Chapter 15: Front Door

The surf school wife lent me a black dress and did my hair on the motel's back deck.

Nana said I looked like a funeral that was going to win.

At seven forty-five Wells parked his dusty truck on Monterey Square between two Bentleys.

He came around and opened my door in a dark suit.

"You're sure you want me walking in with you?" he said. "Half that room just watched me lose forty million dollars."

"That's why. They should see what you did with your Saturday."

The Ballantyne was lit gold from the curb to the cornices.

The doorman stood on the top step in his gray coat with the brass buttons.

I held out the cream card.

He read the front of it, then the two words underneath in blue ink.

He looked at me for a long moment.

"The staff entrance is around back, Miss Tallulah," he said. "I'm afraid it's flooded tonight."

"Is it?"

"Terrible. Nobody can get through."

He tucked my invitation into his coat pocket and opened the front door with a little bow.

The ballroom was pink this time, roses and silk and a string quartet.

Two hundred people in evening clothes turned toward the door.

Half of them had been at my seventeenth birthday.

I watched them work it out, one face at a time.

The motel girl. The developer who'd testified against his own partner. Together, through the front.

My mother was by the stage in pale gold.

She saw me and didn't hurry.

She crossed the room to us with her hand out.

"Darling," she said. "You found the wrong door."

"The doorman said the back was flooded."

"Then he'll be looking for another position." She smiled at Wells. "Wells. You came with the help."

"I came with Tallulah," Wells said. "You remember her. You used to have her name."

A man near us laughed into his champagne and turned it into a cough.

My mother's smile stayed put.

"The trays are in the kitchen," she told me softly. "Since you're dressed for it."

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