Chapter 8: Founders' Dinner

The ballroom held three hundred people and a chandelier the size of a pickup truck.

I wore a midnight-blue velvet dress I'd bought for eighty-nine dollars at a consignment shop on Brady Street.

Matthias had offered to send a stylist, and I had said no.

"Of course," he said, and then he looked at the dress for a very long time.

"Is it wrong?" I said, at the door.

"No," he said. "It's very, very right."

His hand settled on the small of my back, and we went in.

People stared.

They stared at the shaved head and the broad shoulders, and then they stared at me.

I heard it ripple around the room. The clerk. The night shift. The one from the dock.

I kept my chin up.

At the long head table, Oma sat in silver silk with her cane across her lap.

Dieter stood at the lectern with a glass in his hand.

"Friends," he said, "colleagues, family. Tonight we toast the founders of Reinhardt Freight."

Applause.

"And we welcome a new member of the family. My nephew's wife, Hanna."

More applause, warmer than I expected.

"I'm told she works nights in cold storage."

Dieter smiled at the crowd.

"Hanna, dear, would you tell us how much a loaded pallet weighs? We're all so curious about your qualifications."

A few people laughed, uncertainly.

Matthias started to rise.

I put my hand on his arm and stood up myself.

I walked to the lectern, and Dieter, surprised, had no choice but to hand me the microphone.

"About two thousand pounds," I said.

The room was quiet.

"A standard pallet is forty by forty-eight inches."

"I've stacked about forty thousand of them for this company, at nineteen dollars and forty cents an hour."

"I'm proud of every one."

Somebody in the back said, "Yeah!"

"Mr. Reinhardt asked about my qualifications. Here's one. I know who actually makes this company run."

I looked out at the tables.

There were company tables near the back, the long-service tables, where the drivers and the dock crews sat in rented suits.

"Would every person here who works a night shift please stand?"

There was a pause.

Then a chair scraped, and another.

Within moments, sixty people were on their feet, drivers, loaders and a woman from payroll who worked until four.

A man in a bad tie put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.

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