3. Chapter 3
Christina
I'm standing on the loading dock of the Alderley with a clipboard, a coffee the size of my forearm, and no flower truck.
I call Gus.
"Six minutes out," he says, over his engine. "The bridge was up. Don't start the day mad, kid."
"I started at five."
"Then you're due for a good afternoon."
The truck backs in at six forty-six. Two of his guys roll the racks off, forty-two centerpieces in their crates, and I crouch down right there on the dock and pull the paper back from the nearest one.
White hydrangea, garden roses in blush and ivory, my ranunculus.
Every head opened exactly right after two days in the cooler.
I straighten up and breathe for the first time since I woke up.
The hurricane glass comes off the second truck, four hundred votives plus the tall cylinders, and Saul stands at the dock door checking certificates of insurance off his phone one vendor at a time. Nobody gets past him without one. I love this man.
"Linens?" he says, not looking up.
"Inside since yesterday. Which reminds me." I flip the clipboard. "The overlays came in ivory instead of white."
He looks up then. "That bad?"
"Under this lighting, ivory reads yellow next to white napkins.
But the right overlays are on a van from Bridgeview right now.
The rep drove them herself, the mistake was on their order, and we're getting fifteen percent off the full contract.
" I tick it on the clipboard. "She'll be here by three.
We set the base layers now, overlays go on the second she walks in. "
Saul stares at me. "You got the discount before or after she agreed to drive?"
"During."
By nine the room doesn't echo anymore. That's always how I know an empty venue is becoming an event.
The sound changes. Sixty rounds go in, four hundred and fifty chairs, rolling racks of glassware that catch what little light is coming through the high windows.
I walk the floor plan with the fire marshal's copy, measuring the stage aisle with the wheel because he will, lifting two of the hurricane glasses to check flame height because he will do that too. I do it before he can.
Kate arrives at two with the check-in tablets, the paddle boxes, and a bag of pretzels she launches at my head from ten feet away.
"Sit. Eat. Talk."
I sit on the edge of the stage and eat pretzels and run her through it.
Four hundred and eighteen confirmed out of four-twenty.
Check-in works like this: every guest swipes a card at the door, the card links to a paddle number, the paddle follows them all night, and when the gavel comes down, the charge processes automatically and the receipt hits their email before the valet brings the car up.
Express checkout is the difference between a donor's last memory being a great party or being a line.
"The divorce situation?" Kate says.
"Handled. The Hartmans separated last month and someone at the hospital put them at the same table. I moved him to twelve with the golf donors, she stays at four with the board chair. Separate sight lines. No shared centerpiece."
Kate pulls a pretzel from the bag. "You think of everything."
"I think of most things. The rest goes on my arm." I show her the inside of my wrist. Three notes in blue pen. She shakes her head and eats the pretzel.
The auctioneer gets in at four. Mickey Doyle, silver hair, a voice built for rooms bigger than this one.
He walks the stage, checks where his spotters will stand, and goes through the lot order with me at the podium.
Twelve bachelors. Dinner service at seven-thirty.
Auction at eight forty-five, right after the raise-a-paddle for the pediatric unit, when the room is warm and the wine has done its work.
"Who's calling the show?" Mickey asks.
"I'm on the floor with the headset. The other lead is backstage with the talent."
"The one in red who told me where to stand in my own auction?"
"That's the one."
He makes a sound that isn't quite a laugh.
At five I take my one quiet minute of the day in the coat check room.
It's dark in here, smells like cedar and old wool, and I sit on the stool in the corner and eat the last pretzel.
Then I change into the black dress that's been hanging behind the coat rack since noon, my one good one, the kind that works hard enough that you don't have to think about it.
When I walk back out Kate looks at me and does a slow whistle through her teeth.
Vivian arrives at five-thirty in navy silk and walks the full room alone, the whole lap, touching nothing. At the back wall she stops beside me.
"The overlays."
"White. It's handled. Fifteen percent off."
One nod. That's a perfect score from Vivian. "Rachel. Where is she?"
"Backstage with the lineup. Headliner photos."
"Have you seen the final program?"
"I've asked twice." I keep my voice level. "It's the client's approved version. Apparently not my lane." I look out at the room, all forty-two tables set, every votive straight. "I've been counting chairs."
Vivian almost smiles. "Two versions of the truth. Just like I wanted."
At five-forty the program boxes arrive on a hand truck and the courier wheels them straight to the stage steps, where Rachel is already standing with her arms out.
"Careful." She takes the top carton. "Three thousand dollars of printing."
I cross the floor. "Can I see one?"
"They're counted."
"It's a program, Rachel."
"It was approved this morning. By Dianna, the board liaison, and Vivian." She splits the tape on the carton with her thumbnail, lifts one out, looks at the cover, holds it against her chest. "More sign-offs than your flowers got."
"My flowers don't have typos."
She looks at me without changing expression. "Neither does my program."
My headset crackles. The valet captain, out front, voice doing the thing people's voices do when they're trying to stay calm. The lot striping crew never showed. No cones, no numbers. Ninety cars start arriving in forty-five minutes.
"Don't move those programs until every seat is set," I tell her, already moving.
"They'll be exactly where they're supposed to be," she says behind me. "Go worry about your parking lot."
The next thirty minutes are me in a cocktail dress and heels on the asphalt, marking spaces with gaff tape and a Sharpie while two valet runners follow me with chalk.
One through ninety. We finish the last row as the fire marshal's truck pulls in, early, and he walks the floor with me, floor plan in hand, his own measuring wheel, lifting two of my hurricane glasses. He signs off at six-twenty.
When I walk back through the dock door, the lights are at their evening setting. All four hundred votives lit. The programs are at every seat, gold covers catching the candle glow, the whole room warm and low and exactly what it's supposed to be. It's beautiful.
I tell myself I'll read one during dinner service.
Doors open at six-thirty.
The lobby fills the way a well-planned event fills, donors in black tie moving through the room, past Kate's check-in tables, cards down, paddles in hand, into cocktail hour under the columns.
Trays of bites move through the crowd on the count I set with the catering captain.
The string quartet plays at the volume where you lean in to hear it.
The room sounds the way money sounds in a room built right, low laughter, ice, the clink of good glasses.
I'm redirecting a tray at the east bar when the photographer's flash goes off behind me in a quick burst, and the energy near the door shifts the way a room shifts when someone walks in and everyone feels it before they see it.
I turn around.
Julian is in front of the hospital logo in a midnight blue tux, being photographed, and the lights hit him while he laughs at something the photographer said, head turned just slightly, and my brain does a full, embarrassing stop.
He looks up between flashes. His eyes move across the room, easy, unhurried, and they land on me in one second. His arms come down from where they were crossed. The photographer says something. He doesn't hear it.
He walks off the backdrop while the photographer is still shooting, the camera going off at his back as he crosses the floor, and he stops in front of me with his bow tie a few degrees crooked and his hands loose at his sides.
"You're running this."
"My firm is. I'm the lead." I keep my voice even. Professional. My headset is right there on my collar and three people are probably trying to reach me right now. "You're a bachelor."
"Dianna signed me up. My father approved my bio without telling me." He's looking at me the same way he did in the bar two weeks ago, direct, like he's reading something I didn't mean to put on my face. "You knew about this gala."
"I knew about the gala. The talent list isn't my department." That part is true. Completely true. "I found out you were on it the same way everyone else did."
He doesn't look like he fully believes me. He doesn't push it either.
"Christina."
My headset crackles. The catering captain. I press the button. "Copy, be there in five." I release it and look at him, and I can feel the heat coming off him from two feet away, or maybe I'm imagining that, but I don't think I am. "I'm working."
"I know."
He's still standing there. He's not moving. He's just standing in the middle of this room I built, looking at me, bow tie still crooked, and I have approximately twenty things that need my attention right this second.
"Smile for the photographer," I tell him. "You're closing the show."