For someone who had barely left Mahim, I was adjusting reasonably well, finding that sticking to a schedule helped me to retain my sanity. Mathias was very kind to me, which I had always assumed a boss would never be. The work itself was dull, but the enthusiasm with which he greeted me every day made up for it. It was nice, after nineteen years of not really being seen, to finally feel welcomed somewhere.
The girls with whom I now lived seemed to answer to nobody, except occasionally one another, but they had no nagging parents or grandparents calling them, asking them where they were, what they were doing. They had furnished me with a list of written rules the day I moved in, at the top of which, in screaming black felt-tip, was the directive: NO MEN OVERNIGHT! I hesitated to tell them that as far as I was concerned, they had little to worry about. The refrigerator had been separated into four different zones, and I was allotted a reasonable space on the second shelf, as well as one of the drawers. Everyone bought, ate, and monitored her own food. It didn’t matter, Teresa explained to me, who earned what; everyone was responsible for herself and contributed equally to the upkeep of the apartment. I came to assume that this was how young women outside India lived, and as startled as I was by it, I fell into line.
A week into my new job, Mathias told me that his little café had been hired to provide the refreshments for an event and asked if I would agree to help serve. Working as a waitress was something else that well-born Muslim girls didn’t do. But I was already so far gone. So I agreed and, to my horror, Mathias pulled out a short black dress that had arrived in a box, then unfolded a small white lace apron and matching hat.
“Here, wear this,” he said, thrusting it into my hands. Answering the curious look on my face, he replied: “The client wants all the girls to dress like French maids. Bah, it’s stupide, but we do what they ask, no?”
Along with the three other girls from the café, I changed into the ensemble, pulling on a pair of black fishnet tights that had also been provided, and choosing from an assortment of white shoes that had also been sent. When I emerged from the small lavatory, Mathias cast an approving eye up and down my body and let out a whistle.
“I didn’t know you had those curves under your big exotique clothes,” he said as I hid self-consciously behind a table.
The event, as it turned out, was a small fashion show, held as part of a weeklong series of shows all over the city. They were called the defiles, and everyone from our van driver to the policeman who stopped us for speeding seemed aware that Paris comes alive in that week, even more than it usually is. This particular fashion company had decided to book a dark nightclub in an obscure part of town, finding the cheapest way to show the designer’s first collection. Although the fishnet tights were beginning to itch and the lace hat was scratching into my scalp, I couldn’t help but feel a little excited at the prospect of watching my first fashion show, and I hoped I would be able to catch glimpses of it during the passing out of palm-size bottles of champagne and little cheese-filled pastries.
Despite a light drizzle and a cool breeze, there was already a crowd waiting outside the nightclub. Mathias was shown the back entrance and was told where to set up. We walked down a wet alley, through a metal door that was painted red, and down another hallway and into the club’s kitchen. We hurriedly set out the pastries on silver trays, speared toothpicks through olives, and lifted dozens of bottles of champagne out of ice-filled chests. I heard people come in through the main entrance and take their seats, shuffling in the darkened interior of the club, the buzz of a foreign language filling the air.
Mathias turned to greet Bruno, the designer, with a kiss on each cheek. There were superlatives thrown out, words like magnifique and merveilleux, about nothing in particular. Bruno had dyed his hair a bright red, like pictures I had seen a long time ago of clowns in a circus. He had a small silver hoop pierced through an eyebrow, and I noticed another one in his tongue as he spoke to Mathias. A short-sleeved black shirt revealed a dark green tattoo, and beads of sweat covered his forehead. He was talking quickly, nervously, giving Mathias instructions and sizing each one of us up. Then he turned and left.
“He will give himself a heart attack,” Mathias said to me. “So agitated. The girls from Vogue are coming, and important stylists. I told him to have some champagne, relax. But of course, he cannot. He is showing couture style on hand-picked models-twenty-two outfits on twenty-two girls, like Galliano in his early days.” Mathias told me all this as if I would understand, forgetting that until today, I had never before seen a man with his hair dyed bright red.
In less than fifteen minutes, the curtain was due to go up. I peeked out of the kitchen and saw photographers, their cameras slung across necks and shoulders, clustered at one side of a dance floor. Leading to the dance floor was a sloping ramp, covered in plastic. Lights were being tested overhead and music-which Mathias had described as “garage techno funk”-was piercing through speakers on all sides. The people sitting in the front-row seats were smartly dressed, those standing at the back were scruffier. They were holding folders and notebooks and pens, chatting with one another or staring straight ahead. One of the other girls was serving drinks, but Bruno had instructed us to wait until after the show, when there would be a small party, to bring out the rest. He had told Mathias that if there were promises of nourishment afterward, people would stay till the end, no matter how bad the clothes were. Mathias told me that Bruno didn’t have a lot of self-confidence, which might have explained the self-inflicted mutilation of the piercings and tattoo.
I suddenly heard a crash from the area behind the dance floor ramp where the girls were getting ready. I followed Mathias back there and saw a beautiful brunette, all long limbs and teased hair and painted nails, sprawled on the floor, pulling her knee up to her chest and wailing like a child.
“Ouch, shit!” she screamed, in a distinctly British accent. “I think I sprained my bleeding ankle. Damn these shoes!”
On her feet was a pair of sparkling sandals with pin-thin, four-inch heels. All the girls were wearing them, and I was surprised that the brunette was the only one to have fallen over as a result. Bruno was cradling her head and yelling at someone to fetch some ice, someone else to bring a bandage. The girl was still screaming.
“I can’t go on,” she cried. “I can’t even stand up!” Bruno dropped her head and covered his face with his hands. Mathias stooped down to comfort him, as did the rest of the fashion team, while the model continued to yelp in pain, nobody paying any attention to her. I looked over at Mathias questioningly, who hurriedly whispered to me again that Bruno had created exactly twenty-two outfits for twenty-two different models, and that this had been boasted of in the program notes that his guests were, at this very moment, perusing.
“It is his gimmick for the season,” said Mathias. “He cannot go back on it now. People will definitely notice. It has been in all the press.”
I had moved over to the girl to ask what I could do to help her, when Bruno yanked me up by my elbow.
“Oui, ça suffit,” he said, looking me over and pulling the lace cap off my head. “You,” he continued, staring straight at me. “I no speak good Eenglish, but you be mannequin today.”
Mathias stepped in, arguing with Bruno. But after a minute of that, my boss turned to me.
“Tanaya, I am sorry, but he is insisting. He says you are the prettiest girl here. I know you have never done it. But it is only one outfit, and all you must do is walk slowly, smile, turn around, come back. Simple. It is over in a minute, and I will have helped an old friend. You will be compensated. Please?”
Ten minutes later, the French maid’s outfit had been stripped off me, and I was waiting to be dressed.