Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose Page A

busing dishes. The cute ones dressed in sailor suits and escorted the dancers onstage. Every kid who knocked on her door imagined that he or she was the first. The first one who’d been born into the wrong body, the first to love the wrong person, the first to have been beaten up, the first to have washed up on the safe shore of Montparnasse. Yvonne liked basking in the warming sun of their admiration.
    One day, Fat Bernard called Yvonne out to meet a chunky girl wearing bloodstained white flannel trousers.
    Yvonne had seen her somewhere before. It took her a moment to recognize the young woman on the posters plastered around the city, announcing a sports exhibition at the Vélodrome d’Hiver. A record-breaking something or other, soon to be a competitor in the upcoming Olympics, the girl had glared out of the ugly sign, threatening passersby with a spear. Now one eye was purple and swollen shut. Some evil bastard somewhere was sleeping like a baby. Yvonne asked Fat Bernard to take her to the backstage shower.
    When the girl reappeared in a robe and a terry cloth turban, Yvonne led her to the wardrobe.
    â€œThank you,” the girl kept saying.
    Yvonne showed her the racks of costumes, suits, and dresses. The girl looked to Yvonne for direction. Yvonne shrugged. Pick what you want.
    The girl reached toward a man’s tuxedo. Her fingertips bounced off it, as if recoiling from a hot stove.
    â€œGo ahead,” said Yvonne. “Try it on.”

Paris
    July 15, 1928
    Dear parents,
    Yesterday evening I went to the baroness’s for dinner. She and I have shared pleasant evenings, meals, trips to plays, museums, concerts, nightclubs high and low. Yet never once has she invited me to her home, though I have heard, from others, about her parties.
    I’d assumed I was banned because her husband Didi resents the time she spends with me and the small (by their standards) but generous (by ours) loans with which she has gotten me past some rough spots. Recently, I was pushed to the breaking point when an acquaintance, a terrible painter, described the fabulous meal he’d enjoyed at the baroness’s table.
    Late one night, after the baroness and I had had a few drinks at the Dingo, I asked her why she’d never invited me. Was her husband jealous? If so, I would understand. The baroness laughed. She and her husband didn’t have that sort of marriage, and besides he never inquired what she did with her time—and his money. Then why had she hosted my untalented friend, and not me?
    She sighed. “What is the difference between you and your friend?”
    â€œI am a good artist, and he is a bad one?”
    â€œThat is not the point. The point is, he is French. The problem is my brother-in-law, Armand, my husband’s business partner—”
    â€œI know who Armand is,” I said.
    â€œHe’s always at these dinners. And he is something of a maniac about pure French blood or some such distasteful concept.”
    â€œSo the problem is that I am Hungarian?”
    The baroness rolled her eyes.
    So it seemed like a triumph, like proof of the power of our friendship when I received a handwritten invitation to dinner at her home. Maybe her brother-in-law wouldn’t be there. Maybe his views had softened. Who cared what he thought of Hungarians? I was determined to go.
    My desire was not about social climbing but purely about art. If I want to photograph Paris, all of Paris , from its palaces to its hovels, I will have to breach that fortress known as high society.
    On the day of the dinner, I kept hearing Papa’s warning: never be early. To surprise one’s hostess getting dressed is an unforgiveable act of aggression. How well I remember the calculations by which our family arrived at Grandma’s Sunday lunches and the vice principal’s holiday tea precisely twenty minutes late, along with all the other guests who showed up at the same moment.
    I arrived twenty