one of the dressing rooms where her assistant dressed me in silky Parisian undergarments. ‘Where do you get these garments?’ I said. ‘The clothing rations—’
‘I find it’s best not to ask,’ the assistant said, before looking away.
I saw her face in the mirror as I looked at myself, and I could tell she didn’t want to dress me, which made my stomach hurt. ‘Excuse me?’ I said, when she mumbled.
Gérard’s voice drifted down the corridor and into my dressing room. ‘She’s my fiancée,’ he said to the saleswoman. ‘She should look a certain way. Elegant. I am very important, as you know.’
The assistant mumbled some more. ‘What are you saying?’ I said.
She turned around, big smile. ‘Nothing, mademoiselle.’ She adjusted the strap on my brassiere, finding a lost pin in the seam. ‘Close call,’ she said, pulling the pin out only to toss it into a pin pillow like a dagger. ‘I’ll be right back.’
I collapsed against the wall when she left, listening to her whispering to the other assistants. ‘Collaborator,’ I heard. ‘A Vichy bitch.’
I held my face in my hands, but when the saleswoman walked in carrying a heap of dresses in her arms, I stood straight.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘let’s have some fun.’
Only I didn’t try on a few dresses. I tried on every dress in the shop close to my size. Nothing satisfied Gérard. Every time I came out and twirled in front of him he’d shake his head. ‘Too revealing,’ he kept saying, which sent the saleswoman into a state.
She took me back into the dressing room after trying to sell him a satin number. ‘I just don’t know what else to do,’ she said to me, as if it was my fault she hadn’t made a sale. She looked me over, my brassiere strap slipping from my shoulder. ‘He doesn’t like anything on you.’ I pulled up the strap.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, but she had walked out of the dressing room.
The assistant came in with the last dress in my size. A pink thing with lacy long sleeves and a straight neckline. ‘He has to like this one,’ she said, looking at the dress, and then looking at me. ‘It’s the most conservative dress we have.’
She turned me around and tightened my stocking belt, before reaching for the pin pillow. ‘What are you going to do with those?’ I said, and she tucked one pin between her lips.
‘Nothing,’ she murmured, pinching the strap that kept falling off my shoulder with one hand, and pulling the pin from her mouth with the other.
‘Ouch!’ I swatted her. ‘You poked me!’
I saw her smile through the mirror. ‘Sorry, mademoiselle,’ she said, just above a whisper.
‘I’m sure you are,’ I said.
‘What’s going on in there?’ Gérard shouted from the waiting room.
I sighed. ‘Last one,’ I said, looking at the assistant. ‘You better hope he likes this one.’ I stormed out of the room, but then I felt bad and wished I could go back in and tell her I hated every single second of it, and that I hated him too.
I looked at Gérard in front of the big dressing mirrors, swallowing my distaste for the dress, fingering the collar where it suffocated me. I put on a smile. ‘Pink,’ I said, and he spun his finger in the air for me to twirl.
‘That’s it,’ he said, and the saleswoman all but collapsed on the floor. ‘That’s the dress.’
*
I climbed back into his sidecar, holding the dress bag in my lap. ‘Thank you,’ I said, and it was hard to say. ‘For the dress.’
‘I’m doing what you asked, Adèle,’ he said.
‘I didn’t ask for a dress,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said, fitting his helmet, ‘but you asked me to court you.’
He straddled his motorcycle and started it up. ‘Hungry?’ he said, but he wasn’t asking.
We drove to a restaurant I’d never been to before, an out-of-the-way place he said he’d heard about at the Hotel du Parc. ‘La Table,’ I said, reading the sign on the marquee. A fancy woman in a feathered hat walked in with a man in suit. ‘Looks expensive—’
‘It is,’ he said, and then snapped his fingers at the shopping bag. ‘Carry it inside. I want everyone to know where I took you. Only supporters of the Vichy regime eat here.’ He looked at me. ‘We need to make an impression.’
‘Supporters?’ I said, ‘You mean…’
‘You know what I mean.’ He took a few deep breaths near the door to prepare before we walked inside, and I