Chapter 4: The Party

The Ashworth penthouse took up the whole top of a building on Central Park West.

I walked in on Saturday night in a green silk dress that Roxy had pinned on me in the back of a taxi.

Geoffrey waited at the elevator with a champagne flute in each hand.

"You look like someone who is about to rob me," he said.

"Do I?"

"You keep checking the doors."

I had not realized I was doing it.

I took the glass and smiled up at him the way the contract said to.

"I'm nervous," I said. "Everyone here owns something."

"Everyone here owns a piece of my father," Geoffrey said. "Stay near me and don't eat the shrimp."

"Why not the shrimp?"

"My father's guests all do, and then they're loud."

It was the first time I had laughed all week.

The room was a long hall of white sofas and tall windows, and the park lay black and silver beyond the glass.

There were sixty people in it, and they all turned to look at the ring.

A woman I did not know squeezed my arm and told me how brave I was.

A man told Geoffrey he had finally grown up.

Geoffrey said thank you to each of them in exactly the same voice.

I thought, he is lonelier than I am.

I put the thought away, because I had a job to do.

My clutch held a plastic guest card, the kind that opened the terrace door at the far end of the hall.

I had to be standing at that door at nine o'clock.

It was eight forty.

"Portia Marceau," said a voice behind me.

I turned.

Lena Garnier stood there in red, with a diamond choker, a champagne glass, and four people from the corps at her back.

She was beautiful.

"Congratulations," she said, loud enough for the room to hear. "I didn't know Geoffrey had a type."

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