Chapter 23
WALL
THE VERSION OF tonight that goes perfectly lives in my breast pocket, laminated, and I fully intend to make it a reality, because I. Am. Prepared.
Cocktails, remarks, the reveal, auction, dancing, teardown. I've confirmed the vendors twice and the podium mic three times, and I personally walked the ballroom this afternoon flagging trip hazards for a hotel employee who kept assuring me that was her job.
Nothing about this gala can surprise me.
The laminate also has a tab nobody else's copy has. Tab six: Orbit management.
A ballroom has geometry, and geometry can be planned ahead for.
I will stand near my co-chair and his winger during professionally plausible windows only.
The photo call, the reveal. Maybe one public goodbye.
Everything in between, I will rotate. Wolves table, sponsors, bar, repeat.
A man who rotates is a man with nothing to hide.
Right?
I built the system at my kitchen counter last night, and it's airtight.
It survives eleven minutes of gala.
Then Theo walks in wearing a tuxedo, and my rotation develops a wobble.
He's supposed to look like every other man in here.
That's the entire point of black tie—it's a uniform.
Instead he looks like the reason the uniform was invented, to rob everyone else of a fighting chance, and he knows it, because he adjusts his cuff at the exact moment I'm looking and doesn't glance my way even once.
That is fine. Everything’s fine.
I resume rotation.
Patrick arrives two minutes behind him, cause strategy. His tux fits like it consulted him first. He crosses the floor greeting sponsors by name.
Rotate, Wallace.
I rotate directly into Devon, who is surveying the room over the rim of a champagne flute. "Four dozen," he says. "I counted."
"Four dozen what?"
"Penguins." He gestures at the ballroom with the flute, where two almost-full rosters are milling around. "When I met you people it was two dozen penguins trashing one bar, and now look. The colony has doubled."
"We prefer gala."
"You would." He pats my lapel and his eyes lift to my hair. "Red hair, black tux. You look like a fire alarm that just got promoted."
I get pulled away before I can decide whether that was a compliment, because I am the co-chair of this entire operation, and everybody wants a piece of the co-chair. I hand out pieces all night while my peripheral vision keeps tabs on where two particular people are standing at all times.
Frank has annexed the west wall. Catering is his tonight—his tables, his staff, Kayla and Hunter working the long bar.
Frank himself isn't serving anything. He's walking the buffet line pressing down on each table with both hands, testing the load rating, glancing over at the Wolves' section between presses.
There's also a fire extinguisher parked under the dessert table.
"Expecting trouble?" I ask once I’ve rotated to where he’s working.
"I've catered for you people before. I’m not taking any chances."
Smart man.
Petrov materializes at my elbow during rotation two, holding a champagne flute strictly as a prop.
"Resplendent," he states without context, and turns to the nearest donor.
"You are resplendent." She lights up like he's knighted her.
He's been working the room like this all evening, one compliment at a time, aim improving with every deployment, and I'd bet the auction numbers are up because of it.
Then he looks up to the just-refreshed angry red on my head.
"You are also resplendent. Is word of the day. Spend it wisely."
Then he's gone, off to knight a senator.
At the head of the room, on a small stage, the reveal is staged and waiting its turn—a giant check under a black cloth, and next to the check, a standing perch, and on the perch, the guest of honor.
Hendrix surveys the ballroom while I survey the tiny bow tie around his neck. Somebody put a tiny bow tie on him, and he's allowing it. Tonight matters to him too.
Jinx is stationed at the base of the stage, guarding the cloth.
"Nobody says the number," he reminds me when I come to check the podium. "Not out loud. Not until the cloth comes off."
I sigh. "I signed the check, Jinx."
"Shush." He straightens a corner of the cloth that was already straight. "A number said early invites correction. Downward."
I could point out the money is already in the account. I don't, because arguing superstition with Jinx is how you end up holding a candle, and I'm wearing rented clothes.
The photo call hits at eight, right on the laminate. Campaign banner, step-and-repeat, and the photographer from the calendar shoot, who greets me and Patrick like we’re old buddies. "Co-chairs! Give me the glare."
We take our marks. This is the one form of eye contact the two of us are licensed for in public, and by now we're the best in the world at it.
Patrick's chin comes up three inches, and I narrow my eyes on cue while my pulse does something that has nothing to do with hatred, and both of us hold it while the flash goes.
"Perfect chemistry," the photographer says.
She has said this at every event since the poster shoot. One of these days she's going to find out how right she's been the whole time, and I hope somebody films her face.
"Now one with the parrot?"
"No," Patrick and I say together, which gets a laugh from the press line, two nemeses agreeing at last. Hendrix, from his perch, takes note of the rejection.
Between the photos and the speeches there's a stretch of the gala where my only job is to circulate, and this is where tab six starts biting me in the ass.
I do the Wolves table. I do two sponsors.
I do the bar. And then I find myself standing at the edge of a conversation between Patrick, Theo, and a shelter worker, holding a drink I don't remember acquiring.
There's an explanation. The bar is central and the stage is north, so all foot traffic pools here. It's geometry, not longing.
I execute a clean exit, rotate through the silent auction, and four minutes later I'm back, one conversation over, close enough to hear Theo describing his calendar month to a donor as "the people's month." Patrick's eyes pass across me on their way elsewhere and don't stop.
The third time, I don't even catch myself doing it. Leila catches me instead.
She's standing near the auction tables with champagne she isn't drinking, in a stunning bottle green dress, observing. When I drift into the orbit of two specific men for the third documented time, her eyes come to me, then go to them, then come back.
She raises the glass an inch. To me, specifically.
I do a one-eighty toward the coat check like someone who’s just remembered he has an appointment. Behind me, I swear I can hear her not saying anything. Loudly.
Washington intercepts me at the halfway point. His shoulders are down and easy, one drink in hand that he'll nurse until midnight, a captain on the last gala lap of his career and visibly at peace about it. “Good job, Wallace. You’ve built something special here.”
"Mama Paws built it. I just confirmed vendors."
"That's what building it means." He takes in the stage, the check, then the perch. "Enjoy it. Nobody's fallen through a table yet."
"Frank's on the tables."
"Then it's handled." He pats my shoulder, and moves on into the crowd, leaving me two percent more emotionally compromised, which is his signature move and nobody ever calls it.
At nine, the room gets seated. Mama Paws takes the stage, and every conversation in the ballroom cuts at once.
She's radiant. She stands up there in her sparkling dress, with Papa Paws one step behind her, and Wanda flanking the other side, and she looks out at four dozen penguins and their people, and starts talking about animals.
Somewhere in the middle she tells the story of the winter the roof came off, and who showed up, and she doesn't say it was us. She says "Family showed up," and every single Wolf in the room does their damn best to pretend they’re not tearing up.
Then she waves the co-chairs up, and I take a steadying breath before moving.
I do not love stages. A crease has boards and a net and a job. A stage has a mic and people watching. Patrick goes up the steps ahead of me, thanks every single sponsor from memory, hands me the mic, and stands there with his hands folded, openly enjoying my turn.
"Hi, umm. Thank you all for coming," I tell the floor. "Give generously. The auction closes at ten."
I hand the mic back. Somewhere at the Wolves table, Becker starts a standing ovation for the shortest speech in charity history, and it catches, because these people will applaud anything.
Then Jinx releases the cloth, finally, ceremonially, and the check comes out.
Six hundred and forty thousand dollars. The crowd makes the sound the number deserves, and under the applause Mama Paws leans into the mic and delivers the part that isn't on the check: the Milwaukee shelter is funded, fully.
Every kennel, every vet bill, the works, the next ten months handled, and fully paid for.
Wanda's face comes apart with the cameras on her, and Papa Paws steadies Mama Paws with a palm between her shoulders, the same spot Leila holds Washington, and I stand on a stage being professionally observed while the thing we actually did all season concludes all at once, and…Okay.
Worth every spreadsheet war.
Worth the fonts.
Patrick's eyes cut sideways to me for half a second, co-chair to co-chair.
Worth those too.
We come down off the stage and the gala rolls into its loose second act, auction closing, band tuning, and this is the point in the laminate where nothing else is scheduled to happen.
This is when Hendrix decides the evening needs him.
I should have seen the build-up. There were signs. The rejected photo. The bow tie confidence. A room full of pairs, and a perch with sightlines, and a bird whose entire body of work is making people uncomfortable.