Page 124 of Puck You Both

Then he's gone, off to knight a senator.

At the head of the room, on a small stage, the reveal is staged and waiting its turn—a giant check under a black cloth, and next to the check, a standing perch, and on the perch, the guest of honor.

Hendrix surveys the ballroom while I survey the tiny bow tie around his neck. Somebody put a tiny bow tie on him, and he's allowing it. Tonight matters to him too.

Jinx is stationed at the base of the stage, guarding the cloth.

"Nobody says the number," he reminds me when I come to check the podium. "Not out loud. Not until the cloth comes off."

I sigh. "I signed the check, Jinx."

"Shush." He straightens a corner of the cloth that was already straight. "A number said early invites correction. Downward."

I could point out the money is already in the account. I don't, because arguing superstition with Jinx is how you end up holding a candle, and I'm wearing rented clothes.

The photo call hits at eight, right on the laminate. Campaign banner, step-and-repeat, and the photographer from the calendar shoot, who greets me and Patrick like we’re old buddies. "Co-chairs! Give me the glare."

We take our marks. This is the one form of eye contact the two of us are licensed for in public, and by now we're the best in the world at it. Patrick's chin comes up three inches, and I narrow my eyes on cue while my pulse does something that has nothing to do with hatred, and both of us hold it while the flash goes.

"Perfect chemistry," the photographer says.

She has said this at every event since the poster shoot. One of these days she's going to find out how right she's been the whole time, and I hope somebody films her face.

"Now one with the parrot?"

"No," Patrick and I say together, which gets a laugh from the press line, two nemeses agreeing at last. Hendrix, from his perch, takes note of the rejection.

Between the photos and the speeches there's a stretch of the gala where my only job is to circulate, and this is where tab six starts biting me in the ass. I do the Wolves table. I do two sponsors. I do the bar. And then I find myself standing at the edge of a conversation between Patrick, Theo, and a shelter worker, holding a drink I don't remember acquiring.

There's an explanation. The bar is central and the stage is north, so all foot traffic pools here. It's geometry, not longing.

I execute a clean exit, rotate through the silent auction, and four minutes later I'm back, one conversation over, close enough to hear Theo describing his calendar month to a donor as "the people's month." Patrick's eyes pass across me on their way elsewhere and don't stop.

The third time, I don't even catch myself doing it. Leila catches me instead.

She's standing near the auction tables with champagne she isn't drinking, in a stunning bottle green dress, observing. When I drift into the orbit of two specific men for the third documented time, her eyes come to me, then go to them, then come back.

She raises the glass an inch. To me, specifically.

I do a one-eighty toward the coat check like someone who’s just remembered he has an appointment. Behind me, I swear I can hear her not saying anything. Loudly.

Washington intercepts me at the halfway point. His shoulders are down and easy, one drink in hand that he'll nurse until midnight, a captain on the last gala lap of his career and visibly at peace about it. “Good job, Wallace. You’ve built something special here.”

"Mama Paws built it. I just confirmed vendors."

"That's what building it means." He takes in the stage, the check, then the perch. "Enjoy it. Nobody's fallen through a table yet."

"Frank's on the tables."

"Then it's handled." He pats my shoulder, and moves on into the crowd, leaving me two percent more emotionally compromised, which is his signature move and nobody ever calls it.

At nine, the room gets seated. Mama Paws takes the stage, and every conversation in the ballroom cuts at once.

She's radiant. She stands up there in her sparkling dress, with Papa Paws one step behind her, and Wanda flanking the other side, and she looks out at four dozen penguins and their people, and starts talking about animals.

Somewhere in the middle she tells the story of the winter the roof came off, and who showed up, and she doesn't say it was us. She says "Family showed up," and every single Wolf in the room does their damn best to pretend they’re not tearing up.

Then she waves the co-chairs up, and I take a steadying breath before moving.