On an ordinary day the hustle and bustle of other people’s lives went unnoticed. Every ordinary day seemed like a mirage, a flashback, of days previous. Record names, weights, heights, measurements, and other strictly personal information and transfer it all into the creation of another professionally made customized fancy gown, or casual dress. Of course, these qualities only apply to a dressmaker’s ordinary day.

Nick was a bachelor by chance, not by choice. Since he was old enough to follow instructions he’d been working in his father’s dress shop, a boring, lonely existence. Most women were uncomfortable dating a man who knew how many inches they were from bust to buttocks. They flirted, of course. Boy, did they flirt. But he learned very quickly that the only time he was going to see a woman’s dress lying on his bedroom floor was if he worked into the night and fell asleep. Thus, Monday turned to Tuesday then to Wednesday and so on and everything was ordinary. Nick craved change, craved adventure and was always on the lookout for someone, anyone who dared to be extraordinary. 

It happened on a Wednesday. 

He was cutting fabric diligently, minding his own business when a chime went off letting him know someone had entered the shop. 

“I’ll get it!” Nick called back to his father, putting down his scissors. 

He walked to the front where a woman stood with her back to him. 

“Can I help you?” he asked, amazed as she turned around by her striking beauty. 

“Oh!” The woman yelped in alarm, not hearing him enter the room. “Well, you see, I’ve got this dress,” she said in a foreign accent, holdld up a beautiful silk evening dress, “I’ve ripped it. I was hoping you could fix it.”

Nick noticed her nervousness and figured that the dress might not be hers, “Of course. We’ll need it for at least a day. We have a lot of other things that I have to get to first.”

Her face dropped and she approached the counter slowly and methodically, “It can’t wait,” she said, a hint of desperation in her voice, “You see, I’m not supposed to have it. I have to return it immediately.”

Nick couldn’t help but smile, just as he had suspected, as he’d heard a million times before, the dress did not belong to her, “I’m sorry Miss you can’t jump the queue. I can have it to you by Friday at the earliest.”

“Please, you don’t understand!” her voice was high and panicked and Nick almost jumped when she reached out and grabbed his hand tightly, “My husband bought me this dress, it’s his favourite. If I don’t have this dress for tonight he’ll be furious. I’m not supposed to take it out. He was afraid I might ruin it and I did!” Tears were welling in her eyes, and he was a sucker for tears, so it didn’t take long before Nick was agreeing to fix the dress immediately. 

“Really?” she excitedly questioned, “Are you sure you can fix it that soon? I don’t want you to try the impossible and not fix it properly.”

He wondered why after all of her pressuring she was suddenly worried that he couldn’t do it. He knew that her obvious innocence and lack of social experience could attribute to her flustered ignorance. 

“Miss,” Nick planted a warm, reassuring smile on his face and took the dress from her hands. “This is 1939, anything is possible. Don’t worry about the dress, you’ll of course be charged extra for my time so I’ll make sure it looks good as new.”

She seemed relieved yet not unsettled by his declaration of extra costs. He knew that she had money. Designer shoes and handbag and this dress made of such fine silk he knew it must be imported, much like she seemed to be. They arranged a pick up time and when the bell chimed again on her departure he set to work on repairing the damaged garment over his lunch break. From how it was ripped he could tell she’d stepped on the train, pulling free a seam. He sat and wondered for a few moments; curious to know why this girl had tried on this forbidden dress and what she had done to rip it. 

It was a regular pastime of his, to try and think up different scenarios of how people ruined perfectly good clothing.

‘A forbidden dress,’ he thought to himself having never heard of such a formality. In a way he could see that maybe her husband kept the dress from her, knowing her klutziness, not wanting to damage his investment. He thought back to what she said about it being his favourite and he instantly knew the answer. The dress was power. She wore the dress when he wanted her to wear the dress and no other time. He didn’t even know the man but he knew he was a jerk and probably didn’t deserve his pretty wife. Pretty, she most certainly was; a redhead Greta Garbo, even. Long ginger hair, fair skin sprinkled with freckles, lean but not skinny, and short. Nick liked that.

The only thing he threw him off about her was how young she looked. He wouldn’t have put her a day over 16. When his father was young it was not out of the ordinary to see something like that but now, things were different; this was the future. Girls nowadays would at least wait until 18 until they got married, until they finished high school. They pushed the limits of modern society. Now it was becoming normal for them to get commissions for college graduation dresses before wedding dresses. Setting aside his thought of gossip he got back to work on the task at hand. 

“Is that Mrs. Henderson’s?” Nick’s father Robert asked as he walked into the sewing room. 

“No, I’ll get to that later. A woman came in with sort of an emergency so I said I would do her dress first.” Nick replied, not looking up from his work.

“Mrs. Henderson is a friend of mind, she expects things done in a timely manner.”

“It will be Sir,” Nick assured him, “I’ll work into the evening if I have to.”

Robert eyed his son sceptically. He knew that Nick didn’t want to spend his life being a dressmaker, especially now that the trade was predominantly run by women. Then there were department stores. Women were now running to department stores to buy the latest designs by the big new designers – like Chanel. Nylon stockings were replacing silk and everyone wanted to look like a movie star. So the days of dress making were slowly becoming replaced by the days of mending torn dresses designed by Jean Louis or Tina Leser; on the odd occasion they were trusted enough to fix the torn Chanel. It was for those reasons, but not those alone, that Robert knew Nick disliked his job. He never complained but he lacked the passion that his father, and father before him had for the art; for Nick to take on extra tasks was unlike him, and mildly suspicious. 

“So,” Robert began, watching Nick carefully. “This woman must look like Greta Garbo if you’re so keen to please her,” he knew that Nick hated when he teased him about his love for the Swedish bombshell. 

Nick scoffed and rolled his eyes, knowing his father would assume he had something up his sleeve, even if he did happen to think the girl looked similar to his favourite actress. “No, she was married anyway. She just seemed really upset and I wanted to help her out; besides, she’s paying extra.”

Robert smiled, his favourite game was getting Nick worked up because he always won. “Just make sure everything else gets done,” he said before leaving to tend to other business. 

Nick checked the time, one o’clock. Two hours until his mystery woman returned. He quickly glanced at the pickup receipt, looking over her name and address. “Mary O’Hara,” he read quietly. “She’s not quite Greta Garbo, but she sure is pretty.”