Free The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan Page A

another one. With that line, Ayer created a volunteer army, while making it seem like an American tradition.
    Frances didn’t think it was a stretch to say that De Beers was bigger than both of those in terms of inventing the thing you could not do without. Of course, that sounded like bragging. She scratched out everything she had written.
    Maybe she ought to get dressed first.
    She had decided to wear a blue taffeta gown with a long, full skirt, and a jeweled shawl. The ensemble hung on the back of the bathroom door. Frances went to it and ran her fingers over the fabric. Each night this week, as she put on another frock, she thought of the woman back home to whom it belonged, and imagined that friend by her side. She had saved Meg’s for tonight.
    Before Ham died, Meg said that someday the two of them would take the grand tour of Europe. Afterward, everyone encouraged her to do it on her own, but Meg wasn’t the type.
    Frances held her glass up to the dress.
    “Cheers, darling,” she said, draining her drink.
    She thought she just might call up the butler for one more.
    Seven o’clock arrived in what seemed like seconds, and Frances was being whisked off to the club in her private limousine. There was an honest-to-God telephone in the backseat, beside an ice bucket stocked with champagne. She was slightly tipsy and had the strongest urge to call someone, but who?
    Instead, she placed her hands in her lap and clasped them together like they couldn’t be trusted otherwise.
    They got to the club, and her chauffer, Richard, rushed round to open her door. She had to lean heavily on his arm to get out. Yes, she was a clunky old thing, but still she felt like a starlet tonight. She greeted the doormen, who nodded their replies without a word. Frances wondered if someone had instructed them not to speak, like those soldiers who stood guard outside Buckingham Palace.
    The dining room was magnificent, with crystal chandeliers and spraysof white orchids and roses on every table. It looked like the Academy Awards.
    She found her seat, at the same table as Warner and a few others from Ayer. She tried to enjoy the cocktails and the chicken and the Yorkshire pudding, but all she could think about was the fact that soon she would take the stage and she still hadn’t a clue what she’d say.
    No one knew that she was going to speak. That was a secret between herself and Hagopian and a handful of others. Lou Hagopian seemed to be channeling Tony Bennett—he loved the spotlight, and he was so smooth that it seemed like his every word might be scripted. If only whoever had written his lines could have done hers too.
    After dessert, as planned, a girl from public relations came to find Frances in the crowd and ferried her backstage.
    There were many lovely speeches. The chairman of De Beers paid homage to her! She was utterly overwhelmed.
    Then they showed a video, a creation of Bob and Deanne Dunning, the husband-and-wife team who had left Ayer and started their own company at some point in the seventies.
    It opened with a scene from
Casablanca
, Ingrid Bergman saying, “Sing it, Sam.”
    And then the song. “As Time Goes By.” Its notes played on as dozens of Frances’s ads flashed across the screen.
    A voiceover announced, “The engagement of Ayer and De Beers began in 1938 with a letter postmarked Victoria Hotel, Johannesburg, South Africa.”
    From there, the story was told, beginning to end: Of the surveying they did in the thirties, of Gerry Lauck’s plane going down the first time he traveled to South Africa. Of all the advances they had made from one decade to the next. It culminated with a silly thing that the latest creatives had made, a De Beers ad that took the form of a music video. A floppy-haired rock band looked sullen and severe, but by the end the lead singer had proposed to his girlfriend with a diamond.
    As soon as the song ended, it would be her turn.
    Frances had never felt so nervous in all her life. She