Chapter 1 - Thirty-Five Dollars|
Clara had thirty-eight minutes to find a dress.
Victoria informed her at four twenty-two, while Clara was holding a phone against one ear and trying to persuade a florist that white roses were not interchangeable with ivory.
“You’re coming tonight.”
Clara covered the receiver.
“To the gala?”
“Obviously.”
“I thought you had someone handling—”
“I have you.”
Victoria looked up from her dressing table.
“Something formal. Nothing embarrassing.”
The word followed Clara across the bridge to Brooklyn.
At a consignment shop near her apartment, she found a burgundy dress between a sequined jumpsuit and a wedding gown wrapped in yellowing plastic. The fabric was soft. The neckline was simple. There was a small fray at the waist, but the shopkeeper found matching thread and let her use the back room.
Thirty-five dollars.
Clara bought it.
At the hotel that evening, she carried Victoria’s spare shoes, two cosmetic cases, a phone charger, and a second handbag the size of a bread loaf. The ballroom smelled of lilies, warm butter, and perfume applied by people who had never checked a bottle’s price.
“Stay nearby,” Victoria said.
Clara nodded.
She had worked for her eleven months. Long enough to know nearby meant invisible until needed, attentive without listening, grateful without expecting kindness.
A woman in an emerald gown approached.
“Victoria. Who’s this?”
“My assistant.”
Beatrice Dupont looked Clara over.
“Oh.”
One syllable.
Enough.
Victoria handed Clara her champagne glass.
“Apparently, formal means something different across the river.”
Beatrice smiled.
“I think it’s brave.”
Clara shifted the bag against her hip.
The seam at her waist tugged.
She wished she had bought the dress one size larger, though there had not been another.
“Is it vintage?” Beatrice asked.
“Yes.”
“How diplomatic of the shop.”
A nearby woman laughed into her glass.
Clara looked toward the registration table. She had spent three weeks correcting names for tonight’s seating plan. She knew which donors required wheelchair access, which guests had allergies, which sponsor had threatened to withdraw unless his logo appeared larger.
None of that gave her a place to stand.
Victoria held out her hand.
“My phone.”
Clara gave it to her.
“Not that one. The other one.”
Beatrice stepped closer.
“Really, Victoria. You should provide a clothing allowance.”
“I’d need to provide taste first.”
The laughter came easily now.
Clara felt heat climb her neck.
Her silver sparrow locket rested against her collarbone. She touched it once, then stopped before anyone noticed.
Beatrice lifted her wine.
A waiter passed behind her.
She moved sideways.
Too sharply.
Clara saw the glass turn.
Instinct sent her backward.
Her heel caught the heavy curtain pooling near the wall.
The bag slipped.
A hard edge snagged her skirt.
She fell to her knees.
Fabric tore along the side seam.
For a second, she heard nothing except the terrible, intimate sound of something she could not afford coming apart.
Then someone laughed.
Victoria sighed.
“Clara. Get up.”
She tried.
Pain shot through one knee.
The dress pulled wider.
She pressed the edges together.
“Please,” she whispered, though she did not know whom she was asking.
Beatrice looked down at the stain spreading across the hem.
“Well. At least it wasn’t expensive.”
The small circle laughed again.
Clara lowered her head.
Then the laughter thinned.
A silence moved across the ballroom from the entrance.
She saw shoes turning.
Bodies shifting.
Victoria suddenly straightened.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
Clara kept holding the torn fabric.
The footsteps stopped in front of her.
May you like
“Move,” a man said.
For the first time all evening, Victoria obeyed.
