The morning Louise decided to leave for Paris, she had not slept.

She had remained seated in the back room of Heart of Fabrics until dawn, surrounded by sketches, invoices, glasses of cold tea, scraps of fabric and that particular fatigue which comes not only from the body, but from a dream beginning to cost too much.

In the window, the red dress looked braver than she was.

It was humiliating.

— Even my mannequins have more poise than I do, she murmured.

She got up, went to the counter and opened the drawer where she kept the statements. The figures were there. Still just as disagreeable. Sales were not enough. Customers came in, admired, talked, sometimes returned, but not enough. Some bought a scarf as one buys an excuse. Others tried on a dress, looked at themselves for a long time, discovered themselves beautiful, then left saying:

— I will think about it.

Louise was beginning to hate that sentence.

To think about it, in a boutique, often meant: thank you for allowing me to imagine a better version of myself, but I am going to leave my courage in the fitting room.

Pascal Pascal was not helping.

Since he had been living above the boutique, he had managed to become an unavoidable presence. Customers noticed him. Employees commented on him. Passers-by either avoided him or smiled at him. He wrote phrases for the window, then behaved as if the boutique now breathed through his words. He did not steal from the till, no. He did worse: he stole the atmosphere.

As for Jean Chauvet, he came by from time to time to observe the slow progression of the disaster, as a man who almost hoped to be proved right.

— I warned you, his gaze said before his mouth even began.

Louise refused to give him that satisfaction.

That morning, Élodie arrived first. She was wearing a dark-green sweater.

Louise noticed it at once.

— Was Pascal the one who advised you to wear that colour?

Élodie blushed.

— He only said it brought out my soul.

— Your soul starts work at ten, I remind you.

— Yes, Madame Lang.

Claire came next, from the neighbouring café, with two coffees and a croissant.

— You look like someone who has made a dangerous decision.

— I am going to Paris.

Claire set the coffees down.

— There. I knew it.

Élodie opened her eyes wide.

— To Paris?

— Yes.

— For how long?

— A few days. A week, if necessary.

— But the boutique?

— You are going to run it.

The two women looked at her as if she had just announced that she was entrusting them with a ship in the middle of a storm.

— Me? asked Élodie.

— You, Claire if she agrees to drop by from time to time, and Marie-Soleil for impossible decisions.

— I am a waitress, Claire reminded her.

— Precisely. You know how to recognise customers who are hungry.

— For clothes?

— For courage.

Claire considered her for a moment, then smiled.

— That is well put. You should write it on a sign.

— No. Pascal would do it better, and that would irritate me.

At nine o’clock, Marie-Soleil arrived, summoned urgently. She listened to the plan without interrupting, which was rare and worrying.

— Paris, she said at last.

— Yes.

— You are going to present your drawings?

— Yes.

— To whom?

— To everyone who does not throw me out.

— Do you have appointments?

— Two. Perhaps three. The others will be attempts.

— You do not know how to sell your drawings.

— I know.

— You will tremble.

— Probably.

— You will dress too seriously to give yourself courage.

— That is possible.

— You will forget that you are more interesting than your own explanations.

Louise sighed.

— Marie, I need practical help, not an intuitive autopsy.

— Very well. Practical: go.

Louise raised her eyes.

— You think so?

— Yes. Here, you are suffocating. You count your hangers like condemned prisoners. In Paris, at least, you will see whether your designs can breathe elsewhere.

— And the boutique?

Marie-Soleil looked around her.

— It will survive a few days without you. Or it will learn to tremble standing up.

Louise said nothing.

Above them, Pascal’s footsteps crossed the apartment. Slowly. As if he had heard.

Of course he had heard.

A few minutes later, he came down.

He was wearing a black shirt, a burgundy scarf and the face of a man wounded in advance.

— Paris, he said.

— Good morning, Pascal.

— You are going to Paris without consulting me?

— I was unaware that my passport needed your blessing.

— No. But perhaps your novel does.

— My life is not your novel.

He smiled softly.

— Not yet.

Louise felt immediate irritation. He had the gift of entering her decisions like a draught under a door.

— I am leaving the boutique to the girls, she said. I am going to present my drawings.

— Excellent idea.

She had prepared herself for an objection. That approval disarmed her.

— You think so?

— Of course. Here, you are defending a boutique. There, you will defend your name. It is more dangerous. Therefore more useful.

— You surprise me.

— I am capable of grandeur when it costs nothing.

Claire snickered.

Pascal ignored her with wounded dignity.

— I can write you a letter of introduction.

— No.

— A brief note.

— No.

— A sentence.

— Especially not.

— You are wrong. Paris likes sentences.

— Paris also likes people who know how to keep quiet.

He placed a hand over his heart.

— Low blow. But elegant.

Louise went to fetch her coat.

— While I am away, Pascal, you do not come downstairs to seduce my customers. You do not advise my employees. You do not rewrite my signs. You do not touch the window display. You do not tell passers-by that they have tragic necks.

— It was a sincere observation.

— It was a lost customer.

— Not a good customer.

— That is not for you to decide.

He bowed.

— I shall obey.

Marie-Soleil stared at him.

— No. You will interpret obedience.

Pascal smiled.

— You know me better and better.

— That is what worries me.

Louise took her bag of sketches. It was heavy. Too heavy for a few sheets. Into it she had slipped months of stress, pride, fear and beauty.

At the door, she turned one last time toward the boutique.

— Élodie, you note every sale. Claire, you refuse any unscheduled deliveries. Marie, you prevent Pascal from becoming an official attraction.

— And if Jean comes by? asked Élodie.

Louise hesitated.

— Tell him I am working.

— In Paris?

— No. Just tell him I am working. That will annoy him more.

She went out.

In the street, the air seemed different to her.

Not lighter.

But wider.

________________________________________

Paris did not welcome Louise with violins.

Paris welcomed her with a queue at customs, an overpriced taxi, a suitcase jammed in the boot and a driver who judged it useful to explain to her that fashion was no longer what it had been.

— Nowadays, madame, everyone wants to be original. Result: no one is anymore.

Louise, exhausted, replied:

— That is also what I fear.

She had booked a small room in a discreet hotel in the ninth arrondissement. The carpet had known happier travellers, the lift groaned like a forgotten old actor, but the window looked out on a piece of zinc roof, two chimneys and a Parisian sky of delicate grey.

Louise placed her bag of sketches on the bed.

— Good.

She looked at herself in the mirror.

The woman facing her had drawn features, shadowed eyes, but a new decision in her mouth. She had not come to Paris to play tourist, even if she had promised herself to pass before a few temples of fashion as one visits churches.

The next morning, she began with Avenue Montaigne.

The windows there had the perfect coldness of inaccessible things. The dresses did not seem displayed, but guarded. The saleswomen had straight silhouettes, exact smiles and gazes capable of estimating the price of a coat before it had even crossed the threshold.

Louise entered a first house.

She asked to present drawings.

She was asked whether she had an appointment.

She said no.

She was smiled at with that politeness which closes more effectively than a lock.

In a second house, she obtained a business card.

In a third, she was allowed to leave a portfolio at reception.

In a fourth, she was told:

— Madame, we receive a great many proposals.

She replied:

— I imagine so.

— You may send a file by post.

— I have come from Montréal.

— Then you may send it from farther away.

The sentence was not unkind. It was simply French in a way that makes one want to learn to breathe differently.

Louise went back out into the street, her bag heavier than before.

She walked for a long time.

Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. Place Vendôme. Rue Cambon. She did not enter everywhere. Sometimes, she merely looked at the windows, observed the cuts, the volumes, the customers, the men in black who opened doors, the young assistants carrying garment bags as if they were transporting relics.

She quickly noticed those boys of the fashion world.

Some were very upright, very slender, almost severe. Others wore clothes so fluid they looked as if they had refused to choose between jacket and scarf, between shirt and flower. Several had gestures of absolute delicacy. Expressive hands. Soft voices. Fine shoulders. A way of existing that apologised to no one.

Louise observed them without mockery.

On the contrary.

They seemed free in a way that moved her. Not free because life was easy for them, no. Free because they had transformed their difference into style. They did not hide their fragility. They wore it like a line of cut. An elegance. A signature.

In a workshop near the Marais, she saw a young man with bleached hair cross the room with a roll of pink tulle over his shoulder. He moved like a tired prince, but a happy one. Another, older, his wrists covered with fine bracelets, corrected with a precise gesture the fall of a sleeve on a mannequin.

Louise thought:

— They have the right to be more invented than I am.

That thought followed her all day.

________________________________________

On the third day, she had already lost part of her assurance.

She spoke too quickly whenever she was granted ten minutes. She explained her designs instead of letting them breathe. She said “it is only an idea” before the idea had even been judged. She minimised what she had come to sell. She almost apologised for having talent.

In a haute couture house named Maison Valombre, she finally met someone who took the time to look at her sketches.

Valombre occupied a discreet building on a small street near Place des Victoires. Nothing ostentatious on the façade. A brass plaque. A black door. An intercom. Inside, a stone staircase, white walls, bouquets without excessive perfume and the silence of well-paid work.

She was asked to wait in a room where four chairs seemed to cost more than her plane ticket.

Then a slim woman, short-haired, dark glasses, entered with a file under her arm.

— Madame Lang?

— Yes.

— Solange Arvay. Head of the creative workshop.

Louise stood up too quickly.

— Delighted to meet you.

Solange Arvay motioned for her to sit down.

— Show me.

Louise opened her portfolio.

This time, she tried to keep quiet.

Solange looked at the sketches one by one. She did not smile. Commented hardly at all. From time to time, she moved a sheet, returned to the previous one, lingered over a collar, a sleeve, an oblique line.

— You have a hand, she said at last.

Louise felt her heart quicken.

— Thank you.

— But you apologise too much.

— In my drawings?

— In the way you present them. It is as if you ask forgiveness before existing.

Louise did not know what to answer.

Solange lingered over the dress The Escape.

— This one.

— Yes.

— Have you made it?

— Not yet.

— Why not?

— Lack of time. And perhaps of means.

— Bad answer. Means come after the gesture. Not always, but one must believe it if one wants to survive in this trade.

She closed the portfolio.

— I can promise you nothing.

Louise felt the sentence fall onto her shoulders.

— I understand.

— No. You do not understand. I am saying that I can promise nothing, not that you do not interest me.

Louise raised her eyes.

Solange took a card and placed it on the portfolio.

— Leave me a copy of three designs. This one. That one. And the oblique dress.

— The Escape.

— The name is a little literary.

— I know.

— Keep it anyway. Ridiculous names sometimes sell better than good ones.

Louise gave a nervous laugh.

— How long are you staying in Paris?

— A few more days.

— Come by tomorrow at the end of the afternoon. Not before. Not after.

— Thank you. Truly.

— Do not thank me too much. It is tiring.

Louise left Maison Valombre with cautious joy. Not a victory. A thread. But a thread was better than the void.

In the hall, as she was leaving, she noticed a small notice posted near the staff entrance.

MAISON VALOMBRE

SEEKING WORKSHOP ASSISTANT

Discreet presence, eye for detail, immediate availability.

Enquire at reception.

Louise read it once.

Then twice.

Assistant.

Not sales assistant.

She remained motionless.

At that precise moment, two young men came out of a corridor, loaded with garment bags. One wore wide trousers, patent-leather shoes and an ivory blouse with a tied collar. The other had a fitted jacket, eyes very lightly made up, an antique brooch on his lapel. They were talking animatedly, laughing, correcting one another over a nuance of satin, disappearing, returning, leaving again. They were not ridiculous. They were not in disguise. They were in their element.

Better still.

They seemed happy.

Not with a foolish happiness. With a happiness of precision. Of being exactly where their gestures, their tastes, their differences became useful.

Louise looked at the notice.

Then at her reflection in the door glass.

She had spent her life being serious, reassuring men, bankers, suppliers, Jean, hesitant customers. She had learned to become credible. Proper. Upright. Feminine, but not too much. Artistic, but solvent. Daring, but presentable.

And what if, for once, she had to enter differently?

Not as Louise Lang, anxious owner of a Montréal boutique.

As someone else.

A mad, imprudent, almost childish idea opened inside her.

She pushed it away.

It returned.

She thought of Pascal.

Of his cape, of his hat, of his odious way of turning costume into permission.

For the first time, she wondered whether her mistake had been to leave others the right to be theatrical.

— No, she murmured. I am not going to do that.

Which, in the mouth of an exhausted woman, sometimes meant: I probably am going to do it.

________________________________________

That evening, in her small hotel room, Louise emptied her suitcase.

She lined up her clothes on the bed.

A black jacket. Straight trousers. A white shirt. A dark scarf. Flat shoes. A long coat. Nothing strictly masculine. But enough to compose an ambiguous silhouette if she erased certain lines, if she tied back her hair, if she hardened her gestures a little.

She looked at herself in the mirror.

— This is ridiculous.

She removed her earrings.

— Completely ridiculous.

She pulled her hair back, fastened it low, then hid the mass beneath a small hat bought that very afternoon in a second-hand shop in the Marais.

— Jean would say it is pathetic.

She tied the scarf in a way that broke the softness of her neck.

— Pascal would say it is a character.

She put on the black jacket.

— Marie-Soleil would say it is a shedding of skin.

She applied barely any make-up, but altered her eyebrows, deepened a shadow, erased her mouth. Her face changed. Not enough to become a man. Too much to remain entirely Louise.

She tried to walk.

Too Louise.

She began again. Fewer hips. More angles. Not caricatural. Only different. A new restraint. A way of not offering her face before her presence.

She thought of the assistants at Maison Valombre.

Of their free elegance.

Of that impression that they had conquered the right to exist by refining their strangeness.

Louise opened her diary.

On a blank page, she wrote:

Louis Lang.

She looked at the first name.

Too simple.

She added:

Louis Langel.

No.

Louis Lange.

Better.

A name that resembled her without admitting it.

She murmured:

— Good morning. I have come about the workshop assistant position.

Her voice was too high.

She began again, lower.

— Good morning. I have come about the workshop assistant position.

She smiled despite herself.

In the mirror, Louis Lange smiled back at her.

Not truly a man. Not an erased woman. A ruse. A secret passage. A character fragile enough to enter where Louise Lang might not have dared insist.

She placed her hand on her bag of sketches.

— Tomorrow, we try our luck.

Then she lay down without undressing at once, as if removing that costume might already make the audacity disappear.

Before sleeping, she thought of Heart of Fabrics.

Of Élodie, Claire, Marie-Soleil.

Of Jean, who was surely preparing a sentence with which to reproach her for her absence.

Of Pascal, who, perhaps, was already inventing a story around her.

She suddenly sat up.

Pascal.

He would understand too quickly. He would sense the metamorphosis. He would make a scene of it. A symbol. A trap.

Louise turned off the lamp.

— Let him only try to steal this from me, she murmured into the dark.

In the narrow room, Paris did not answer.

But outside, somewhere in the streets where the windows were still dreaming of fabrics, fashion kept watch like an elegant beast.

END OF CHAPTER IV