Theo spoke to the lighting men then, to angle the lights to show the clothes to their best advantage, and to the soundmen about the soundtrack for the party. The wall coverings were bright, multicolored silks. And there would be a small group of violinists at the party playing gypsy music. Bright colors were the core of the new season’s collection, and the direction she was taking seemed perfect. The young woman in charge, Valentina, was surprised how fast it started to take shape as soon as Theo arrived. She hadn’t been successful due to a lack of skill or indolence. She flew around like a whirling dervish, wielded the staple gun herself so she could get the colors of the silks positioned just right. She was capable and energetic and for the first time in a year, she was having fun. She wished there was someone she knew to share it with, but there wasn’t.

She was surprised when the workmen started to go home.

“It’s only eight o’clock,” she said, looking disappointed. It was two a.m. for her, on Paris time, which didn’t seem to stop her. She was fully energized by what she was doing and seemed tireless. She had been exhausted for a year. But working with her hands in the empty store, she felt alive again. It wasn’t serious, in the grander scheme of life, but it was something she could do, a magic she could still create, and that was at least something. It reminded her that she was good at her job, and all its component parts. She hadn’t been able to save her son or her husband, no matter how hard she’d tried, but she could take an empty space and make something beautiful of it.

She set up the desk and told them where to put the cash register, just around the corner in a less visible part of the store. By the time she left at nine o’clock, the bare bones were there, and the color palette, which dominated the room, looked like a sky at dawn, with mauves and purples, soft peaches, brighter oranges, and a splash of shocking pink. She was happy when she turned the alarm on, locked the door, and walked up Madison Avenue, with her bodyguard beside her. She didn’t speak on the brief walk uptown, but he could see that she was happy, more than she had been in a year.

—