Flapper Boy

Maman and Papa met at Le Bon Marche. Maman always loved fashion. She helped women become the people they wanted to be. She was a ladies maid to all the women of Paris who did not have one of their own. Maman's job was in the women's clothing department of that simultaneous treasure chest and Pandora's box of a building. She made other women beautiful, and somewhere along the way, Papa decided that she was the most beautiful of them all.

Papa was awful with directions, and the first time he saw Maman he was trying to find a new suit for himself. Instead of leaving the store with a garment bag, he clothed himself in the happiness he found when Maman agreed to meet him for dinner that evening.

I was born a little over a year later. We were so happy until the war. When I was seven, Papa left to go fight. His humor and warm personality were replaced with the cold harshness of a medal that we were told meant he did something heroic. Every time I saw it, all I could feel was the pain, as if I was being impaled by the crossed swords of the medal that was supposed to symbolize valor. I could only wish that Papa had been a coward. I could not hear the words "Great War" without scoffing.

Maman became quiet, and after the war ended, she married Uncle Henri, as I was quickly told to call my new stepfather. Uncle Henri was large and balding, a grotesque caricature of a real person. His table manners were atrocious, he had no social graces to speak of, and he was consistently mopping his shining face and receding hairline, which while helping the sweat did little to counteract the smell.

Looking back I know that Maman must have been thinking of me. Even though her salary as a shop girl and Papa's as a journalist were not large, I can never remember wanting as a child. But she must have figured after Papa's death that Uncle Henri's fortune would make sure we stayed comfortable.

My world fell apart again the year I turned thirteen. The Spanish Flu was an epidemic, and though all three of us had managed to avoid it for the longest, at the very end of the scourge, Maman fell ill. Before she died, she made Uncle Henri promise that he would do whatever it took to protect me. It was this promise that would eventually change my life.

I followed fashion with a trained and voracious appetite. In its way, I felt closer to my Maman whenever I saw a beautiful dress or a fascinating hat. When I was eighteen, I even managed to get a job in the same department store where Maman and Papa met. I wasn't in clothing, but perfume, and wherever I went I was told I carried the scent of lavender with me.

No I did not have a close relationship with Uncle Henri, who scolded me time and again for working at that "dreadful place", but as I got into my later teens, the world was wonderful and exciting, and I couldn't imagine being anywhere but Paris.

Skirts were shorter, dresses were looser, and hair was much, much shorter. My reddish brown waves were my one big vanity, and although I reveled in shorter hemlines and celebrated the fact that my small breasts might finally be considered fashionable, I refused to cut my hair. Women could, and should, be equal to men, but that didn't mean we had to look like them.

Up until I turned nineteen, life with Uncle Henri wasn't happy, but it was peaceful. For the most part I was left to my own devices. I can only guess why things changed.

I have always looked young, and it wasn't until around the time I turned eighteen or nineteen that I actually began to look like a "grown-up". That was when men started to notice me. Uncle Henri was no exception. At the same times, the scandal of the rising dress hems meant that everyone, and I as a fashion conscious young woman, made sure I was consistently one of the first to have a shorter skirt. Uncle Henri also began to talk about how lonely he was and how he never imagined he would be raising another man's child. He wanted to raise children of his own.

It's likely that I'll never know the reason, but I think it was a combination of the above in addition to my Maman's dying wish that forced my hand.

Some otherwise unmemorable summer day is when it happened. Maybe it wasn't until now that he thought I was a "woman", but Uncle Henri had convinced himself he was in love with me, and decided that the only way he could really protect me was by marrying me.

At first, all I could do was walk away and lock myself into my room. Up until then I liked my life. I had a job I enjoyed, an entertaining hobby, and great friends. I didn't want to give any of that up. Then I came up with what I thought was a foolproof plan.

Despite being rather wealthy, Uncle Henri was notoriously stingy, and I thought that there was no way he would part with any, much less a large amount of it for anything non-necessary for me. The next afternoon, I walked into his study trembling.

The room was a bland as he was, so I didn't even have anything to focus my attentions on while I worked up the courage to confront him.

When he finally deigned to hear me, I opened my mouth and put myself on the most unexpected path I could have never imagined for myself. "I will marry you, but only if all of my conditions are met."

I honestly believed that there was no way he would ever agree to the first, let alone all of my outrageous conditions, so I found myself becoming bolder. "I will need a full trousseau, and there are three gowns in particular that I must have before I can marry you." I gave him the name of a well-known house of couture. "The first gown shines like the sun. It is made of gold silk and has a brilliant sunburst pattern beaded throughout. Even the way the hem is cut makes it flare like a bright sun if it were to be worn while dancing". I then mentioned its exorbitant cost, thinking he would forget his proposition and that life could continue on in its normal way. "If I am to agree, I must have it in my hands before I give you the next condition." I walked out of the room, sure of what his response would be.

To my utter shock and horror, three days later I walked into my room to find a large box on my bed. After lifting the lid, I could help but sigh, whether out of awe for the beauty of the piece or confusion over what to do next, I could not tell you.

Over supper that evening, in which I was forced to sit far closer to Uncle Henri than usual, and watched his normally pasty color slowly turn scarlet with the amount of wine I watched him consume. "Well, shall we set a date at the church?"

Fighting my impulse to flee as fast as I possibly could, I reminded him that my list was only a third of the way complete. "What useless frippery will it be now?" he said with a smile that looked as if it was humoring a child who thought they knew everything.

Angrily, I gave him the name of an even more exclusive couture house, one in which you were required to have an appointment to even see their designs. "This one is as silver as the full moon. The entire gown is beaded and the pattern radiates from the center. It looks like a full moon." Despite the fluke of the first dress, I knew he would never pay even more for this one, even if he had the patience to deal with the necessity of making an appointment to even see it.

When almost two weeks later I saw another box on my bed, I could barely open it my hands were trembling so badly. The delicate silver tissue wrapping was nothing to the gown it contained. The dress slowly slipped through my fingers as I began to panic.

I jumped nearly a foot in the air when I heard a knock on my door. I lifted the dress again, to shield myself if possible from Uncle Henri's slow approach. This time he had a lecherous leer on his face and it was all I could do not to call for a maid. How I managed to keep my voice level as I outlined my final impossible task, I will never know, but I must have been convincing.

I told him that I wanted a dress didn't exist, yet that shined like the stars, and that I wanted the most sought after designer in Paris to create it herself. I would only settle for midnight blue velvet, starbursts stitched in silver thread, and for each star to feature real diamonds.

There was no way in the world for this was going to happen. Somehow I coaxed Uncle Henri out of the room before sliding the bolt and nearly giving myself over to hysterics. The next morning seemed fine, and the month after that continued in much the same way. By the time I finally allowed myself to think that things may have returned to normal, I had to make a split second decision.

After not hearing a thing about the gown or marriage for over a month I gaped when the most beautiful dress I had ever seen was laid out on my bed one evening after I returned from work. Realizing how little time I had before Uncle Henri came to find in in order to make me uphold my end of the bargain, I grabbed my mother's favorite old carpet bag, my father's briefcase, and stuffed the three priceless gowns, my purse, and a small box of my most important possessions in it. On the way out of the house, I collected some food, and in a fit of genius or madness, grabbed the laundry of our very short gardener and made it out of the house.

I wandered until I found the artist's area where Maman, and Papa, and I had lived. I found a very small room that I could afford to rent for a short time and collapsed onto the shabby but sturdy bed that acted as both sleeping and seating area.

I knew Uncle Henri would be looking for me, and that I should probably leave the city, but I had lived in Paris my entire life and knew nowhere else. I had no one else to go to. Looking at the men's clothes falling haphazardly out of the bag that I had thrown onto the desk/table/vanity, I made a foolish decision.

Almost in a daze I asked my nearest neighbor, some kind of dancer if the tutus I saw in her incredibly messy flat were to mean anything, if she had a pair of scissors I might borrow. At my age in that time, I had realized with a sinking feeling, that my hair was my biggest liability. Uncle Henri knew I refused to cut it, and what better way to throw him off of my trail than by doing just that?

As I felt my long locks hit the floor, I knew I had to make sure I stayed hidden. After returning the scissors, I tried on trousers for the first time in my life, and thankful for being nearly flat chested, wrapping my breasts wasn't as hard or as painful as I thought it would be. Forcing years of my mother correcting my posture out of the window, I let myself slouch, and realized with a start that looking into the small mirror in my room, I made an incredibly believable boy. After washing off all of my makeup and getting rid of the cloud of lavender that I existed in, I pulled a cap down low over my eyes and set out to test my new identity with an audience.

I was hurrying down the street with my eyes turned towards the ground when I heard a voice calling out to me in strangely accented French.

"Excuse me, but how well do you know the city?" After assuring the strange gentleman that I had lived in Paris my entire life and could tell him how to get anywhere, he offered me the proposition that changed my life.

"Would you be interested in a job that means you sleep during the day and are busy all night almost every night?" Curious, I had to respond in the affirmative.

"Well a bunch of friends and I are constantly communicating back and forth and often need things delivered very quickly within the city. Would you be willing to be delivery boy for us?" He lit up a cigarette while he was talking, then stared intensely, waiting for my answer.

"What types of things would I be delivering?"

"Oh not much really, manuscript drafts, sketches, the occasional painting and such."

It was only at this moment that I put all of the pieces together: the strange accent, the nagging feeling I had seen this person before, and being asked to transport manuscripts and the like. Not to recognize G. Trevor Daniels, the American author of some of the most popular novels the world was reading, would have been criminal, and he must have seen the recognition flash in my eyes.

"We would pay you reasonably well to be discreet. We enjoy our parties and social life, but where we live and how we behave in private is only to be discussed if spoken about with us first. If you don't think you could hold to this, I can walk away now." And he started to turn from me.

"NO!" My voice cracked just like a young man's would. "I mean, no don't walk away, yes I would be interested in the job, and yes I can be incredibly discreet."

He gave me a bright, disarming smile that had me feeling a stirring in a place I hadn't expected. He ground out his cigarette on the curb and said "Excellent! I think we should begin with a meet and greet." He threw his arm around my shoulders and led me down the street.

For the next six months, I was a gopher to some of the greatest names of a generation. Poetry, art, novels, and even philosophy all passed through my hands, and as I got to know the creators, my opinions, particularly regarding aesthetic issues (which they had discovered I had an eye for) were sought.

One evening after making an unusual trip to the imposing yet somehow captivating Palais Garnier to deliver a libretto, I made yet another major decision. This group of artists frequented certain clubs when they were interested in a party, and having lived as a boy for so long, even calling myself Arnaud, I was ready to be a girl again.

I was going to go to one of these gatherings as myself. Having kept my hair short enough to just slick behind my ears this entire time, I wasn't very worried about being found out by Uncle Henri. Going back to my little flat, I shed the skin that had become normal and even comfortable to me these past six months.

Not slicking my hair back, my natural wave and ear length style were the height of fashion. Putting on rouge and kohl for the first time in months made me unrecognizable from the person I had been. Finally, putting on my golden sun dress, I became another version of myself. I finally felt like I would fit in with the fashionable artistic set I worked with and for on a daily basis.

When I walked across the club to the bar, people stopped talking and turned to stare as I passed. I had forgotten how it felt to be admired like you were a piece of meat in a butcher's shop, and I couldn't honestly say that I had missed it. I nursed my drink in a corner, swaying in time to the music. I hadn't realized I had become so lost in thought until a shadow fell over me, causing me to start.

I had to crane my neck, even in my heels to meet those eyes I had come to know so well over the last half year. "Hello. I'm Trevor. Trevor Daniels". My body's reaction to him hadn't gone away after our first meeting. If anything, it had only gotten worse. He was witty and intelligent, and his writing showed exactly how shallow the very people he was writing about, and who were reading his writing, actually were. He hadn't intended to be a success, but people ate up his stories.

He and I had become close friends. I worked for the rest of his group, but Trevor found a friend he could talk to, and I had only just recently realized that I had fallen in love with him. So when he introduced himself, I couldn't do anything but blush.

He had what I suppose they called "American good looks". Light blue eyes and wheat colored hair. He told me he was from what Americans called "the heartland". He grew up in one of the country's bigger cities, Chicago.

With all of this information I wasn't supposed to know at the forefront of my mind, the only thing I could say was, "hello, I'm Amelie".

He chuckled at my unusual reticence, "I don't suppose you would care to dance?" I gave him my hand, and he pulled me out onto the dance floor. We danced together all night, and I taught the endearingly clumsy American how to do the Charleston. I had to brush off his offer to walk me to my flat, but promised I would meet him for dinner if my crazy boss would give me the evening off.

The next afternoon was a really strange experience for me. As Arnaud, I got to see the effect that Amelie had had on Trevor. He was so preoccupied that he didn't think before letting me have the evening a week later off, saying he had plans of his own then anyway.

Armed with the knowledge that he was really looking forward to seeing Amelie again, I was much less flustered than the week before. Tonight I had pulled out the silver dress. It glowed under the streetlight as I walked to meet Trevor at the restaurant he had suggested. I could feel the stares on my back as I made my way into the small cozy restaurant.

About halfway through the wonderful evening, I couldn't help but wondering whether or not I could tell him who I really was. I don't think I would have felt safe in Paris anymore going back to the way I used to be. Uncle Henri continued to put pleas into the papers about how worried he was for his "dear stepdaughter's safety". I never wanted to see him again.

At the end of another wonderful evening, I wished it would have gone on forever. At this point, it was Trevor who became flustered. After managing to stammer out an invitation to a private party for the New Year, which was fast approaching, I whispered "I'd love to", kissed his cheek and walked away. Once I reached the door of the café, I turned to see he was still in a daze. I smiled to myself as I walked back to my flat.

The third "date" was more intimate than all the rest. I wore the third dress. The one that had almost cost me so much. But when I walked into the room on Trevor's arm, it felt like it might all have been worth it for this moment. I was, quite literally, the star of the evening. We drank and we danced, and as the clock got closer to ringing in the new year, I got more and more anxious.

I had decided to tell him. He had a right to know. As we were in the last minute before midnight, he handed me a piece of sheet music that he must have pilfered from the piano. Over the music in his endearingly untidy scrawl was both a poem and a plea:

For the girl whose

Smile shines like the sun

Who is fair as the moon

With eyes that glitter like stars

Come away with me?

"I'm going back to America, and I want you to come with me." The rest of the party was counting down the final ten seconds as I looked up at him in shock.

"I have something you have to know….

"10-9-8"

He beat me to it, "You're Arnaud".

"7-6-5"

"But how did you know—"

He put his hand gently over my mouth, "It's all in the poem, and I figured you must have had your reasons."

"4-3"

"And I love you both".

"2-1. Happy New Year!"

As everyone around us began to cheer and the band struck up Auld Lang Syne, he kissed me, and I decided that no matter what had happened in my life before this moment, it must have all been worth it.