Chapter 24: The Seventh

I wore the green.

Roland had told me to wear it once, in a text, the night he sold me from a stage.

This time I had picked it myself, off my own rack, and zipped it up with Lila holding the back.

"It's a good color on you," she said.

"I know. It always was."

The ballroom of the hotel looked smaller at noon, with the lights on and the chairs stacked along the walls.

The doors at the far end stood open to the lobby.

Maybe sixty people had come.

Chantal sat in the front row in a pink suit, with a tissue already in her fist.

The housekeeper sat beside her, and next to her sat the woman from the board who now ran the company, looking amused.

At the back, on a chair, stood a man with a camera.

It was the photographer from the business section.

"Ma'am," he called, "I stood on a chair last time. I figured I'd be consistent."

I laughed, and the room laughed with me.

On an easel by the stage I had put eleven crayon drawings in a row.

They had come from the pediatric ward that morning, in a flat envelope, with a nurse who wouldn't take a tip.

I climbed the three steps to the stage.

The same microphone stood at the center, on the same stand.

I tapped it, and the sound went out over the empty tables.

"Hi," I said. "Some of you were here a few weeks ago."

A few people groaned, kindly.

"You watched me say no into this thing. I'd like to say a different word, in the same spot, with all of you looking."

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