Chapter 9: Scars and Whiskey
The silence after closing clung to the shop, thick as the scent of polish and rubber. Keiko leaned against the glass counter, the adrenaline of the day draining from her limbs, leaving a hollow, vibrating fatigue. The jade green dress felt less like armor now and more like a second skin she desperately needed to shed. Her phone, face-down on the counter, buzzed.
Liam was in the back, helping Eva tally the day’s insane receipts. Keiko flipped the phone over.
A text from her mother. Then another. Then three more in quick succession.
Mom: Keiko. Your aunt Michiko in San Francisco saw the newspaper online. She sent it to the family chat.
Mom: What is this? Is this a joke?
Mom: You are half-naked in some… rubber suit. On the floor. Laughing like a crazy person.
Mom: We did not send you to New York for this. To be a… a clown.
Mom: Your father is too angry to speak. Call me immediately.
The words didn’t just read; they seared. Each notification buzz felt like a physical slap. The proud glow of the day, the laughter with Liam, the woman from the Hamptons, the nodding approval of strangers—it all evaporated, leaving the cold, familiar ash of disappointment. Her vision blurred, the elegant lines of the boutique swimming into a nauseating watercolor.
“Keiko?” Eva’s voice cut through the haze. She was suddenly there, a platinum silhouette against the dark racks. Her sharp eyes took in the phone, the trembling hand, the way Keiko’s breath had hitched. “What’s wrong?”
Keiko tried to speak. A dry click came out. She shoved the phone across the counter toward Eva.
Eva picked it up, her blood-red nails tapping the screen as she read. Her expression didn’t change. It hardened, but not in surprise. In recognition. She placed the phone down gently. “Liam,” she called over her shoulder, her voice cool and controlled. “Be a love and run to the bodega. Get us some sparkling water. The fancy kind with the bubbles that hurt your nose.”
Liam appeared in the doorway, his smile fading as he absorbed the scene: Keiko, rigid and pale, Eva’s deliberate calm. He was smart. He didn’t ask. “Sure. Fancy bubbles. Got it.” He grabbed his jacket, brushed a hand over Keiko’s shoulder—a fleeting touch of solidarity—and was gone, the bell on the door jangling behind him.
The second the door shut, Eva moved. She went to a small, lacquered cabinet Keiko had always assumed held tailoring supplies. Instead, Eva produced a bottle of amber liquid and two heavy crystal tumblers. She poured two generous fingers into each, the liquid glugging softly. She pushed one across the counter to Keiko.
“Drink.”
“I don’t—”
“Drink it. You’re shaking.”
Keiko wrapped her hands around the glass. It was shockingly heavy. The smell, peaty and sharp, stung her nostrils. She took a sip. Fire traced a path down her throat, erupting in her stomach. She coughed, her eyes watering.
Eva didn’t sip. She took a full swallow, her eyes never leaving Keiko’s. “Let me guess,” she said, her voice a low, knowing rasp. “Traditional Asian family values. Honor. Propriety. ‘What will the relatives think?’”
The accuracy was a fresh wound. Keiko just nodded, staring into the whiskey.
“My father,” Eva said, placing her glass down with a definitive clink, “was a professor of French literature at Columbia. A very proper man. A man of le mot juste, the correct word, the correct thought, the correct life.” She began unbuttoning the cuff of her silk blouse, her movements precise. “When I was twenty-two, I came home with this.”
She rolled up her sleeve, revealing not just the tattoo Keiko had glimpsed before, but the full extent of it. It was a stunning, intricate sleeve of cherry blossoms in varying shades of pink and gray, branches winding from her wrist over her elbow, disappearing under the fabric of her blouse toward her shoulder. It was beautiful, and permanent, and utterly defiant.
“He threw a first edition of Baudelaire at my head,” Eva continued, a ghost of a smile on her lips. “Missed. Broke a vase my mother loved. He didn’t speak to me for two years. Not a word.” She took another drink. “Now, he’s retired. He plays golf in Florida. He brags to his retired professor friends about his daughter, the ‘avant-garde fashion artist’ in SoHo. He shows them pictures of my work in The New York Times.” She fixed Keiko with a piercing gaze. “He doesn’t show them the tattoo. But he knows it’s there. It’s the foundation of everything he’s bragging about.”
Keiko’s mind spun. The whiskey warmth was spreading, blurring the sharp edges of her panic. “Two years?”
“Two very quiet years. I worked three jobs. I lived in a basement apartment in Bushwick with cockroaches the size of my thumb. I learned to sew on a machine I borrowed from a drag queen named Chlorine.” Eva rolled her sleeve back down, meticulously re-buttoning the cuff. “The silence was… loud. But in that silence, I found my own voice. It turns out my voice is less about speaking and more about creating shapes that make other people feel powerful.”
“They think I’m a clown,” Keiko whispered, the words tearing out of her. “They think I’ve thrown away everything they worked for. That I’m embarrassing them.”
“You are,” Eva said bluntly. “Good. That’s the first step. You have to be embarrassing. You have to be ridiculous. You have to be everything their narrow world cannot accommodate. Otherwise, you’ll spend your life folded up neatly in a drawer, like a sweater they only bring out for special occasions to show how well-behaved you are.”
Keiko thought of her dorm room, the careful, neutral colors. The map with its safe, tourist-friendly pins. The way she used to make herself smaller in lectures, voiceless.
“What do I do?” The question was a plea.
“You have a choice. You can call them. You can apologize. You can say it was a silly one-time thing, a mistake, that you’re focusing on your pre-law studies.” Eva’s tone made it clear this was the worst possible path. “Or, you can wait. You can let the silence sit. It will be awful. You will feel like you are dissolving. And then, you will realize you are not. You are solidifying. And while you’re solidifying, you do the work.”
“The work.”
“The black suit is pressed and ready for Thursday. The colloquium at Parsons. You will stand in front of those fashion intellectuals, in my clothes, and you will talk about the dialogue between body and garment. You will give your parents something real to be confused about. Not a picture. A career. A point of view.” Eva finished her whiskey. “They will come around, or they won’t. But you will be here. And you will be someone.”
The door opened, the bell jingling with a horrifying normalcy. Liam came in, holding a bag. He saw the tears streaking Keiko’s makeup, the empty glasses, Eva’s defiant posture. He didn’t say a word. He put the bag on the counter and simply walked behind it, wrapping his arms around Keiko from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder. His presence was a wall against the world.
Keiko leaned into him, the cool latex of her dress pressing against his shirt. She looked at Eva, then at her phone, dark and accusing on the counter.
She picked up the whiskey glass and drained the last of it, the burn now a comforting ember.
“Okay,” she said, her voice rough but clear.
“Okay what?” Eva asked.
“Okay, I’ll do the work.”
She didn’t reach for her phone. Instead, she reached for Liam’s hand, lacing her fingers through his. The silence from across the country would be loud. She would let it scream. Here, in the dim, fragrant boutique, she had a dress to take off, a skin to reclaim, and a speech to write for a room full of people waiting to hear what she had to say.
Here, in the dim, fragrant boutique, she had a dress to take off, a skin to reclaim, and a speech to write for a room full of people waiting to hear what she had to say. The whiskey’s heat faded, replaced by a cold, clear focus. She changed back into her street clothes, the simple cotton a relief against her skin, the jade dress returning to its husk of plastic on a hanger.
“Walk her home, Liam,” Eva instructed, already wiping down the glass counter with a brisk, final swipe. “And no drafting speeches tonight. Sleep. The words will come tomorrow when you’re not smelling like panic and Scotch.”
He did walk her home, his arm a steady weight across her shoulders. The city’s night sounds—cabs honking, laughter spilling from bars—felt like they were happening behind glass. “You okay?” he asked, his voice low near her ear.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “But I will be.”
Her phone remained dark and silent in her bag. She didn’t touch it. She slept a deep, dreamless sleep, and in the morning, the silence from her family was a tangible presence in her dorm room, a third occupant. She acknowledged it, then opened her laptop to a blank document. The cursor blinked. She titled it: Colloquium Notes.
The work began.
For the next four days, her world contracted to a triangle: her dorm, the boutique, and the practice space of her own voice. Liam was her first audience, her most patient editor. They sprawled on the floor of her room, surrounded by highlighted printouts and empty coffee cups.
“So, the dialogue isn’t verbal,” she said, reading aloud, her voice tentative. “It’s structural. The garment proposes a shape, a possibility. The body accepts, or resists, or… transforms it.”
“Good,” Liam said, nibbling on a pen. “But ‘proposes’ feels a bit formal. Like a business meeting. What’s a better word?”
Keiko thought, staring at the laughing photo she’d pinned above her desk. “The garment… suggests. Yeah. It suggests a braver version of you. And you get to decide if you accept the suggestion.”
“Perfect. Write that.”
She practiced in front of him until her delivery lost its robotic cadence, until she could look up from her notes and hold his gaze without faltering. He asked gentle, probing questions. “What did the harness feel like, not look like?” “Why was laughing the right response, not a serious pose?” He helped her mine her own experience for the raw material of authority.
After closing the shop each evening, she’d stand amid the racks and mannequins while Eva polished a cuff or sorted orders. Eva listened, her green eyes missing nothing.
“Stop apologizing with your posture,” Eva snapped during the first run-through. “You’re listing to the left like you’re waiting for a blow. Plant your feet. Own the floorboards.”
Keiko adjusted, squaring her shoulders.
“The bit about the seams being like architectural lines is strong,” Eva said later, critical and precise. “But connect it back to yourself. You’re not a textbook. You’re the building. Tell them what the weather feels like inside this new architecture.”
The feedback was relentless, sculptural. Eva chipped away at the academic hedging, at the timid phrases, revealing the compelling core beneath. “They don’t want a theory from you,” Eva said, finalizing a zipper on a daring cobalt catsuit. “They have theorists. They want the proof. You’re the proof. Show them the woman in the window.”
Keiko looked at the large print of her own laughing face, now displayed prominently in the boutique’s window, drawing glances from passersby. That joy was not an accident; it was a argument. She wove it into the talk.
Her sentences became cleaner, more assertive. Her gestures, once fluttery, became deliberate. She learned to pause. She learned to let a insight hang in the air. She was not just preparing a presentation; she was constructing a self that could deliver it.
On the third day, her mother’s name flashed again on her phone. A call this time. Keiko watched it ring, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. The silence after it went to voicemail was profound. She didn’t listen to the message. Instead, she opened her email.
She found the digital invitation from Parsons, the one with the secure link to the live stream of the colloquium. It was a polished, professional thing, featuring the event title and a bland stock photo of a lecture hall. It was the most powerful weapon she had.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard, purposeful and calm. She didn’t craft a long defense. She didn’t explain or justify. She wrote a single sentence: If you would like to see what I’m doing in New York, I will be speaking here.
She attached the link. She hit send.
The act was quiet, but it felt like slamming a door and opening a window at the same time. She was not asking for permission. She was not begging for understanding. She was offering, for the first time, a direct line to her real self, unmediated by shame or expectation. They could choose to watch, or they could choose to look away. The power of that choice, for once, was hers.
She stood up from her desk, walked to the window, and looked out at the city’s electric grid. Somewhere, in a quiet suburban house three thousand miles away, her parents’ computer had just chimed with her response. The silence between them was no longer empty; it was now charged with the potential of her own voice, waiting to fill it.
The silence between them was no longer empty; it was now charged with the potential of her own voice, waiting to fill it. That night, she slept fitfully, her mind rehearsing sentences that dissolved into nonsense. The morning of the colloquium dawned gray and drizzly, the city slick with reflected neon and anxious energy. Keiko moved through her classes like a ghost, the notes on her desk blurring into a smear of black and white.
Her phone buzzed at 4:47 PM. A text from Eva.
Meet me at the shop at 6. And bring a long overcoat.
A concrete instruction. A task. Keiko clung to it. She fumbled in her closet for the only long coat she owned, a sensible, knee-length wool thing her mother had bought her for “professional interviews.” The irony was almost funny. Liam met her at her dorm, his hair damp from the drizzle. “Ready for your unveiling?” he asked, trying for lightness, but she saw the concern in his eyes.
“I have a coat,” she said, holding it up like a shield.
“Perfect start.”
The walk to Second Skin felt different. Every puddle seemed to reflect the glowing “PARSONS” banner she’d seen online. Every stranger’s glance felt like assessment. The boutique was a welcome cave, its familiar scents of talc and rubber a strange comfort. Eva was waiting, a look of intense concentration on her face. She didn’t greet them with words. She simply gestured to a garment bag hanging from the ceiling light, a black silhouette against the bright bulb.
“Open it,” Eva said.
Keiko unzipped the bag. The air left her lungs.
Inside was not the structured black suit she’d worn for the Times shoot. This was something else entirely. It was a catsuit, pure and simple, but rendered in a latex so profoundly black it seemed to swallow the light. It was high-necked, long-sleeved, with a subtle matte finish that promised a thousand secret highlights. It looked liquid and solid all at once, sensual in its stark simplicity, powerful in its total coverage.
“It’s your skin,” Eva said, her voice low and certain. “Your second skin, for your second self. The one who speaks tonight.”
Keiko reached out, touching the material. It was cool, impossibly smooth.
“You put this on here,” Eva continued, moving closer. “And you wear the coat over it. Buttoned to the top.” Her green eyes held Keiko’s, unblinking. “And as you speak, you slowly unbutton your coat. Revealing the beautiful butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. A visual thesis. Understood?”
The plan was audacious. It was theater. It was perfect. Keiko nodded, her throat tight.
“Let’s get you in,” Liam said, his hands already gentle on her shoulders. Eva turned the open sign to closed and drew the curtain across the glass door. The back room was warm, intimate. With their help, Keiko shed her street clothes. The catsuit was heavier than it looked, a weight of intention.
She stepped into the legs, the latex clinging instantly. Liam guided it up over her hips, her stomach, her arms. He was meticulous, easing the material over her shoulders without a single pinch. The high neck sealed her in, a comforting pressure around her throat. She felt sealed, integrated. Eva produced a bottle of shine and a soft cloth, and Liam set to work, polishing every inch until the matte black gleamed with a deep, starless-night luster.
Keiko looked in the full-length mirror. A stranger, elegant and severe, looked back. The person who belonged in a lecture hall at Parsons. The person with something to say.
“Wow,” Liam breathed, stepping back. “You look… ready.”
Eva handed her the sensible wool coat. Keiko put it on, the contrast almost laughable. The bulky, conservative wool hid every sleek, radical line. She buttoned it from hem to throat, a perfect disguise. “The transformation is in the reveal,” Eva said, adjusting the collar with a final, almost maternal tug. “Now, go. Your chariot awaits.”
An Uber idled at the curb. The three of them slid into the backseat, a silent, determined party. The driver glanced in the mirror. “Big night?” he asked amiably.
“The biggest,” Liam said, his hand finding Keiko’s on the seat between them. His palm was warm against the cool latex covering her own.
The city streamed by outside the window, a blur of light and motion. Keiko watched it, feeling the subtle creak of the catsuit with each breath, the secret she carried beneath the plain wool. Her phone, buried in her coat pocket, remained silent. No calls. No texts. She didn’t know if her parents had clicked the link, if they were waiting at a computer screen three thousand miles away. It didn’t matter in this moment. All that mattered was the building growing closer, the coat on her body, and the words she had grown in the silence, waiting now to be spoken.
The Uber stopped at the curb of a severe, modern building all sharp angles and glass. The lobby was a rush of polished concrete and the low hum of a hundred conversations. A student volunteer with a headset spotted them, her eyes widening at the sight of Eva. “You’re with the colloquium? This way, please.”
They were ushered down a corridor lined with student work—avant-garde sculptural dresses, deconstructed tailoring. The air smelled of hot electronics and ambition. The volunteer pushed open heavy wooden doors.
They arrived at Parsons, and the three were brought to the lecture hall already abuzz in anticipation. It was steep, almost theatrical, with rows of seats curving down toward a modest stage and a simple podium. It was three-quarters full, a sea of asymmetrical haircuts, thick-framed glasses, and black clothing. The murmur was intellectual, eager.
Eva and Liam sat in the front row and talked to each other in low tones. “She’s green around the gills,” Liam muttered, watching Keiko hover backstage, visible through a crack in the side curtain.
“Good,” Eva said, not taking her eyes off the crowd. “It means she cares. Nerves are just energy. She’ll use it.”
A man in a perfectly tailored charcoal suit approached the podium. The dean of the school came out and provided opening remarks. His voice was calm, professorial. He spoke about the dialogue between creator and muse, about the body as the first canvas. “Tonight,” he said, “we are privileged to hear from both sides of that creative conversation.”
He also introduced Eva, who stood and waved at the audience with a regal, practiced flick of her wrist. A ripple of applause, respectful, knowing. She sat back down, a satisfied cat.
Then he introduced Keiko. “A young woman whose authentic presence in the recent Times feature caught our eye. Not a model, but a collaborator. Please welcome Keiko Tanaka.”
Keiko walked up to the microphone, the wool coat feeling like a leaden shell. The stage lights were hot and blinding, reducing the audience to a dark, shapeless mass. She adjusted the mic, the screech of feedback making her wince. She saw Liam’s encouraging nod, Eva’s sharp, expectant gaze.
She started her talk, her voice thin in the speakers at first. She discussed her personal journey as a college student coming from a small town in Vermont. “I spent a year feeling like a ghost here,” she said, the words gaining strength as she recited the truth. “I was present, but I had no texture. No sound. I felt unseen and unheard.”
She described the campus, the overwhelming rush, the silence inside her. “I answered an ad for a retail job because I needed to pay for books.” A slight, knowing chuckle from the fashion students in the crowd. “That ad started me on a journey of discovery. I walked into Second Skin and saw garments that weren’t about hiding. They were about proposing a new shape for the person inside.”
This led into the body of her speech. She spoke about architecture, about the harness that felt like being held. As she started the main topic and highlighted the key discussion points, her hands, which had been clenched on the podium, began to move. She gestured to illustrate a seam, the line of a shoulder.
With one hand, she slowly, over the course of time, unbuttoned the coat.
The top button came free as she discussed “the suggestion of structure.” The second button loosened with a point about “the dialogue between resistance and acceptance.” She didn’t rush. It was a parallel narrative. Each released button was a sentence punctuated. The heavy wool began to fall open, revealing a sliver of profound black beneath.
She spoke of vulnerability as a design principle. A third button. She talked about the laughter in the photo, the joy of discovering a braver shape. A fourth. The coat was now hanging open, the matte-black catsuit fully visible beneath, gleaming under the lights like a deep space between stars.
“The garment isn’t the transformation,” she said, her voice clear and filling the hall without the microphone’s help. “It’s the invitation. You have to accept it. You have to step into the new architecture and decide to live there.”
And finally at the conclusion, she dropped the coat.
It slid from her shoulders with a heavy whisper, pooling at her feet on the stage. She stood revealed in her latex glory, a sleek, powerful silhouette against the bright backdrop. The audience drew a collective, sharp breath. Then silence.
Keiko stepped away from the podium, out from behind its shield. She looked at the dark crowd, at Liam’s proud, stunned face, at Eva’s slight, triumphant smile.
She capped it off with a phone, and her natural laughter—like the one in the photograph—was greeted and returned by the audience with laughter and applause. It was a release of tension, a burst of real, shared joy. The applause was not polite anymore; it was vigorous, warm, enveloping.
What followed was a Q&A session, as she fielded questions from both students and faculty. Her confidence overflowed. A young man asked about the tension between fashion and comfort. “Discomfort is a kind of information,” Keiko answered, without missing a beat. “It tells you where you’re resisting the change. Sometimes you listen to it. Sometimes you push through it.”
A professor asked about the commercialization of radical design. Keiko glanced at Eva. “I think the most radical thing is making someone feel powerful in their own skin. If that happens in a boutique or a classroom, it’s still radical.”
Even Eva was asked a few questions. She was concise, witty, deflecting praise onto Keiko. “I make the suggestion,” Eva said, pointing a sharp nail at Keiko on stage. “She provides the courage. That’s the collaboration.”
As the evening wound to a close, the dean retook the mic and concluded the evening. He thanked them, called the dialogue “illuminating,” and invited everyone to a small reception in the adjacent gallery.
The house lights came up. Keiko, suddenly shy again, bent to pick up her discarded coat. Liam was already vaulting onto the stage, ignoring the steps. He didn’t say a word. He just wrapped her in a hug, careful not to crush the latex. “You,” he whispered into her hair, “were absolutely fucking magnificent.”
Eva ascended the steps more gracefully, nodding to a few approaching faculty. She stopped in front of Keiko, looked her up and down, and gave a single, firm nod. “You did the work.”
People swarmed the stage then—students wanting selfies, professors offering business cards, a woman from a downtown gallery murmuring about a potential installation. Keiko answered questions, her hand tightly in Liam’s, the latex cool under the admiring touches. She was floating, anchored only by their presence.
Across the room, perched on a table of canapés, her phone in her coat pocket lit up. A notification. Then another. Then a third.
She didn’t see them. She was too busy being seen.