Chapter 13: The Gala Opens

On Friday afternoon Maggie unzipped Ivy's garment bag on my bed and found a black server's uniform.

It was my size.

A name tag was pinned to the collar. It read STAFF.

"She wants you carrying trays," Maggie said.

"She wants me in the kitchen when the lights go down."

"So what do we do?"

"We throw it in the bathtub," I said. "And I wear the red."

Elliot sent the car at six.

He didn't come with it.

He had left that morning for the ballroom, and a driver held the door and passed me a small flash drive in a plain envelope.

A note was folded around it, in Elliot's square handwriting.

Everything I have on Tuesday night. I won't speak for you. Rule three. E.

I held the drive in my fist the whole way down Park Avenue.

The ballroom was gold and white, with three hundred guests in black tie and a press line along the east wall.

Ivy had put my seat card at table thirty-one.

Table thirty-one stood beside the kitchen doors, under an exit sign, behind a column.

I picked up the card, put it in my clutch, and walked to the front.

Elliot was at the head table in a black tuxedo.

He saw me.

He didn't smile, and he didn't stand.

I understood that it cost him, so I nodded once, and sat in the chair beside his that had no card.

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