1. Chapter 1 #2
She drops the lemon drop in her palm. "When you report to Vivian tonight, I'd keep it professional. No need to make it a whole thing." She starts for the door, then stops, eyes going to the corkboard. "The Reyes swatches are lovely, by the way. For a hundred and forty people."
She walks out. I reach over and move my mother's frame back the half inch and sit there doing what I've done since my first week here, which is go back over the beginning, the third day, the coffee I brought her that she handed back without tasting.
Told me she doesn't drink her calories. It never got better after that.
At 10:40 I'm grabbing my keys when Kate appears.
"Try not to actually kill each other."
"I wish you were coming."
"Feinberg tasting at noon. Print deadline at four." She points her mug at me. "Witnesses, Christina. Whatever happens in that building, make sure there are witnesses."
The Alderley is in River North, a 1928 ballroom that used to be a bank.
Twelve stories of limestone on the outside, two stories of plaster ceiling and original bank columns on the inside, a stage at the far end with house curtains that probably weigh five hundred pounds each.
I park in the lot across the street and Rachel pulls into the spot two down from mine sixty seconds later, because we left the office at the same time and drove the same route and neither of us is ever going to say that out loud.
We walk to the entrance four feet apart. Not speaking. Sunglasses on. A man holds the brass door open, looks from her to me, back to her, and makes the smart decision not to say anything about it.
"Saul Pemberton." He shakes my hand, then Rachel's. Property manager, golf shirt, a ring of keys on his belt that sounds like change rattling with every step. "Vivian called this morning. Said you two were her best."
"She's right," we both say.
He decides not to pursue it.
Inside, the space opens up in the way that good venues do, where your whole brain recalibrates because the ceiling is that much higher and the floor is that much wider than you expected.
My heels echo off the original hardwood.
I open my notebook and start walking the perimeter while Saul talks, counting what's already here, what we won't have to source.
"Capacity's four-twenty seated with the fire lanes. Marshal's strict, so your floor plan goes to him a full week out, no exceptions." He slaps one of the columns with a flat palm. "House inventory comes with the rental. Sixty rounds, sixty-inch tables, four-fifty chiavari chairs in the back room."
I write it down. "That's eleven grand we don't spend."
Rachel writes the exact same thing on her phone two feet to my left, and I see her do it.
"Load-in is the dock off the alley, shared with the steakhouse next door.
Your trucks need to be there before ten in the morning or they wait.
Catering kitchen's behind the stage, two walk-ins, full prep line, your team just brings their own smallwares.
" He tilts his head back toward the ceiling.
"Eight rig points up there, rated five hundred pounds each, if you're flying lighting or drape.
House sound is fine for speeches. You're doing a live auction?
" He looks at me. "Take the upgrade package.
People bid with their ears. If the auctioneer sounds far away, the paddles stay down. "
"We'll take it," I say.
"Add the upgrade," Rachel says, at the exact same moment.
Saul looks between us. "You two related?"
"No," we both say.
He takes us through the rest. Coat check off the lobby, valet contract is separate but he has a company he trusts, ninety car capacity in the lot with street overflow available.
Every vendor sends a certificate of insurance at least forty-eight hours before load-in.
Twenty-five percent deposit holds the date.
"It'll be paid by two," I tell him.
Rachel steps away to take a call, turning her back to both of us, and Saul drops his voice.
"One more thing. Open flame has to be enclosed. Candles go in glass, full perimeter, taller than the flame. Marshal has measured them before. With an actual ruler."
"Hurricane glass on every table."
He nods. "You've done this before."
"Once or twice," I say.
Rachel comes back with her phone pressed to her chest. "Dianna, from the hospital's development office.
She's sending the bachelor list tonight.
Twelve doctors, and she says the headliner is a very big deal.
" She's telling the room, not me. The program is her lane and she's already put the fence up.
"Great," I say. "I have centerpieces to order."
We end up at the wholesale flower market on Randolph. Same route again. We park one aisle apart.
The market smells like cold water and cut stems, the walk-in coolers humming behind the glass, buckets of flowers arranged by color from one end of the floor to the other.
I find Gus at the back counter, same spot he's been standing since before I had this job.
He's been selling Vivian Marsh flowers for fifteen years and he moves through the order form with exactly zero patience for hesitation.
Forty-two centerpieces. White hydrangea base, garden roses, ranunculus in blush and ivory, greens kept low so people can actually see each other. Nobody wants to talk to a centerpiece. One ninety a table, hard goods included, delivery and strike.
"Garden roses I'll have to fly in," Gus says, capping his pen. "You confirm by tomorrow morning, you're fine. Wait until the afternoon, you're doing peonies."
"I'll call you tonight," I say.
Rachel spends the whole order near the orchid display, recording notes to herself, words drifting over occasionally. Vision. Elevated. Cohesive. I write down the deposit amount and stop listening.
It's almost two when we walk back out onto Randolph. The deposit for the Alderley clears on my phone before I've reached the corner. I'm putting my sunglasses on when Rachel stops at the newsstand to grab a sparkling water, and I'm two steps past her when something catches my eye.
The city magazine. The new issue, stacked forty deep in the wire rack by the register.
I stop.
There's a man on the cover. Navy scrubs, arms crossed, photographed against gray paper.
Half-smiling at something just past the camera's left edge, like whoever was supposed to be there stepped away at the last second.
The kind of photo where you can't tell if the subject is aware of how good-looking he is or genuinely doesn't care, and somehow both answers are worse than the other.
The cover line runs under his collarbone.
The new face of cardiac surgery.
My keys are in my hand. I don't remember taking them out.
Julian.
Julian Cross. His face, right here, on a wire rack on Randolph Street, stacked next to the crossword digest and the parenting magazines. I haven't seen him in six years and I knew exactly who it was before I read the name, before I read anything, just from the angle of his shoulders.
He looks older. Of course he does. We both do. But on him it does something unfair, the gray starting at his temple that wasn't there when he was twenty-seven, when I knew the sound of his apartment in the background of his voice. When I thought I knew what I was doing.
We were only ever together once. Not even that, not officially.
Something that built for eight months and then broke on a bench outside the anatomy building on a Thursday afternoon, him telling me carefully, kindly, that he had to focus, that it wasn't fair to me, that I deserved someone who could actually show up.
Said it like it was a favor. Three weeks later I withdrew from the nursing program.
Submitted the paperwork online, packed my apartment, and never went back to that side of the city.
I pick the magazine up.
"Are you buying that or are we going?" Rachel's at the curb with her water, keys out, sunglasses already on.
I look at his face for two more seconds.
I put it back on the rack. Face down.
"You have your car," I say. "I have mine. We're not going anywhere together."
"Obviously." She turns for the lot.
I walk to my car wishing I could do this entire event on my own.