  You put up the talent, and run things during the day.”

Kim shook her head.  “Thanks, guys, but I don’t know about this.  I’m honored that you believe in me enough to do this, but…”

“But my ass, Kimberly!”  Mia told her.  “You got the talent, and we’ve got the bread.  Why not make it happen.  What have we got to lose?”

“How about your money?”  Kim told her.

Mia shrugged.  “I can always make more.”

“And I can always run to Daddy for more,”  Brittany said with a smile.

“You two really want to put your money into this?”  Kim asked.

“I’m writing a check to the company for a hundred grand,”  Mia told her.  “We can go and open up a company bank account tomorrow.”

“I’ll deposit the same,”  Brittany told her.  “If we need more, I’ll deposit more.”

“Two hundred grand should get us the building, the display racks, and enough to hire some help,”  Mia said.  “It’ll also get us enough garments made to start off really well.”

“We’ll need some cute purses and shoes!”  Brittany told her. 

“Right, we can’t have a clothing line without some cute bags and shoes!”  Mia concurred.

“And we’ll need a name!”  Brittany said.

“Something catchy!”  Mia told them.

They both turned toward Kimberly.

“Our names?”  Kim asked.   “Our first initials?”

“In alphabetical order?”  Mia asked.

“BKM?”  Brittany asked.

“BKM Manhattan!”  Kimberly suggested.

“BKM Manhattan Couture!”  Brittany said.

“I like that!”  Mia said, pointing toward Brittany.

“That’s it!”  Kim said, now growing more animated.  “BKM Manhattan Couture!”

“Donna Karan, eat your heart out!”  Mia shouted.

“Wait until you see the new leather bag that I’m designing for the company!”  Kim told them.  She waved her hand through the air in grandiose fashion.  “The new BKM Manhattan Couture, Fifth Avenue Bag!”

Mia bounced up and down excitedly.  Kimberly and Brittany quickly joined her, and the three of them began to bounce all over the furnishings throughout the room.

“Paris, here we come!”  Mia shouted.

“Look out Louis Vuitton!”  Brittany shouted.

Kimberly raced to the table and flipped open her design portfolio.  “I have all kinds of ideas running through my head!” 

Brittany and Mia joined her at the table, peering over her shoulder. 

“We can name our bags after the different Avenues,”  Kim told them.  “Their can be a First Avenue Bag, a Second Avenue Bag, and so on and so forth.  We can do a Carnegie line of upscale gowns and tuxedos.  We can do a Fifth Avenue After Dark collection of tasteful but sexy undergarments for women.  We can do a Fifth Avenue Black label of luxury garments, a Fifth Avenue Purple label, a Fifth Avenue Brown Label, all kinds of possibilities!  We are going to rock the fashion world!”

“Whoah!”  Mia shouted.  “That’s the Kimmie I know from Princeton!”

Kimberly lifted her pencil and began sketching.  She knew that months ago, she wouldn't have even contemplated such a bold move, no matter how convincing Mia and
Brittany were.  She was only doing this for one reason, and one reason only.  It was because a certain man had told her that she could.  He told her that she was worthy, and that she could do anything that she put her mind to.  A certain man had built her up, and given her the confidence to do bold things.  Quitting her job had been the first step along this path that she knew that she would eventually take.  She had just been trying to figure out a way to get a loan, and then ask her Dad for the rest of the money.  But now Mia and Brittany had come through for her.