Chapter 4: The Garavani Table

On Thursday night I walked into the Palmer Room in a borrowed black dress, on Teo Garavani's arm.

His wife was standing forty feet away.

The Palmer Room was the biggest ballroom on the North Side, and both families had a hundred people in it.

The music faltered when we came through the door.

Then it kept going, because the band had been paid to play.

Nobody else kept going.

"Smile a little," Teo said into my ear. "You're allowed to look like you're enjoying yourself."

"I'm not."

"Then look like you're winning."

In the car he had laid out the rules in four sentences.

We would be seen together at every family event until his wife's baby was born.

We would say nothing about the debt in public, and we would not touch in private.

When the baby came and we had the answer, we would go our separate ways, clean.

I had agreed to all of it, because it gave me a reason to stand up straight.

The ballroom saw me before I saw it.

Two hundred faces turned, and then a hundred and ninety of them turned politely away.

The ten that didn't were at a round table near the stage.

Leandro sat at it in a black dinner jacket.

He lifted his glass an inch toward me and smiled.

Agnese sat on his right with her mouth shut tight.

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