Schaffert / THE PERFUME THIEF
1
If you’re picturing me in some ladylike frock printed with posies, lace at the collar, don’t. I’m not done up that way. I began wearing trousers long before we ladies were allowed. You’ll find me in tweed and neckties, shirtsleeves and cuff links, fedoras and porkpies.
People sometimes say, She’s still somewhat handsome, and I think they mean it as a compliment.
“Are you whoever you are when you’re dressed,” a fellow asked me many, many years ago—decades, probably—a bourbon in one hand, his other hand toying with the button of my suspenders, “or are you whoever you are when you’re naked?”
I’ve had aliases. Sometimes I committed my crimes as a man, sometimes as a woman, sometimes as a woman in a man’s clothes. I don’t think of myself as dishonest, though. Never did. I’ve told lies, yes, but you can’t call me a liar just for being different. I’m an actor, if anything. I’m none of those people I pretended to be. Or, better yet, I’m all of them. And I have a good heart, and I’m a damn sight kinder than most of the saps I’ve snookered. When I was famous for a time, I’d be doing you a favor to filch your fine goods. People practically begged me to fleece them so they could boast of it. They’d pay me double the worth of whatever I took, just for the bragging rights.
I haven’t dragged my tuxedo out in years, and though I’ve never much minded the scent of mothballs, I’ve doused myself, lapel to sock, in a perfume I’ve bottled new for the occasion—the pretty, powdery stink of fresh-plucked mimosa smuggled up from the farms south of here, from the unoccupied zones, snuck right past the border by my underground spice merchant. This illegal perfume is my little slap on the nose to any Nazi who comes sniffing around my throat.
Now we’ve been invited back, we Parisians, to some of the clubs, some of the parties, some of the playgrounds we got kicked out of when our invaders invaded. They need us drunk and happy and batting our lashes at the enemy. They need Paris to be Paris. They need the city they stole to be something worth stealing after all.
It’s all pretend, but that’s fine, because I was always my most charming when I lied.
Copyright © 2021 by Timothy Schaffert. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
