The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Paris, France. July 29, 1716. Addie waits across the street from the tailor’s shop. She hopes that Bertin, the shop’s owner, will assume she’s a lady’s maid. After the last customer leaves, Addie runs inside the shop. Monsieur Bertin regards her coolly; “I’m closing,” he tells her. Addie pretends that she’s Madame Lautrec’s maid and has come to give Lautrec’s measurements. Bertin leaves to get his measuring tape. By the time he fetches it, he’ll have forgotten about Addie and will retire upstairs—and Addie will have the shop to herself.

Addie listens for Bertin to go to bed, then she gets to work, admiring the shop’s fine fabrics. She observes the men’s clothing in another corner of the room. She considers, as she often does, how much easier it would be to be a man. Then she changes into the men’s clothing; it feels like “armor” against her body. She picks up a pair of shears to try to cut her hair, but it grows back immediately. She looks at herself in the mirror. The disguise isn’t terribly convincing. She sighs, then she changes into a dark sapphire dress.

Addie leaves Bertin’s shop and steps outside into the night. A man dressed in black greets her from across the street: it’s the stranger. He holds out his arm and offers to walk with her. Addie accepts, but only because it’s dark out; only “women of a certain class” walk alone at night. After a while, Addie asks the stranger to change his appearance—he can take any shape he chooses, right? The stranger smiles and tells her he likes this shape—and he thinks Addie does, too. Addie says she did before, but he’s ruined it for her. Then she immediately realizes her mistake: she has told him the truth, and now he will always appear as the stranger.

Addie and the stranger walk until they reach a small, disheveled house. When the stranger leaves, Addie will sneak inside through a gap in the wall. This building will burn down in a month, but for now, it’s hers. But the stranger doesn’t leave. Instead, he asks why Addie puts herself through more suffering when she could just give in to him. Calmly, Addie tells the stranger about the elephants she saw in the palace grounds the other day, and the Champagne she drank afterward. She’s only been in Paris for two years, and there’s so much more to see. Addie grins, relishing the small victory of proving the darkness wrong.