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well-kempt avenues, this city was more like a dream of Paris than New York.
    The wardrobe department was lodged on the second floor of another genteel stone building with decorative flower finials over the windows. The door at the end of the dark hallway led to a huge open room with sunlight cutting yellow squares on the hardwood floors and racks of clothing. A sewing machine whirred invisibly nearby. Between the headless mannequins and shelving with metal bins for accessories, Pagan could see that the opposite wall was covered in mirrors.
    â€œHello?” she called out, brushing past a rack of black jackets. Tony Perry’s name was scrawled on big yellow tags attached to each one. “Madge?”
    â€œPagan, honey!” a woman’s scratchy voice called from somewhere to her right. “Over here!”
    Pagan spotted a column of smoke trailing up near the ceiling and wound her way between ball gowns, shelves of hats and rows of linen trousers toward it. “They’ve buried you alive, Madge. I’m here to save you.”
    She rounded a trestle of frilly yellow skirts to find Madge Popandreau, wardrobe mistress for Two to Tango , seated at a huge black sewing machine. She had her eternal cigarette clutched between narrow, red-lipstick-smeared lips, her sharp black eyes following the line of white tulle as she threaded it under the bobbing needle. Madge had frizzy unnaturally black hair pulled back in a giant bun, square, deft hands and an eagle gaze that could spot the head of a pin on a sequin-covered dress.
    â€œI’m just finishing up your petticoat for the big rumba number. Throw on that black suit for me in the meantime, will you, sweetie? Mind the pins.” She jerked her head toward a rack of clothes with tags that bore Pagan’s name. “Rada!”
    â€œComing.” The voice was gloomy and Russian. A lanky young woman with a leonine mane of dark blond hair emerged between racks of fur coats. “Hello,” she said to Pagan in the same sad tone. “I will help you with the clothes.”
    â€œYou wearing a girdle, honey?” Madge asked, still sewing, and didn’t wait for a reply. “If she’s not, get her one, will you, Rada?”
    Rada nodded and scanned Pagan’s hips as she took off her trench coat. “No girdle today?”
    â€œI’d rather jiggle like Jell-O,” said Pagan.
    Rada nodded mournfully, as if Pagan had announced a sudden death, slid the tape measure from around her neck and whipped it around Pagan’s hips. “A full-body one is required for this suit.” She shook her head. “It is very tight.”
    â€œI don’t need to breathe,” Pagan said as she slipped off her sneakers and unbuttoned her jeans. Near-nudity was the norm in wardrobe. Rada turned, and pulled a black sheath of elastane and straps off its hanger attached to the suit.
    Pagan wiggled and wrestled her way into it, adjusting the bra straps, as Rada slipped the silky wool suit off its hanger. The pencil skirt was tight as hell at the waist—Rada hadn’t been kidding—and it clenched tighter still as it slid down her hips.
    â€œI know you’re all about the A-line Dior these days, honey,” Madge said. “You like to be able to move, maybe have a snack, like a real-life person. But this director, Victor, he didn’t want you looking human and told me to make it as close-fitting as possible. I said okay, since you don’t have to dance in it.”
    Victor sounded like a treat. Pagan hadn’t met him yet, and was dreading it more each day. “I might need to walk,” she said, squeezing her feet into the four-inch black heels that went with the suit. “I don’t think I could sit down in this.”
    â€œWe’ll get you a slant board,” Rada said.
    The dreaded slant board, a simple contraption that allowed actresses to recline on a wooden board that could be leaned back at an angle to