Chapter 24: First Friday

The next first Friday, the floor captain met me at the door of the club and bowed.

"Ms. Prescott," he said. "Your table is ready."

"How many?"

"Four, ma'am, as booked. And Ms. Dunne has asked for a fifth place."

"She can have six," I said.

The private room had been redone in a week.

The marble table was the same, and the parquet was the same, and a new tablecloth hung over the spot where Cressida had knelt.

On the wall, in a plain black frame, hung a printed notice from the membership committee.

It said the scoreboard dinner now belonged to every woman who had no patron, and that her month would be counted in her own words.

Posey had written it.

She stood by the window in a new dress that she had bought herself, with a slim leather folder under her arm.

"The Pagani sold on Tuesday," she said. "Four point one. After the fees, it came to two hundred and twenty thousand a girl."

"All eighteen?"

"Every one has been paid. Fourteen of them are coming tonight."

"What did the woman in yellow say?"

"That it was the first time anyone in that circle had ever paid her back for something," Posey said. "She cried at the bank."

I laughed, and my eyes stung, and I let her fix my necklace.

"Cressida moved out on the thirty-first," Posey said, lower.

"A friend told me she took a job at a restaurant in Ohio," she said. "I didn't ask which."

"Neither will I."

"Good."

The door opened behind us.

They came in together.

Christian came first, in a charcoal suit with no tie, and Dorian beside him with his hair carefully wrecked.

Maddox was a step behind with his glasses pushed up and a gift bag in one hand.

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