Beauty Dies

by Melodie Johnson Howe

  I almost made it through the cosmetics section but caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and stopped. Pinched and angry, I was suddenly one of those women I had vowed at the age of eighteen never to become. My mother. The saleslady, the one with her face painted by the numbers, appeared in front of me like a miracle. She took hold of my hand and turned it so the white underside of my wrist was exposed. Her hand was extraordinarily soft, as if it had been filleted.

  “Wet Red,” she said soothingly, drawing a red line with a tube of lipstick across my wrist right where a sad lonely woman might slash her vein.

  It wasn’t a bad shade. Oh, hell, lipstick was good for the soul.

  Five

  IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK when I got back to the hotel. Claire was having tea, surrounded by fashion magazines. I helped myself to a cup and a few crustless sandwiches, then sat at my desk. I told her what I had learned at Bergdorf’s.

  She put her cup down. “St. Rome? Look on page forty-two of the March issue of Bonton.”

  I did. There was Sarah Grange wearing a white shirt and white jodhpurs, sitting on the whitest horse God ever made. Sitting behind her, in tight white jeans and no shirt, was the most handsome guy God ever made. Sarah and the bare-chested wonder looked like they had just experienced mutual orgasm, or at least an epiphany. On closer inspection, so did the horse. Below the picture were the words: THE ST. ROME WOMAN.

  “There’s the connection,” I said. “St. Rome dress. St. Rome Woman.”

  “Yes, but what does the connection mean?” Claire asked peevishly.

  “Remember when riding a horse was how girls said they lost their virginity?” I bit into a sliced cucumber sandwich.

  “Miss Hill, I’m an accomplished horsewoman. I’ve been riding since I was five. The only thing I ever lost was my hard hat.”

  “You didn’t grow up in Versailles, Ohio. Where did you grow up?” I wondered.

  “I was born in the city where you and I met. Pasadena. I was raised in London, Paris, Rome, and Berlin. I am a woman-of-the-world. Page twenty-two in the April edition of Vogue, Miss Hill.” She popped a transparently thin slice of salmon laid out on a narrow piece of brown bread into her mouth.

  This time Sarah Grange was in a white chiffon evening gown, her arms raised above her head, holding a bottle of St. Rome perfume. Kneeling at her feet was the guy in the tight white jeans. He still hadn’t found his shirt. His broad hands clutched her narrow hips. His face burrowed into the layers of chiffon. The muscles on his back bulged with tension. Or was it passion? The caption identified her again as the St. Rome Woman.

  “And I only bought a lipstick.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Page eighty in the February issue of Bonton.”

  There were Cybella and Sarah: TWO GENERATIONS OF BEAUTY. Cybella was still beautiful. But time had softened her angular bones and made her lips thin and drawn instead of lush. The neck was long and elegant, but again, time had diminished her large dark eyes with wrinkled flesh.

  “According to the insipid article,” Claire said, “mother and daughter had not seen one another for some time. The writer, if you can call her that, seems to think it had something to do with each woman discovering that beauty comes from the inside, not the outside, and then she had a tizzy about drinking a lot of water. Once reunited, mother transformed daughter into a supermodel in order to carry on a short family tradition.”

  “That’s nice. Then the daughter does a porno video.”

  “And the mother supposedly kills herself, and the other performer in the video is murdered.” She reached for the anchovy paste sandwich, which I always let her have. “Call St. Rome’s sales representative. Tell him I want to talk to the designer immediately.”

  I dialed the number and got Blanchard Smith’s secretary on the phone. “This is Maggie Hill calling for Claire Conrad. She would like to speak with Mr. St. Rome.”

  “I’ll tell Mr. Smith to inform him,” she said, her voice thin with boredom.

  As an ex-secretary, I knew I hadn’t made it to the important-calls-to-return list.

  “Listen,” I said, “and listen carefully. We have a porno video of the St. Rome Woman, Sarah Grange. You tell him I’m ready to give it to the tabloids. Tell him inquiring minds are waiting to hear from him at the Parkfaire Hotel, Conrad Suite, in one hour.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “Claire Conrad has no sense of humor and I lost mine this morning.” I hung up.

  Claire looked up from the pages of Bonton. Her hard intelligent eyes studied me.

  “You’ve thought of something?” I asked. “A clue?”

  “How did you lose your virginity, Miss Hill?”

  “Bobby Polinsky. I was sixteen.”

  “Why?”

  “I just wanted to get it over with. Virginity always seemed like a burden.”

  “You mean like having a hump on your back?”

  “I mean like I would be freer. More equal and independent without it.”

  “Equal to whom and independent of what?”

  “Equal to Polinsky and also independent of him.”

  “And were you?”

  “No. Polinsky’s mind was as flat as an Ohio field. I was far more intelligent, but everybody adored him. I was never adored. He strutted around the school and the girls whispered my name in the hallways.”

  “Poor women.” She shook head and sipped her tea.

  I wanted to ask her how she’d lost her virginity, but I couldn’t. That would be like asking Queen Elizabeth if she’d lost it in the backseat of her Rolls. Maybe when she lost her hat, a stable boy had picked it up. They looked into each other’s eyes.

  “You’ve thought of something, Miss Hill?” she asked, gazing at me over the rim of her cup.

  “No.”

  Boulton came into the room. “May I get you some more hot water, madam?” He checked the teapot.

  “No thank you, Boulton. Take a look at those magazines.”

  He obliged. “So Sarah Grange is the St. Rome Woman.”

  “Miss Hill has learned that Jackie’s red dress is a St. Rome design. And I learned that Miss Hill lost her virginity when she was sixteen with a young boy named Bobby Polinsky.”

  He smiled at me. “Regarding Mr. Polinsky, should I offer my congratulations or my condolences?”

  I made a face. The phone rang.

  “Conrad Suite, Maggie Hill speaking.”

  A female voice filled with self-importance announced, “This is Nora Brown, editor of Bonton magazine. I want to see Claire Conrad as soon as possible, here, at the magazine. We’re at Forty-fifth and Madison.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “She threatened St. Rome, didn’t she? In the fashion world that’s like threatening the president of the United States. And I suggest that Miss Conrad bring some proof to back up her outrageous accusations.”

  “Do you have a VCR?”

  “Of course.”

  “Just a minute.” I looked at Claire. “It seems my threats have upset St. Rome and a top dog at Bonton. She wants to see you.”

  “Tell her I’ll be there.”

  “She’ll be there,” I said to Nora Brown.

  She grunted and slammed down the phone.

  Claire leaned back in her chair, stretched her long legs, and smiled. “It seems we have begun to move the rock. Bring the car around, Boulton.”

  I took off my jacket and examined the lumpy shoulder pads. I searched my desk drawer for scissors, in vain, then began to nibble at the threads.

  “Must you gnaw on your clothes, Miss Hill?”

  “I’m having a clothes attack. Big shoulder pads are out. We’re going to Bonton. They know shoulder pads are out because they have deemed it so.” I spit some thread into the wastebasket.

  “When we first met you told me shoulder pads made you feel less melancholy.”

  “They do. Look, I know this isn’t going to make any sense to you bec
ause you get up in the morning and put on your black pantsuit one day and your white pantsuit the next day, God knows why, and you have hundreds of black suits and white suits. But the rest of us poor jerks have to worry about color, pattern, style, and length.”

  “But why devour your clothes? It’s like eating your young.” She got up and left the room, returning with a Swiss pocketknife that did everything except ask you for a date. “I’d think,” she said, “your need to feel less mournful would triumph over your need for fashion.”

  She expertly flipped open the knife. A silvery blade shone in her hand. I stared at it and wondered if Jackie had seen the shiny sharpness of the blade before it sliced into her belly. I took the pocketknife and cut the remaining threads, and the shoulder pads fell to the floor. They looked strangely indecent, like discarded parts of a body.

  Six

  SITTING IN THE BENTLEY was like being held in the palm of a giant gray kid glove. Claire and I sat in the backseat. The crystal bud vases in silver holders bloomed with wildflowers. It was Boulton’s job to replace the flowers with fresh ones each morning. The small bouquets were a reminder of the mysterious death of Claire’s parents. That’s all I had been allowed to know. I wondered if Johnson had held anything back from Boswell. I reached in my purse and got out my mirror and applied Wet Red. Boulton’s eyes watched me in the rearview mirror. The lipstick felt as smooth and as moist as a lover’s tongue. I noticed how his hair almost touched his starched white collar. I wondered how many unloved women had felt the nape of his neck with their naked arms. I put the lipstick and mirror away.

  “God gives you one face and you paint yourself another,” Claire announced. “And yet you remove your shoulder pads.”

  “Confusing, isn’t it?” I sighed.

  At about five o’clock Boulton pulled into a NO PARKING space in front of the Bonton building. Claire asked him to wait.

  We rode up to the twenty-second floor. Jackie’s video weighed heavily in my purse. My jacket hung limply on my shoulders, making me look like I was in a slump, but my lips glistened.

  We stepped out into a narrow utilitarian foyer. A fatigued receptionist, her lipstick long talked off, sat behind a surgical-white table. A black leather banquette ran along one wall. Two thin men sat on it, legs crossed, hands folded on knees, purposely staring in opposite directions. Behind the receptionist, in big silver letters, gleamed the word Bonton. Below was a metal rack weighted with clothes. A green suit, about the size of a small box, was shoved against a purple crushed-velvet pantsuit. The purple number looked like it had been made for a demented poet. A yellow fake fur coat, cute as a teddy bear, cuddled against a limp floral print dress. The dress looked tired—like it had taken a couple of decades to drag itself in from Woodstock. The clothes had a silly childlike quality, as if they’d been designed for all those adult children of tasteless parents. I wished I’d left my shoulder pads in. Not only did I feel like I had tiny shoulders, now I felt like I had no spine.

  “Claire Conrad to see Nora Brown,” Claire announced.

  “Just a minute.” The receptionist pushed a button with a pencil, told someone that we were waiting, then took another call.

  A slender woman with a stern tight mouth and hair and skin the color of cheap Chablis came out the door next to the clothes rack.

  “Claire Conrad?” she demanded.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Ms. Brown’s secretary. This way, please.” Turning sharply on flat heels, she spoke with all the warmth of a nurse ready to draw blood.

  We followed her down a long corridor lined with more clothes racks and windowed cubicles. Each cubicle contained one woman and a computer. The women, brows wrinkled with concentration, stared into their monitors, or over a cup of coffee, or through a curl of cigarette smoke. They looked as gray as the industrial carpeting and as dry as soot. In fact they looked like we used to think housewives looked: isolated and unhappy.

  “We’re preparing a layout,” the secretary said in a clipped voice, gesturing toward the racks. “We mix and match the outfits to see what we want and what we don’t want to use. It’s an editing process.”

  Claire stopped and pulled out a yellow leather bustier from one of the racks. The empty cups of the bra arched stiffly outward in mocking imitation of the female breast. “Are the women in those offices trying to figure out how to sell this to other women?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “No wonder they look tired,” Claire observed dryly. The secretary marched us through a big square room.

  Women’s hats lined two long shelves. Feathers, nets, and silk flowers decorated brims and bands. Boxes overflowing with gold earrings, pearl necklaces, brooches, rhinestone chokers, and bracelets were piled on a large table. Another table held rows of large-size high-heel shoes. Chiffon scarves, silk scarves, and cashmere shawls were tossed in a pile.

  “Our accessory room,” the secretary announced.

  It was the kind of room I had dreamed about when I was little and playing dress-up. But every time I opened my mother’s closet door, there were only the limp rayon dresses, plastic belts, and safe, unsexy shoes with the squishy wedge soles. Picking up a pink suede high-heel shoe, I guessed it to be about a size eleven. “Did you ever play dress-up in your mother’s clothes?” I asked Claire.

  “I preferred the costumes of kings. Once I dressed up as Richard the Third and terrified the servants. Why do you ask?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Models have large feet,” the secretary informed me, taking the shoe from my hand and returning it. “Nora Brown is waiting.”

  We moved into another hallway where we encountered a closed door flanked by two desks. A red-haired woman sat at one, our guide took the other. They nodded and spoke in unison: “You may go in.”

  Nora Brown stood behind a massive desk carved from wood the color of blond hair. In her early fifties, she was small and lean. Her black hair, cut severely short, accentuated a wide, firm jaw, pale skin, and ruby red lips. Her white silk blouse was tucked tightly into a navy blue skirt. She was studying some kind of layout the way an admiral might scrutinize his invasion map. Instead of ships I imagined her strategically positioning tall, thin, big-footed models around the world. She looked up at us with quick furtive eyes the color of a basic black dress.

  “Sit down.” Nora gestured to two small, uncomfortable-looking steel chairs. My mother would’ve called them the going-home chairs: the kind you offered the guests when you didn’t want them to linger.

  Nora turned on Claire. “I’ve never talked to a private investigator before.”

  “Any clerk from the IRS can call himself an investigator. I prefer to be called a private detective,” Claire replied, her eyes taking in the room.

  “Blanchard Smith telephoned me. He was very upset by your threats.”

  “To be exact, Miss Hill threatened him. She has a certain aptitude for the profession.”

  Nora gave me a quick look, too quick for her to notice the charm of my smile.

  “Where is Mr. St. Rome?” Claire asked.

  “I thought it best to see if your accusations had any validity before disturbing him.”

  “I didn’t know that an editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine fronted for the designers.”

  “I’m not fronting for anybody.” Nora picked up a copy of her magazine. “I’ve been told by men that they find the women in Bonton sexier than the women in Playboy. The sexuality of the American woman is as important to us as what she wears. They go hand in hand. But there is a difference between sexiness and pornography,” she elaborated, primly. “Bonton has taken a political stand. I even wrote an article on pornography.”

  “For or against?” I asked in my most innocent voice.

  “Against, of course.” Ruby lips curled in contempt. She brushed angrily at her skirt as if a little pornography had gotten on it. “Show me what proof you have.”

  “Miss Hill, the VCR is there,” Claire pointed her walking stick to
ward some blond-colored shelves.

  I got the video ready to go, grabbed the remote, and clicked it on. Again I stared at female flesh.

  Nora sat stiff-shouldered in her chair, lips pursed. After a few minutes she pressed her fingers over the bridge of her nose as if trying to push a headache or the images on the monitor away. “Turn it off.”

  Claire nodded and I hit the button.

  “Private investigation is a dirty little profession, isn’t it?” Her black eyes challenged Claire.

  “I’d say mine is a grim profession. The truth, and I always discover the truth, is usually very sad.”

  “Oh, please, spare me the platitudes. What do you intend to do with this video?”

  “As Miss Hill suggested, there are always the tabloids, but for now I’d just like some answers.”

  “I have a magazine to run and I’d like to get on with it. So why don’t you cut the crap and tell me how much money you want.” She sounded like she was ordering another shipload of models.

  “I never discuss money. Miss Hill handles my finances.”

  Nora studied me. I tried to adjust my expression to that of a blackmailing accountant.

  “You need shoulder pads in that jacket,” she snapped, then thrust her wide jaw in Claire’s direction. “I don’t know anything about this video. I don’t know why Sarah did it or when she did it.”

  “The St. Rome evening gown dates the video,” Claire said. “It’s from last year’s fall collection.”

  “The rag hanging on that creature is a St. Rome? There’s no way you can prove that.”

  “The creature has a name. It’s Jackie,” I said.

  Nora ignored me. “Videos are no longer an obvious source of reality.” She slapped her hands down on a photograph of a beautiful young woman smiling as if she were the only beautiful young woman who had ever smiled. “That dress may look like a St. Rome, but it doesn’t mean it is. You obviously don’t know the fashion industry. We thrive on redundancy. That style of dress, with a little variation, has been done for years.” She was better than a politician at putting spin on a story.