Chapter 16: Arianna's Gala

"You're not going," Aaron said.

"I'm going."

"She wrote you a dare on the back of a photo."

"That's why I'm going."

She arrived Saturday at five with a garment bag and a curling iron.

"Black," she said, unzipping it. "Long sleeves. Nothing she can call trashy. Nothing she can call sad."

The dress was soft and plain and fit close all the way down.

It showed the small new curve under my ribs that hadn't been there in October.

"You're showing," Delfina said, and pressed her knuckles to her mouth. "Look at you. Starting to show. Madonna."

Aaron was standing in the hall doorway with the car keys.

He looked at me in the dress and forgot whatever he'd been going to say.

"You can close your mouth," Delfina told him.

He closed it.

He drove us into Manhattan with both hands on the wheel and parked across Park Avenue where he could see the hotel doors.

"Thirty minutes," he said. "Then I come in. I don't care who sees my face."

"Forty," I said.

"Thirty-five."

Delfina leaned between the seats.

"You two are disgusting," she said happily. "Come on, Mirella."

She took my arm on the red carpet.

The flashes started before we reached the doors.

Two photographers from The Chronicle. A girl from Pulse holding her phone up.

"Mirella! Mirella, are you still pregnant?"

"Look at her," Delfina told them. "What do you think?"

The ballroom was white roses and gold chairs and a twelve-piece band.

Every capo in the family was there in black tie. The old men from the oversight board sat at a round table near the front with their wives.

Next to them sat three men in plain gray suits with plain gray faces.

The buyer's people.

The music didn't stop when I walked in.

The talking did.

Ottavia was at the head table in black lace. She saw me and set her glass down very slowly.

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