Read Online Salaam, Paris by Kavita Daswani - Free Book Online

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