They Auctioned Off My Housekeeping, Then the Mob Paid a Million for It novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Next Item
At a charity gala Livia's boyfriend's friend auctions a week of her housekeeping while the table laughs, and after she walks out a man bids a million dollars.
The charity auction was halfway done when my face came up on the ballroom screen.
I was in the middle of a bite of lamb.
It was a photo from an hour earlier. I was standing by the coat check in a borrowed black gown, looking surprised.
Margot Tilghman had taken it with a smile and said it was for the slideshow.
She was the one who had zipped me into that dress in the ladies' room when the zipper stuck.
She had also lent me two hairpins and told me I looked like a movie star.
Now she stood on the stage in red silk with the microphone in her hand.
"Next item, ladies and gentlemen," she said. "One full week of Livia's housekeeping services."
The ballroom laughed before she finished the sentence.
"Livia washes Thurston's shirts," Margot said. "She irons them. She has cleaned his kitchen every morning for two years and never once asked for a raise."
At our table, Thurston's partners were already thumping the cloth.
Thurston was my boyfriend. I had lived in his apartment since the spring before last.
I turned to him. "Thurston, tell her to stop."
He didn't take his eyes off the stage. He was grinning.
"Babe, it's for the children's ward. Margot did all this work. Let her have her fun."
Then he squeezed my hand and kissed my temple.
"Just smile for her. Two minutes, and I'll take you for dessert after."
I looked down at my right hand.
I wore one plain gold band on that finger and never took it off. Thurston had asked me about it a dozen times.
My father gave it to me the day I left home. That was all I ever told him.
I turned it once with my thumb.
"Do I hear two hundred?" Margot called.
"Two hundred!" said a man at the next table, and his wife slapped his arm, laughing.
"Five hundred for the week," Thurston's partner said. "And she does windows."
The whole room roared.
"Eight hundred," a woman called. "Does she cook?"
"She makes a great lasagna," Margot said. "Thurston says so."
Thurston raised his paddle. "One thousand. I'm not letting her go cheap."
Everybody clapped for him.
I had quit a job I liked because he said we were saving for a ring.
I had scrubbed his bathroom while he told his friends I was the best thing that ever happened to him.
I sat very still at that table and understood that nobody there was ever going to stop it.
So I stood up.
My chair scraped. Three people turned to look.
I walked down the center aisle in the borrowed gown. Nobody laughed until I was almost at the steps.
Then somebody did, softly, because they thought I was part of the show.
I climbed onto the stage and held my hand out to Margot.
She was still smiling. She gave me the microphone, because it never occurred to her that she shouldn't.
"Thank you," I said.
The room went quiet.
"My name is Livia Maitland. I'm not for sale, and I don't clean for free."
I looked at the table of partners.
"You bid five hundred. You bid eight hundred. You bid a thousand."
Nobody moved.
"Those pledges are for a children's ward. Every one of you said them out loud, in front of everybody. Pay them."
Margot opened her mouth.
"And pay them in your own name," I said, "not in mine."
Then I took the apartment key off my ring and held it up so the camera on the stage would catch it.
I set it down on the podium beside the water glass.
"Thurston, your shirts are in the dryer. Your lasagna is in the freezer. Both of them are yours now."
He was on his feet. His face had gone a dull red.
"Livia. Sit down."
"No."
"You are embarrassing me."
"I know," I said. "It's a joke. Smile."
A few people in the back laughed, and this time it wasn't at me.
I handed the microphone back to Margot.
I walked up the aisle with my head level and my hands steady, and nobody bid on anything.
I was almost at the doors when the auctioneer's assistant, a young man in a black vest, said into the silence, "Is the bidding... is the item withdrawn?"
Margot laughed weakly. "Obviously it's withdrawn."
"Not withdrawn," a man said.
His voice came from the back of the room, from table twenty-two, and it didn't need a microphone.
I stopped with my hand on the door.
"One million dollars," he said. "For the week."
The room turned.
A man stood up behind a table of four others who were already on their feet. Tall, dark suit, a scar through his left eyebrow, gray at his temples.
He didn't look at the stage.
He looked at me.
I hadn't seen him in six years, and I knew exactly who he was.
His name was Rocco Danieli.
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