I helped myself to one of the chocolates and let it melt in my mouth. It was pure deliciousness. After swallowing the last morsel, the sweet taste of the dark chocolate dissolved into the bitter taste of dark memories. It was time.
“Madame,” I said hesitantly. “I must tell you something.”
“What eez it, ma chérie? There eez sadness in your eyes.”
My mind flashed back fifteen years. Kevin and I were both teenagers —sixteen-year-olds who had run away from our small rural upstate New York town. He to escape the brutal beatings of his father, a macho local sheriff, who had no tolerance for his son’s homosexuality, and I to escape the wrath I endured as the daughter of the neighborhood crack whore. “Who’s your daddy?” the kids at school would taunt when I was a skinny pig-tailed youngster. For all I knew, it could be any one of their fathers. My narcissistic mother, never there for me (I was an unwanted accident discovered too late to be aborted), slept with them all to indulge her sick addictions. Then, at fifteen, late-bloomer me sprouted five inches, and my flat-as-a-board breasts morphed into spheres. Boys would grab at me, try to pull my pants down, and call me names like slut, whore, and skank. They equated me with my mother, who I was not.
Kevin was always there to protect me. He’d learned Tai Kwan Do to protect himself from his own share of bullies and could send one of my molesters to his knees with a roundhouse kick. But this was not the life we wanted, so we decided to run away together. To find a new life in a big city like New York where we could fit in or disappear.
Kevin stole a gun from his father along with a few hundred dollars, which he kept locked in a safe. The gun and the money were all we had to start off on our new life together. We managed to hitch our way to New York City where we ended up in Brooklyn in the heart of Brighton Beach. Kevin charmed his way into securing a small one-bedroom rental apartment and used the money to buy some flea-market furnishings. We both needed to find work fast. Kevin, who had a flair for words, found a position teaching English to the children of neighborhood Russian immigrants, and I landed a sales job at a local lingerie store, Madame Paulette’s.
I’d been combing the busy streets for work for hours when I came upon the big “Sales Help Wanted” sign in the storefront window. I’ll never forget walking into her shop. With Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose” playing in the background, I took in all the luxurious silk and lace lingerie that Madame Paulette imported from Paris. Tables of delicate, perfectly folded brassieres, panties, and garters mingled with carefully organized racks of beautiful slips, negligees, and robes. There was also a carousel filled with package after package of fine silk stockings. Standing erect behind the cash register, the petite but chic Madame Paulette was dressed in her signature gray A-line skirt and perfectly pressed white blouse and drinking a glass of red wine. I introduced myself and told her I was interested in the sales position. She gave me the once-over and nodded approvingly. In her deep raspy voice, she said, “Ma chérie, zee shape of a women’s breasts lies in zee straps. Let me see if you know how to adjust one.”
Leaving her wine behind, she led me to a small dressing room in the rear of the store where a well-heeled buxom woman was trying on numerous bras. Madame Paulette beheld the half-naked woman in her ill-fitting lacy bra and shook her head. “Ah, non, non, non. It eez all wrong for you.” Sorting through the pile of bras strewn on a petite gold-leafed chair, she found another and handed it to her. “Please put on theese one, and mademoiselle will adjust it.” With a nod of her chin, she looked my way.
The stocky woman nervously slipped on the big-cupped bra, front to back, and I hastily hooked it for her. Madame Paulette shot me a pleased smile. I surveyed the customer in the bra; the bra had potential but was not fitting her quite right. With nimble fingers, I tightened both straps, lifting up her boobs. I had learned how to put on a bra from watching my mother prepare for her “dates.” At least the crack whore had been good for something. And being a difficult fit myself with my full C-cup breasts, which I’d inherited from her, I was quite an expert on making bras fit, though mine were the cheap cotton K-Mart variety.
“Now bend over and wiggle your breasts into the cups.” I said after I finished adjusting the straps.
The woman did as asked and then stood up. She looked at herself in the floor length mirror, and her face lit up. The lacy, underwire bra fit her perfectly and did wonders for her saggy boobs. “I’ll take it and two more just like it!”
“Superbe!” Madame Paulette beamed. “I will have my new assistant wrap zeem up.”