The Paris Seamstress

by Natasha Lester

  Sam laughed. “She’s right,” he said to Estella. “All you need is a dress. And I know you have a spectacular gold one somewhere.”

  “I brought it with me,” Janie said, pulling it out of her bag.

  “Then I’d best get changed.” Estella ducked behind the screen in the corner and put on the dress.

  Janie did the same, followed by Sam. Soon Sam was handsome in his tuxedo and Janie gorgeous in what should have been a severe black dress. It buttoned to the base of her neck and fell in a long, thin column to the floor. With Janie’s blond hair, voluptuous figure, and red lips, she looked as if she were just waiting to be unbuttoned, which was the effect Estella had been hoping for when she designed it.

  They clinked glasses, took a final swallow of their drinks, covered up their finery with their coats—Estella ruing the cloak she’d had to leave with the inscrutable man in Paris and wishing she could afford something nicer than her day coat to wear out at night—then Sam hailed a taxi for Gramercy Park.

  The taxi pulled up outside a house that loomed in a familiar way over the street. The streetlamp was out so Estella couldn’t see it very well but it made her shiver all the same and she pulled her coat tighter around her as if the December night had reached into her bones.

  “Cold?” Sam asked.

  She shook her head. “No. Just felt a ghost float past.”

  “Let’s get into the lights and the champagne and there’ll be no more ghosts,” Janie said as she glided up the steps, winked at the doorman, passed over the invitations and had them all whisked through with barely a murmur. “Told you it’d be as simple as a Kansas model to get in here,” she said.

  The party was smoky, but not enough to obscure the many sparkling gemstones worn by the women and which Estella took to be real. She was glad of her dress, which made her feel a little more as if she belonged. It didn’t take Janie long to find a man wanting to spin her around the dance floor, nor did it take Sam long to find a group of men playing poker and drinking whiskey, which he thought it was his duty to join. But he too was soon cajoled to join the dancers by a pretty brunette and then a redhead, before the brunette returned to claim him once more.

  Which left Estella at the bar occasionally, and at other times on the dance floor as well, dragged out by a succession of young and ever drunker men who were all eager, although she kept declining, to show her the library, where she suspected reading aloud to her wasn’t what they had in mind. After the fourth such suggestion, she switched to French, pretended not to understand, and drank far too much champagne.

  Which was probably why, when Janie appeared at her side, Estella said, more loudly than she should have, pointing to a woman some distance away, “Look at that poor, ruined Lanvin copy. I sketched that very dress at a show last season. If I’d known what they were going to do to it, I’d never have copied it.”

  Janie followed Estella’s finger across to a woman dancing in a dress with a handkerchief skirt, made out of panels of white and black silk, and a black bodice held up at the neck by a collar of pearls.

  “They’ve scrimped on the panels to save money,” Estella said. “It’s meant to be twice as full. It looks like a butterfly one wing short of a set.”

  Janie laughed. “Any others?”

  Estella twirled around and came face-to-face with a woman who had clearly overheard Estella’s commentary and who wore a bud of a smile that looked as if it would take more than sunlight to open. “You’re very sure of your opinions,” the woman said, her tone far from friendly.

  Estella could see why. The woman wore a copy too, a calamitous version of one of Estella’s favorite Chanel gowns, one which was meant to skim the body like a lover’s hand. The Chanel original was of black lace, flaring out gently into a long skirt, a bouquet of white linen camellias arranged over the right breast, concealing some of the cleavage exposed by the heart-shaped neckline. In this woman’s version, the camellias were pinned too low so all you saw was the cleavage, the lace was poorly stitched to the lining so it rode up at one side, and the skirt collapsed to the floor, rather than falling gracefully down. The woman’s defensive air indicated that she suspected Estella knew the dress did not possess the couture bloodline it claimed.

  “I just wonder why so much energy is expended on something that isn’t what it’s supposed to be,” Estella said, her tongue loose with champagne honesty, but trying to be kind.

  “And what is your dress supposed to be?” the woman asked. “A little burst of sunshine?” The sneer was too evident to ignore.

  “An original. Stella Designs. Come and see me when you’re tired of imitations.”

  “Stella Designs. I’ll remember that.”

  The woman stalked off and Estella couldn’t help feeling as if she’d just made a huge mistake. That, once again, she should have buttoned her mouth one sentence earlier. She reached for another drink—gin this time—and Janie spun back out onto the dance floor.

  Soon after midnight, Estella heard the words, “Alex is back,” whispered around the party, accompanied by smiles from the women and the kind of frisson that an unexpected riff on a saxophone might bring. Estella wondered who could possibly cause such a commotion among people who seemed so hard to surprise.

  “He’s as enigmatic as Gatsby,” one woman at the bar said knowingly to another, “and his origins are just as murky. I’ve heard tell that his father was a pirate on the Oriental seas.” The woman tittered, then continued her tall tale. “I know being a lawyer pays well but he seems to have more money than one could legitimately earn. Add that to lethal charm and you can see why all the women in the room are quivering right now.”

  Estella smiled. A pirate with lethal charm was someone she should keep Janie away from. He didn’t sound like the marrying kind. She cast her eyes around the room, searching for Janie, but couldn’t find her. She walked around the perimeter, throwing a smile to Sam who had another young woman—blond now—comfortably ensconced on his knee, but Estella soon realized she was less steady than she should be. Home would be the best place for her. Janie was smart enough not to walk a pirate’s plank.

  She found her coat, drew it over her dress, then walked to the very edges of the room where she hoped to find the door. But the shadows beneath the pillars, out of the light of the double-story void, were disorienting. She could hardly see anything. It didn’t help that the room whirled a little with her champagne vision.

  “Alex!” a man called as he knocked against her in his rush, pushing her farther behind the pillar, spilling a little of his drink on her. “I heard the rumors.”

  “They’re not rumors,” another man, the mysterious Alex obviously, replied cheerfully. “I’m back.”

  “Until we run you out of the country again.” The first man laughed grimly while Estella shook his whiskey off her fingers.

  “With you chasing, I’ll be in the country for decades,” Alex said. “Excuse me.” His voice was familiar. Unaccented, almost.

  Before Estella had a chance to look up from brushing down her damp coat, she found herself swept into someone’s arms, a very unchaste kiss planted near her earlobe. “I found you,” the same voice—Alex’s—said.

  Estella’s mind raced.

  Who the hell was he? It wasn’t as if she made a habit of drunken and ginned-up nights at parties. It was too damned dark to see very much, just that his hair was dark and his lips were moving toward hers.

  In a flash from a nearby cigarette lighter she caught a glimpse of two glittering brown eyes and the outline of a face that was séduisant, a word that she didn’t believe had an exact English translation, handsome being too insipid for what séduisant implied and seductive being too obvious, too showy. No, this man was so attractive it almost hurt to look at him: attractive in a reckless way—as if he knew precisely the effect his looks had on people—attractive in a way that was best avoided. But also memorable. Had she met him before?

  The flare of the lighter was so quick that the impressions rushe
d over Estella in a moment. They were immediately plunged back into darkness before she could make out his features exactly, before she could trace back the path of a memory to discover where she might know him from.

  Then this Alex began to kiss her in a way she hadn’t been kissed for a very long time—in fact, she’d never been kissed like this—and because it felt so good, she responded immediately, opening her mouth, searching out his tongue. One of his hands threaded through her hair so he could kiss her even more deeply and the other dropped to her hip, stroking the fabric of her coat, making the skin beneath burn.

  The clawing of desire stronger than anything she’d felt before made her step backward, away from this man she didn’t know but who she was kissing as if she knew him better than anyone. His gaze remained fixed on her face, which almost felt like standing naked before him, her skin peeled back and her heart on view. And she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted this man to see her heart.

  “Wait,” he said softly, a whisper of a word, so gentle, like his hand had been as it ran down her back, but also hungry, wanting something from her that she felt certain he got far too often and far too easily, especially if he made a habit of kissing women like that.

  His hand reached out and his fingertips met hers but that was all; a tantalizing and magical hiss of flesh against flesh before she turned away.

  Meet me at Jimmy Ryan’s tomorrow night, she thought she heard him say before the bodies of the dancers took her into their midst and the man, Alex, was swooped upon by voices both friendly and displeased. She stumbled once, twice, as if she were a sauced-up broad who couldn’t hold her liquor when she was, in fact, just stunned, knocked out by a kiss.

  She somehow found the front door, felt the same shiver as she ran through the Gothic arch and down the steps, hailed a cab but then realized she had no money. So she walked the long, long way back to the Barbizon, alone, lonely, images of her mother playing across her eyelids in a desolate stream.

  When she arrived, she didn’t bother to take off her dress, just fell onto the bed, curled on her side, and dreamed of being gathered against a man, naked, his arms wrapped around her, languorous and lovely with sleep.

  When she awoke, it was morning and she curved her body back to feel the man but there was only emptiness and she recalled, in pieces, the night. The kiss. The man who was at once both familiar and strange, the realization that everything that had come after had just been a dream. A lump lodged in her throat, tears threatened her eyes.

  Meet me at Jimmy Ryan’s tomorrow night. Had that been a dream too?

  Chapter Six

  Estella spent the next day with her head bent over her sewing machine making a dress to wear to a rendezvous she wasn’t sure if she’d imagined. Janie telephoned to say she was going out after work with a man she’d met at the party and Estella thanked God; she didn’t want to have to explain what she was up to. Not when she didn’t even know herself.

  She took one short break midafternoon to swim in the pool at the Barbizon, which she tried to do every day, enjoying the meditative sensation of stroking her arms through the water even though she wasn’t a particularly good swimmer. She hoped it would relax her the way it usually did. But she timed it badly; she had the misfortune to bump into the matron as she entered the lift in her bathing suit, a simple white cotton affair consisting of a cut-off man’s shirt that she’d bought for a bargain and denuded of sleeves. To this she’d sewn black cotton to cover her nether regions, resulting in a bathing suit that was streamlined, stylish, and so much more practical for swimming than the heavy, bloated dress-style suits that the other women wore.

  “What are you wearing?” Matron snapped.

  “I’m going swimming,” Estella said.

  “You will not parade around the hotel in that.”

  “I’m going to the pool.”

  “Cover yourself or you will need to find somewhere else to stay. This is America, not France.”

  “I know that,” Estella retorted, before storming away to find the off-cut of black cotton in her room. She tied it at her waist to make a cover-up skirt. Which looked rather good, she had to admit, storing the idea away for later and cheekily blowing Matron a kiss to thank her for the idea when she passed by.

  Then, at eight o’clock, she bathed and put on her new dress. Green jersey, long, slim skirt, with a sash that formed a halter-neck, crossed over the bust and then wound around her lower back to tie at the side. At first she’d imagined the ties would simply drape down, but at the last moment, she fashioned them into a blousy flower, like a peony. The dress was backless, a surprise that the classical front did not suggest. It was an homage to the draping and wrapping of Vionnet but using the kind of democratic fabric that someone like Estella could actually afford.

  She darkened her lashes with mascara and reddened her lips. She left her hair down, its black waves falling down her back, secured on one side with a rhinestone clip shaped like a star. Her mother had given it to her for her sixteenth birthday. She touched the star, trying again to sense her mother’s presence, to have the universe send her a message about whether her mother was safe but all she heard were the car horns of Manhattan.

  Then, before she could ask herself what she was doing, she caught the subway to 52nd Street, having ascertained that Jimmy Ryan’s was a jazz club in the basement of a brownstone that looked more conventional from the street than the music emanating from its belly would suggest.

  “Two dollars,” the barman said when she ordered a sidecar.

  She winced and pretended to look inside her purse, knowing all too well that she couldn’t afford to spend two dollars on a drink. “I left my money on the dresser,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She pushed the glass away.

  “On the house.” The bartender winked.

  “Thanks.” She raised her glass, sipping gratefully. And then suddenly, by her side and looking so goddamned airtight she could almost feel her dress wanting to take itself off, she saw Alex.

  “You came,” he said, voice familiar from the party but from somewhere else too.

  A memory blinded her. She crashed her drink onto the bar. The Théâtre du Palais-Royal. Dancing with a man mixed up in more than trouble; a man who, at the very least, dealt with death and secrets. Alex was the same damn man.

  Before she could say anything, another woman entered the club, crossed over to Alex and slipped her arm through his, kissing his cheek. Estella’s gasp was so loud she wondered how it didn’t shatter glasses.

  Because this woman looked so exactly like her that Estella could barely tell where she ended and the other woman began. Except this woman was an Estella of sometime in the future that she hoped would never come, an Estella with shadowed eyes. Estella, broken.

  Alex took a step back as he looked from one identical woman to the other.

  Estella wanted to shut her eyes, to run away, to never have seen the other woman—who the hell was she?—but she couldn’t show a man like Alex and his lookalike paramour how bewildered and frightened she was. “Isn’t this awkward?” she said hotly, tears stinging her eyes, before turning on her heel and leaving the club.

  Out on the street when she thought she was safe, she doubled over, hands clutching a brownstone wall for comfort it didn’t give.

  Alex had kissed her last night because he thought she was someone else. It explained one piece of the puzzle. And Estella didn’t care to solve any more; all Alex had brought her, from the first night she met him in Paris, was loss and suffering and heartache.

  Part Two

  Fabienne

  Chapter Seven

  May 2015

  I declare the exhibition, The Seamstress from Paris, now open!”

  The crowd gathered at the Met for the annual gala clapped and cheered and then began to file through to the exhibition rooms. Fabienne hung back, wishing it wasn’t so crowded, wanting to spend time alone with every exhibit, feeling so proud of her grandmother that she thought she might burst. She realized
she was standing beside Anna Wintour and she smiled stupidly, but her smile widened as Anna, who was also wearing Stella Designs, took in Fabienne’s gown, nodded approvingly and murmured, “You have excellent taste.”

  The whole night held the elusive quality of a dream. From arriving at Fifth Avenue filled with gawking, celebrity-mad crowds (what a disappointment Fabienne must have been), to walking up a red carpet lined with cameras and stars, where she’d recognized Kate Hudson, Sarah Jessica Parker, possibly a Kardashian—she didn’t watch much television so she couldn’t be sure—and Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, both of whom Fabienne had wanted to rush over to and befriend on the basis that they were all Australian.

  If only Estella was here to see this, Fabienne thought. How Mamie would love it, the way people were exclaiming over the Stars and Stripes dress, in classic navy with a thin horizontal white stripe and a bold red star over the heart, or the red skirt—a one-off from 1943—that was beautifully embroidered with a tiny repeating pattern of three witches on a broomstick, or the blouses from 1944 printed with faded maps of Paris so that the streets looked like delicate crisscrosses, a subtle reminder of a city struggling to come back to the light. As Fabienne stepped closer to study the now even more faded map on one of the blouses, she tripped on someone’s foot. To stop herself falling, she put out a hand, which connected with a man’s back.

  “I’m so sorry!” Fabienne gasped. “I was engrossed in the blouse.”

  The man had turned, as had the woman beside him, and they both smiled politely at her.

  “It’s incredible isn’t it?” the woman said to Fabienne. “I’m trying to find the Arc de Triomphe which is why my foot got in your way. I’m sorry.”

  “Did you find it?” Fabienne asked.

  “Just there. Bottom right.” The man pointed and Fabienne couldn’t help but notice his very handsome face: dark hair, blue eyes; a nice tuxedo—it looked like a Tom Ford—and a titanium Tiffany cuff peeking out at his wrist.