Transvestia

lacking to complete my lady. If I could find a wig tonight, I could start tonight. And I had thought it would take at least another day just to collect the first outfit. At the information center I looked up the classification "perruguiers" in Bottin, the directory that lists all the businesses in Paris. No wigmaker advertised "Open until 9:00" or other U.S. style late business hours. Oh, well. Good try. At least I'll have everything else ready. Maybe tomorrow I could fine one. Perhaps I could go to the Carrousel tonight and tip enough for a good table and tip the waiter to invite one of the performers to have champagne with me and tip the pretty creature to tell me where she got her wig.

I picked up my packages and started downstairs. At a counter just a few yards from the door was a sign "Special on Wigs. Fitted here." Obviously it was in the cards for me to be complete, and now. "Excuse me, madam," I said to the bored-looking middle aged lady at the counter, "do you have a wig for a large head?”

"Is it for yourself?" The directness of her question startled me. "Yes, I ..."

"Makes no difference," she smiled. "I get my commission whether I sell to a woman or a man. It's for a masquerade, isn't it? Here, I have one that is already styled. Slip into this booth and try it." She got her commission.

Carrousel, the famous Paris night club that features the most beautiful female impersonators in the world, is just a half a block from the intersection of the Boulevard Montparnasse and the Boulevard Raspail. Many of the performers at Carrousel don't change to go home after work, but Parisians figure that this is their business and nobody else's, so the area around Carrousel is pretty blase about men in feminine attire. A couple of years earlier when our usual Paris hotel had been full we had stayed at a small hotel without a name at 11B Rue Jules Chaplain. I had noticed that the front door remained unlocked at all hours. To enter most European hotels you ring a bell and the concierge presses a button that opens an electric latch. He or she then scans the doorway to see who is coming or going. This place either had less strict surveillance or they catered to a clientele that preferred unmonitored arrivals and departures. This suited my plans, so I checked in, paid a week's rent in advance, and went up to my

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