Page 27 of Danny

She swallows. Sets the granola bar down. "Turn around."

I turn around.

"Face the mirror."

I face the mirror. The warped one on the closet door that makes me look slightly melted on one side.

Even melted, I look — different. The dress does something. It sits on my waist the way the tailored uniform sits on my waist, like someone measured me in my sleep, but where the uniform makes me look professional, this makes me look like a woman who goes places. Who belongs in rooms with string quartets and champagne towers. The green is dark enough that it's almost black in the shadows, and where the light hits it, it warms up. My skin looks — I don't know. Like skin that gets taken care of, which mine absolutely does not. I use a three-dollar moisturizer from the bodega and sometimes forget.

"Okay," Evie says behind me. "Sit down. I'm doing your face."

She does my face. And my hair. And at some point she produces shoes from the garment bag that I hadn't noticed, and by 7 p.m. I'm standing in my tiny apartment looking like someone I've never met. A version of me that exists in a parallel universe where my checking account has more than two digits and my mother isn't sick and I've never spilled anything on anyone.

I almost like this version. She looks like she's got her shit together.

She doesn't. But she looks like it. And tonight, that might be enough.

The Sterling Club during a Gala is absurd.

Candles. Candles on every surface. Candles on the tables, the bar, the windowsills, the piano, candles in arrangements on the floor that I'm going to spend the entire night worrying someone will kick over. The green leather booths are gone, replaced by round tables with black linen, crystal glasses and centerpieces that are taller than some of the guests. A string quartet in the corner where the pianist usually sits, playing something that sounds expensive.

And people. So many people. Three hundred of them, maybe more, all in black tie, all glittering. The women in gowns and the men in tuxedos and every single one of them looking like they belong here in a way I never will, no matter what dress I'm wearing.

I'm on event coordination tonight. Earpiece in. Clipboard in hand. Heels that are taller than my usual ones because Evie is a sadist. My job is to keep everything running — the caterers on schedule, the seating chart accurate, the champagne towers upright, the senator in table nine away from the senator in table twelve because apparently they hate each other over something involving a highway bill.

I haven't seen Danny.

I'm aware of this. I'm also aware that I've checked every entrance three times and scanned every cluster of tuxedos. I need to stop because Marcus just radioed that the sea bass is going to the wrong station and I have actual work to do.

Two hours in. I've redirected the sea bass. I've talked the drunk senator out of an impromptu speech. I've confirmed dessert timing and fixed a table number and kept the champagne towers vertical through sheer force of will and anxiety.

My earpiece crackles. Evie's voice: "Main entrance. Just walked in. I'm going to need a minute."

Marcus, through the earpiece: "Confirmed. That's a really good tuxedo."

I'm already walking. Through the service door, into the ballroom, clipboard against my chest like armor.

I see him.

He's near the entrance with Jagger and someone I don't know. Black tuxedo. All black — the shirt, the bow tie, everything. It's cut close and it makes his shoulders look broader and his waist look narrower and his jaw look like something you'd cut yourself on.

The bow tie is crooked. Slightly off-center, the left side sitting higher than the right, like he'd tied it himself in a mirror and hadn't had anyone to check.

All that money, all that power, all that control — and nobody to straighten his bow tie.

He turns. Scans the room like he's looking for something. His eyes move over the crowd, past tables, past people, and then they find me and stop.

He stares.

I watch it happen — watch his body react before his face does. His hand tightens on his whiskey glass. His jaw clenches. His eyes move down and back up and his mouth opens the tiniest amount, like he's about to say something, and then he just shakes his head. Like he’s in complete disbelief.

I mouth: Your bow tie is crooked.

His left corner of his mouth tips up into a kind of smile.

He mouths back: I know.

Jagger says something and Danny turns to answer, our publicly intimate moment broken. I go back through the service door before I do something stupid like walk across a ballroom full of billionaires to fix a man's bow tie in front of hundreds of people.