3. Chapter 3 #2
"There he is." Rachel arrives at his elbow in red, and her hand goes flat to his lapel the way you touch someone you've decided you're comfortable touching.
Her fingers smooth down over the fabric and rest there.
"You are late for the lineup photos. The other eleven have been waiting, and none of them are the cover of a magazine, so the mood is a little fragile.
" She laughs, light and easy, and angles her head just enough to make sure I'm watching her hand on his lapel.
"Christina, aren't you supposed to be in the kitchen? "
"On my way." I hold Julian's eyes for one extra second, then go.
The kitchen, then the floor for dinner service. Four hundred and eighteen plates in under twenty-four minutes, which the catering captain and I agreed to time because we're both that kind of person. And through all of it I keep finding the head table.
I'm not looking for it. I'm just moving through the room doing my job, and my eyes keep landing there anyway.
Julian, next to a silver-haired man with a straight back who has to be his father.
Rachel, who is supposed to be backstage, bent down behind Julian's chair with her mouth near his ear, one hand on his shoulder, talking to him through the entrée course.
I watch him answer her with his eyes on whatever's in front of him on the plate.
He doesn't lean in. He answers the question, whatever it was, and she laughs like he said something clever, and her hand moves on his shoulder.
At eight-forty the lights go down everywhere except the podium. The room turns its chairs. Vivian nods at me from the front and I key my headset. Mickey's ready.
The hospital comes first. A silver-haired man takes the podium, straight-backed, no notes, and the screen behind him reads DR. RAYMOND CROSS, CHIEF OF CARDIOTHORACIC SURGERY.
Cross.
The name goes through me before I can do anything about it. I look at the head table. Julian is watching his father.
"Thirty-one years ago," Dr. Cross says, "this hospital had four pediatric cardiac beds.
Tonight we have nineteen. Three of them are occupied right now, by children born this month with hearts the size of a walnut, and every one of those children is here because rooms like this one decided they should be.
" He stands in the quiet without filling it.
"My late wife sat on the committee that funded bed number five.
She believed you ask people for money plainly, you tell them exactly what it buys, then you stop talking and let them be generous.
" A pause. "That's what it buys. Be generous. "
The applause that follows is the kind that means something. He steps down, passes the head table without sitting, shakes Mickey's hand at the stairs, and Julian watches him do it with an expression I can't read from the back wall, something between pride and something older than pride.
Mickey takes the podium, flips his gavel once. "I can't follow that, so I won't. Twelve bachelors, one hour, every dollar to the nineteen beds. Paddles up."
Lot one, an anesthesiologist with a sailing package, goes for fourteen hundred.
Lot two, a pediatrician with box seats, twenty-one hundred.
The room warms exactly on schedule. Lot six, an orthopedic surgeon with a golf weekend, gets a war between two women at table nine and lands at four thousand, and the room is loud now, genuinely having fun, exactly where we needed it to be by lot six.
I'm at the back wall with my headset when Mickey turns to his last card.
"Ladies and gentlemen. Lot twelve."
The screen behind him changes. Julian on the cover of the magazine, arms crossed, the half-smile he doesn't know he makes. A sound moves through the room, low and collective, mostly from the tables closest to the stage.
I cross my arms.
"A weekend for two at a board member's lake house in Harbor Springs.
Private chef dinner, a spa morning, and the company of Lakeshore Memorial's own Doctor Julian Cross.
" Mickey pauses. "The new face of cardiac surgery and the old face of his father's patience.
" Laughter from the room, warm. "Doctor. Come on out."
Julian walks out under the lights. He has his hands in his pockets and he moves like he owns the floor under him and the room responds to that. People clap harder when someone isn't asking them to. He stops at center stage and his eyes find the back wall and find me, and he doesn't look away.
Mickey opens at two thousand.
The woman in green at table fourteen, mid-forties, wine-warmed, paddle up. Two-five from a man bidding for his wife while she grabs his arm. Three thousand, green dress again, standing up to do it this time.
"Thirty-five hundred." Rachel's voice. Flat and precise.
I turn.
She's at the side of the room near the stage steps, paddle raised, and she's wearing it on her face, the whole thing, the smile she has when she wants you to know she's winning.
Four thousand, green dress. Forty-five hundred, Rachel, without a breath between them.
Green dress conferences with her table. Five thousand. The room reacts.
"Fifty-five hundred." Rachel.
Green dress sits down, laughing, done.
I watch Rachel turn her head toward the stage, toward Julian standing under the lights, and she does something slow with her expression, satisfied, like a period at the end of a sentence.
He's not looking at her.
He slept in my apartment one night, six years ago, and in the morning he hummed some song with no name while he made breakfast at my stove, and I stood in the doorway watching his shoulders and thought something I was stupid enough to believe.
I take the headset off.
I walk the fifteen feet to Kate's table. She sees me coming and her expression goes from professional to alarmed in real time.
"What are you doing?"
"Give me a paddle," I say.
"Christina. It's at fifty-five hundred."
"Give me your paddle, Kate."
"That's your rent times four."
"I don't care," I say.
She looks at me like I'm actually crazy then pulls paddle 214 from the reserve stack and puts it in my palm without looking at me.
"Fifty-five hundred going twice," Mickey says. The gavel hand comes up.
I raise the paddle.
"Six thousand!" Mickey's voice cracks open with delight.
"New bidder at the back of the house, welcome in.
" Heads turn in a wave, table by table, the spotlight swinging toward the back wall and landing on me, and four hundred faces arrive at once.
Vivian's is one of them. She's risen half out of her chair.
On stage, Julian goes still. His lips part and then close, and he looks at me from up there under the lights the way he looked at me at the bar two weeks ago when I walked out, except this time I'm standing here with a paddle in my hand and I'm not going anywhere.
"Sixty-five hundred." Rachel. Sharp, no pause, two spots of color on her cheeks now.
"Seven." My voice comes out steadier than my hands. The paddle is cardboard and feels like a month of rent.
"Seventy-five," Rachel snaps, and her voice has gone up just enough that the woman at table three turns to look at her.
Somewhere near the front a board member's wife says something to her husband in a low voice and he laughs.
Twenty-two thousand left in savings if it ends right here. I do the math and let it sit. My mom lit candles twice when I was a kid and called it an adventure. We couldn't even afford hot meals some nights.
I lift the paddle.
"Eight thousand."
Four hundred people make the same sound at once.
Mickey swings to Rachel. His eyebrows are up. "Lady in red, eighty-five?"
Rachel's paddle is at her shoulder. It stays there.
She looks from me to the stage, to Julian, who is not looking at her, who hasn't looked at her once in the last three bids, who is watching me with his weight shifted forward and his hands out of his pockets.
Whatever she sees on his face makes her arm come down slowly. She turns it into a small wave. Done.
"Eight thousand going once." The gavel hovers. "Going twice." Mickey cups his eyes against the light. "Fair warning, last chance."
The woman in green grabs her centerpiece for support and yells, "Eighty-five hundred!" Her table screams.
Kate's hand finds my wrist. Under the noise she says my name, just once, quietly.
"Nine thousand," I say.
Mickey drops the gavel so hard the sound bounces off the plaster ceiling.
"SOLD. Paddle two-fourteen. The woman in black at the back of the house who knows exactly what she's doing."
The spotlight swings from the stage and finds me, and I'm standing there in the back of a room I built with four hundred people looking at me and Kate saying oh my God into my ear, and Vivian is on her feet at the front table.
Rachel has her paddle at her side and her face has gone the color of her dress.
Mickey is leaning into the microphone with his hand cupped. "Come on up, two-fourteen. Come claim your weekend."
Julian steps to the edge of the stage. The lights are behind him. The room is still making noise and he's not performing for any of it. He's looking at me the same as he looked at me the night I walked out on him at Costello's, straight and certain, except I'm not walking away.
I just spent nine thousand dollars to stay.
I hand my clipboard to Kate. My heels are loud on the hardwood as I walk the length of the room, and every step I take the room gets quieter. The lights are warm on my face when I reach the stage stairs and put my hand on the rail.
Julian crouches down at the edge of the stage so we're level, eye to eye, four hundred people behind me and the gavel already down. Up close I can see the exact moment he decides not to smile about it.
"Nine thousand," he says, low enough that it's just mine.
"It's for the kids." I say it without flinching. "The pediatric unit. That's all."
His mouth does something that isn't quite a smile. "Sure."
He stands up, holds his hand out to help me up the stairs, and I take it. His hand is warm and I feel it all the way up my arm, and I let go the second I'm on the stage.
Mickey puts his arm out wide. "Ladies and gentlemen, your final lot."
The room applauds. I stand next to Julian Cross under the lights in front of four hundred people.