Now, Detective, I know what you’re thinking. Wouldn’t the black factory eat into the profits of the legitimate one? The answer is no, not necessarily. Generally speaking, the customer who drops a couple hundred dollars for a one-to-one is not at all the same person who pays upward of two thousand dollars for the real thing. Mandy Mak wouldn’t be cannibalizing her legitimate factories but growing her family’s handbag empire as a whole. All she had to do was make sure the international brands never, ever found out.
To be clear, the whole plan was outrageous, truly outrageous. I couldn’t fathom why Winnie had bothered to recount it to me instead of rejecting it outright. The international brands, already skittish about manufacturing their goods in China, yet unable to walk away from the cheap labor, implemented harsh regulations to combat IP theft. Leftover materials had to be accounted for down to the millimeter; blueprints were stored in industrial safes, factory rejects swiftly destroyed.
But when I attempted to warn Winnie about the riskiness of this new venture, to express the opinion that had Boss Mak been in better health, he’d have roundly rejected this move, she replied with a smirk and said, I’ve never seen him turn down money, and this is a hell of a lot of it. She quickly came to the conclusion that I had to go to Dongguan to work out the details of this new partnership, one that would make the Maks our sole supplier of counterfeit handbags.
I argued that the plan was too dangerous, that the Maks could never pull it off, that Winnie was giving up too much power, and all for something that was doomed to fail.
I even tried to appeal to her ego. This was your ingenious scheme, I said. You’re the one who made this all happen. And now, if they control the supply chain, you’re at their mercy. You work for them.
Frankly, Detective, I can’t say for sure if I truly bought into my own arguments, or if I was just grasping for reasons to decline the trip. Because even then I knew what it meant: to go to Dongguan would be to become Winnie’s proxy, to leap from employee to partner, equally accountable, equally culpable, equally entangled with the Maks and their numerous other illegitimate schemes.
And so I tried to buy myself some time, suggesting we take a few weeks to consider our options, but Winnie wouldn’t hear of it. She swept an arm through the air, as though that could vanquish all my concerns.
No, she said. I didn’t get this far by playing it safe. We’re in.
Desperate, I told her I couldn’t leave Henri.
In a tone laced with disdain, she said. Come on, not this again.
Oli will never let me go. You know how he is.
Her expression hardened. Well, if you can’t talk to him, I can. In fact, I can tell him everything. Is that what you want?
The skin on the back of my neck prickled. I searched her face for any traces of humor or irony—surely, she was kidding. Surely, she was a split second away from barking out a laugh. Instead, I found only pure distilled scorn. In that moment I saw Winnie for who she truly was: not an awkward bookworm, nor a brilliant iconoclast, but a common thug.
I said, All right. When should I leave?
She clapped her hands, instantly returned to her old cheerful self. The shift was dizzying.
We’ll get you on the next flight out. It’ll be great, you’ll see. As though she hadn’t just threatened to ruin me, my marriage, my life.
That evening, when Oli walked through the door, weary and depleted, as he always was at the end of the week, I was ready to press my case. His favorite boeuf bourguignon—the only thing I’d ever learned to cook—simmered on the stove; four kinds of hard and soft cheeses and an assortment of water crackers were fanned out across the walnut board; a good red Burgundy beckoned from the decanter.
I served my husband a steaming helping of the rich, dark stew. The meat was tender, the shallots fragrant, the mushrooms glossy as pearls. He inched his chair to mine and laid his head on my shoulder. I pressed the pads of my fingers into his scalp and he practically purred.
That was when I told him about the trip.
His head launched up like a basketball. Shenzhen, China? Day after tomorrow?
I reminded him that Winnie couldn’t leave the country because of her citizenship application and I was the only lawyer on staff. I heard the words leave my mouth and fail to make sense, so I babbled on and on. But since I couldn’t reveal the real reason for the trip, all Oli could gather was that I was jetting off once again, at the last minute, and worse, leaving our son behind.
Ava, tell me the truth, are you having an affair? he asked.
The piece of meat in my mouth turned to gristle and I spat it into my napkin.
Your hair, he said, gesturing at my new auburn highlights, and those colorful dresses, it’s so fucking cliché.
I swore I was faithful; he was the one who’d always chided me to wear more color, I did it for him! I tried to explain that business in China had to be done face-to-face, that I would shake some hands and sign some stuff and turn around and fly right back, oh, except that my grandmother was turning ninety this week, and for once in my life I’d be able to celebrate with her, and surely he could grant me that much?
What’s come over you? he asked. Can you hear how bizarre you sound right now?
I shut my mouth.
Oli pushed aside his plate. Our son’s being raised by his nanny.
Now this was too much. My carefully laid-out argument splintered like a log. I roared back, And that’s my fault? Coming from a man who lives apart from his family for the majority of the week?
You know the kind of hours I’m working, Oli said, his voice cracking. This’ll be the first day off I’ve had in three weeks.
Here the regular me, the real me, would have caught myself, would have stopped and listened. The possessed me charged on, thinking only of herself.
Oh, come now, you knew what you were getting into. No one forced you.
He blanched. Fine. Pay Maria to stay the entire time you’re gone. I can’t drive back and forth from Palo Alto every night.
I’m glad your priorities are so clear. I stormed around the room searching for my phone so I could send Maria a message, offer another raise.
He said, You’re the one upending our lives with this so-called job. For christ’s sake, I don’t even know what it is you do.
That’s because you never listen, I yelled from the kitchen, where my phone had been resting precariously close to the sink. I’ve told you a half dozen times, but all you do is work, work, work and then come home on the weekend and spend fifteen minutes here and there playing with your son. You call that parenting?
In lieu of a response there was a deafening crash. I ran back to the dining room where, in a highly uncharacteristic move, Oli had swept the Baccarat crystal vase that had been a gift from his mother off the sideboard and onto the floor.
He stood there with his head in his hands, shoulders heaving with each breath. A lifetime ago I would have taken him in my arms, nestled my face into the warm hollow beneath his chin. Instead, I told him, Clean that up before you leave, and walked out of the room.
Three days after Winnie first proposed and then ordered me on this trip, I landed at the Shenzhen airport in the middle of a deluge. I was lamenting my failure to pack an umbrella when I caught sight of my name on a placard, held by a young man in a budget suit with stylishly shaggy collar-length hair.
Despite my protests, he wrested my Rollaboard from me and dashed into the downpour beneath a capacious black golf umbrella, promising to return with the car.