“Exactly.” He nodded. “We’re here to do something about that.”
We had deflected attention from Be Your Best’s vanished creative leader, Lilly Terhune. When an article in the Boston Globe used the word “disappeared” next to the words “glamorous business tycoon Lilly Terhune,” Dead Lilly was delighted to be described as a glamorous business tycoon but determined not to have being dead get in the way of her perfect sales conference. “Get on the telephone, Neave,” she said. “Call the directors and any influential salesgirls you can think of and talk up the new stuff—hint about the circus extravaganza. Let them hear that everything’s on target. Be sweet. Let them know they’re fascinating and smart and their voice sounds so good-looking. They’re all talkers, and they’ll talk.”
I found that when the need arose and was clearly defined, I could flirt. Only a handful of attendees canceled.
The opening address was Lilly’s trademark performance. “The trick is to look like exactly what every salesgirl on the floor wants to be,” Lilly told me. Mr. Boppit stepped around her and walked into my closet. “We’ll start with the shoes, because they are the foundation to any look,” he said briskly. “People who know what’s what look at the shoes first.” He kicked my feet. It hurt, which astounded me.
“I can feel you!” I gasped. Up until this point Boppit and Lilly had been like the air. What was this dog but debris from my exploded confusion and grief, after all? Yet when he kicked me, a solid whummp argued against his imaginary state. “What’s happening here?”
“You haven’t noticed. Yesterday I offered you a cigarette,” Lilly said.
“So?”
“You smoked it,” Lilly said. “We’re less distant to you … more solid.”
I bent to take the shoes off, and when I got upright again Boppit whipped down my zipper. “Off,” he demanded briskly. “Now, then.” He turned to the closet. “Nothing in here will work. Except … perhaps this Ben Zuckerman suit. Look at this, Lilly.”
She blew a series of smoke rings. “Love it. Of course, I should. I picked it off a rack in Jordan Marsh in 1952 and wore it the next day. Passed it off to Neave when my closet got too full. But that’s too sober for opening night. We’ll use it for the day-two sessions.”
“Right,” Bop said, flicking it with one finger. “So—Neave, show me anything else in this closet that Lilly picked out or passed down.”
I obliged. We stood shoulder to shoulder and looked over a lineup of about six dresses, two skirts, four blouses, and a clutch of belts. Boppit did a hard five-minute assessment, then stepped forward with perfect confidence and started laying out entire ensembles, one by one. “For the welcoming speech we need something splashy yet not intimidating; glamorous, but not so glamorous that the audience can’t imagine themselves in it. So—isn’t there something a little more … frivolous yet still elegant in there? Oh my God!” he cried, leaping out with his prize in his hands. He held out a silk broadcloth sundress, snug through to its tiny waist with a wide midnight-blue belt cinching everything above a skirt that must have had twelve yards of fabric in it. Red and aquamarine camellias flowed over the skirt’s white background. Boppit held it to his waist and turned so it moved like a current around him. “So, so perfect! A Molyneux frock! And you are not wearing one of those pointy-cone brassieres under it. We want you to look like you’ve actually got breasts. The pointy look will be so outré in five years. We are placing you at the head of that vanguard.”
“How do you know what will be outré or not?” I ask.
He rolled his eyes at me and handed me the dress. “Again with your narrow idea that things only go in one direction. What have you got in the way of underwear that accommodates strapless?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever worn strapless.”
“Then why is this dress here?” Boppit demanded, swinging a silk sheath up off the bed to consider. “Lilly, this one was yours too?”
Dead Lilly nodded. “It’s last season, Bop,” she warned.
“Dovima was wearing this thing in the Vogue March issue so who the hell cares if it didn’t go down the runway last week.” He whipped around to consult with Lilly. “This is perfect for the awards dinner. What should we do about the underwear?”
They located the appropriate underwear in the dresser that Lilly’d used when we lived together. She and Boppit yanked open the drawers and found strapless brassieres, corsets, garter belts, stockings—some still in their pearl-finish boxes with filmy tissue paper.
“Now, the shoes … something delicate, reserved but lightheartedly sexy.” Boppit hummed, bent over and digging through the closet like a terrier. “Look at this pitiful collection. My God, you wear Buster Brown,” he whined, dangling a brown penny loafer between his thumb and forefinger. “Yet you are in the fashion business. This is just too strange.” He held the shoe up to show Lilly. “This kind of footwear might work if it were worn with an air of irony.” He looked at me doubtfully. “Do you think you can manage ironic?”
Maybe. Maybe not.
“We’ll say not,” Boppit said.
“Here.” Dead Lilly drew me to a full-length mirror. “Look at yourself, Neavie.”
I did. “Oh,” I said softly. “Oh.” And I started to cry, because something about the image in the mirror was more like Lilly Terhune than Lilly herself. Dead Lilly stood behind me and patted one shoulder. Mr. Boppit patted the other. “We can stand up there on that stage right behind you, Neave. Nobody’ll see us. Just you. Slip on these pretty little patent heels—a woman can convince anybody of anything in those shoes. Now let’s get your final conference plan-of-attack-meeting outfit ready, because those people will be in your office in an hour and you’re going to walk in there and tell them exactly what’s going to happen.”
“You can do it.” Dead Lilly nodded at my reflection in the mirror as if it were truer to me than the flesh. “Look at you. So ready.”
*
On the opening day of the conference when I first stepped to the front of the room, a thick, soft silence greeted me. Some of the more clueless salesgirls were still looking up expecting Lilly Terhune to sweep up to the lectern. But it was me. I looked out at them and it was as if I were suddenly looking out of Lilly Terhune’s eyes, believing the things Lilly believed—that selling Be Your Best cosmetics was a public service on the order of providing drinking water and electricity.
“Tell them they are continuing practices that civilization has honored for as long as there has been civilization,” Boppit had said to me as we prepared. “Remember that before lipstick existed in that beautiful twist tube, the Mesopotamians applied jewels to their lips. The Egyptians used potted dyes. Cleopatra crushed carmine beetles to get the red she wanted.”