Before Mimi met Mark she lived with Renee in a narrow brick rowhome on a wide street with cracking asphalt and buzzing electric lines. The walls were thin and the windows wide. In the summer their skin stuck to one another's when they sat on the couch. That time of the year the structure would betray them, the oak floors warping and black orbs budding up and spreading in vines from the ceiling. But they managed to keep a healthy monstera plant on top of the fridge, and hung a cotton tapestry over the worst of the mold in the living room. The cloth smelled of patchouli and the long-haired man at the flea market said the bird in the middle was a fertility god. Neither of them believed in the phoenix until Renee woke up on a thick August morning with blood clots on her sheets, and what she swore was a small human brain cooking in the sunlight. They took it down the next day.  

Back then Mimi was working at a book shop. The owner, an old Persian lady with soft hands and a voice like peach nectar, said Mimi should focus on being a writer. Parisa had never read anything Mimi wrote, but she saw the way the girl watched people. This was enough for her. Parisa felt more seen by Mimi than she had by anyone else in forty years. “One day,” she had said as she stacked books in the window, “all women stop existing.”

Mimi never showed her the stories she jotted down while she worked the till. Tales of a lovely little woman who lived alone. Clarisa, she called her, brought yellow into a room. Books opened and young women fell in step behind her, changing forms in the midday hues.

She quit the book shop three months before Parisa grabbed a pen instead of eyeliner one morning, stabbed her eye and ended up in a memory care facility. Mimi didn’t visit her, even though she kept promising herself she would. Mark said the old woman surely had plenty of friends. Plus, he told her, those places are dreary. They make you sick. 

Mark was from Ohio and he worked at a bank with a dubious record and a skyscraper office Mimi refused to go to. “You won’t be corrupted by sitting at my desk,” he’d scoff. For some reason she could not shake the feeling that she would. 

They met at a friend’s birthday dinner. Mimi wove her life into his ear over ravioli and wine. His hair tickled her nose and she sighed that she was just tired. She had started as an assistant editor at a home-design magazine headquartered in New York. She was working at Parisa’s shop three days a week, and commuting to the city the other four. The commute was long, and the night before she had woken up with a clump of her hair on her pillow. He drew circles on her palm and asked why she was still working at the bookstore. “Take care of yourself,” he whispered. 

The next day Mimi returned to the shop in a brown pantsuit she reserved for her other job, and told Parisa that next Friday would be her last day. 

Mark liked that she was an editor at a magazine. When he talked about her, he talked about work. “We’re both busy,” she’d heard him tell a friend at a brunch six months after they’d met, “we don’t have too much time together. I think that’s important in a relationship.” His friend shot a look at his girlfriend across the room. Mark didn’t look at Mimi. 

Renee was seeing someone too. Liam was a pilot with a mullet and gapped teeth. 

“They’re like twins,” Mark said to Liam, one night in the middle of May. The moon was low and thin and the air wafting into the restaurant was crisp. On the drive that evening, 90s rock blasting and the windows down, an SUV swerved in front of them and they nearly crashed. There was a liveliness at the table, a pleasure at just being alive.

“We’re lucky fellas,” Liam beamed back at him. 

The girls sat next to one another in the booth. Mimi’s arm was over Renee’s shoulder, coiling into her hair and pulling through knots from the windy ride. Liam’s friend brought platters of grilled chicken, hunks of toasted baguette, and three different salads.

“You’re too good,” Renee reached her up and grabbed the chef’s hand. He squeezed her fingers and patted Liam on the shoulder. 

“Enjoy it,” he winked at the men and the pretext of later intimacy laid heavily across the table. Both men touched their girlfriend’s legs. 

Not bothering to fill their plates, they reached across the table, forks stretched out in front of them like weapons, piercing pieces of meat, juicy tangerine slices, caramelized artichoke hearts. 

Renee looked at Liam and put a large leaf of lettuce into her mouth theatrically. They didn’t break eye contact as he began to speak. “I think Renee and I have some exciting news–”

“Oh, I was going to tell Mimi when we were alone,” Renee interjected hurriedly. 

Mimi looked between them, “tell me what?”Renee put her head on Mimi’s shoulder. 

“Ugh I don’t want to tell you tonight.” 

“Come on,” Mimi prodded, turning towards her friend. 

Renee sat up and took a sip of Liam’s beer. “Well. Liam and I have been talking,” she looked at him, “and we’re going to move in together.” Slowly she turned herself back towards Mimi, guiltily.

All three sets of eyes watched her. “Oh, okay,” she gave a forced smile, “I’m happy for you two. When?”

“Next month,” Liam asserted without the quiet care Renee was giving the moment. 

“Don’t worry, of course I’ll keep paying rent. I mean until I can get someone to take over my lease.” Mimi’s arm was limp around Renee’s shoulders. 

“So someone else will move in.” Mimi flatly stated the obvious. 

Through the conversation Mark continued to eat, jamming slices of chicken between pieces of bread. Right then, his cheeks were rounded with carbs. “What if,” he started to talk, and then stopped himself, chewing a bit more and then taking a long swig of beer. “How about you move in with me?” 

And so, the next week Mimi’s belongings were in boxes. Sharpie scribbles describing her life. Everything was loaded into Liam’s car and the four of them drove across the city to a quiet block where the wires had been undergrounded and the houses were new. 

Mark unloaded the trunk and invited Liam up for a beer. Mimi and Renee sat on the front steps of the condo. The cement was freshly poured. If they had arrived just a day before they would be writing their names, leaving their handprints, drawing something crude for good measure. But they arrived a day too late and so instead it would remain too clean, too flat, too perfect. 

“I’m a bit jealous that you and Liam are moving into a new place. I just feel like I’m invading Mark’s space.”

“Why didn’t you?” Renee asked.

“He loves this place.”

Renee looked up at the grey, plastic siding. “Well, you get to move into the future.”

“If this is the future I want to stop time,” Mimi moaned and put her face in her hands. 

Renee hugged her, and for thirty minutes they sat quietly. For seven years they had spent the winter curled up on the rug next to the old radiator, bingeing bad TV and cooking dinner with Nina Simone playing. They went vegan together, and then vegetarian, paleo. Their meals changed and they got a new table. It was made of elm and it still smelled like a tree.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Mimi said into her friend’s neck.

“Me too,” Renee said and Mimi could hear the tears in the back of her throat. This made her own body convulse. “But I’m not going anywhere, right? We’re both still in the city. It could be worse.”

Mimi nodded uncertainly. 

A hoot. They looked up at Mark, wearing an Eagles’ jersey and hanging his head out the window, grinning.  “You two aren’t about to leave us, are you?”

“No promises.” Renee yelled up at him. 

For their one-year anniversary Mark made pasta in his kitchen with its faux-granite counters and squeaky white walls. Mimi was finishing up an article for work when her phone rang. It was Parisa’s son.

“Hey Mimi, I thought you’d want to know,” he sighed quietly and seemed to sit down, “ my mom died.” He sounded sleepy and his voice was soft. 

“Oh god. Oh no.”

Her funeral was the next week. Mark offered to go with her, but she said she’d rather go alone. 

It was at a mosque in the south of the city. In her old age Parisa had lost religion. Her son acknowledged this in his eulogy. No religious figures spoke, but some people prayed. At the front of the room there was a large picture of her. It was taken in a park full of cherry blossoms. She wore an orange dress and a long yellow scarf wrapped loosely around her head. And she smiled like life was everlasting. 

Mimi stood in front of the picture. She wished she hadn’t worn black. Not everyone had, Parisa’s son did not. His shoes were light blue. He said that in the worst of his mother’s confusion, a few months before she died, she had ordered him fifteen pairs of the colorful loafers. 

A tall man approached her. “Are you Miriam?” He had kind eyes.

“Yes,” she smiled, “are you a friend of Parisa’s?”

“A friend from university, yes.” He stood very upright in front of her. Neither of them spoke, and Mimi shifted her weight between her legs. “Parisa wrote to me about you. She sent me some beautiful pieces of writing.” 

Mimi stared up at him. “Oh, I don’t think–”

He reached into his pants pocket, retrieving an envelope and smoothing it carefully. He handed it to her. She smiled up at him stiffly but mercifully he did not look down. He surveyed the room. She opened the envelope. 

It took her a moment to recognize them. Her writings about Clarissa. Scrawled on carefully torn out sheets of notebook paper. A note in the corner of one of the pages, in Parisa's looping handwriting, ‘this one is my favorite. Who knew you could still make this weathered old lady sob?’

Mimi felt her chest expand and her face warm. She must have forgotten her book at the shop on her last day. 

“You can have those back,” he said with a gentle smile. “Seems they were lost in the post,” he continued. “I just received her letter last week. It made it even more shocking when I got the news that,” he trailed off. Mimi looked at Parisa’s writing on the envelope.

  “I lead the creative writing department at our alma mater.” He handed her another piece of paper, this one crisper, with information about a university in Washington state. 

“If you would be interested in coming up to our university to meet some of the writing faculty, we would be pleased to host you,” he paused and looked at Mimi intently, “I think you would be a great fit for our masters program.” 

Looking between the wrinkled envelope in her hand, and the calm figure in front of her, she couldn’t stop nodding. 

“It would be a real move,” he cautioned. “A big change.” 

“Mimi looked to him and then to Parisa, her yellow scarf flapping in the spring breeze. 

“I would love to.” And she meant it. 

Music came on Parisa moved her shoulders to the rhythm. 

And the whole room watched her. They saw her. 

In a palette of oranges and yellows. Warm honey, milk, and gold. 

All women keep existing.