Page 33 of The Frog Prince
“David was out of line.”
I stand there for a moment and feel nothing. I’m very good at moments like this. I go numb, all cool and empty and hollow as if I never had feelings and nothing could ever hurt me, touch me; and I stay there until I can shrug. “If you say so.”
But I don’t leave.
I should, but I don’t.
The Hospice Foundation depends on the ball. David says the ball is the foundation’s primary source of income, and I believe him, and maybe this is why Jean-Marc fell out of love with me. I get stubborn at all the wrong times, for all the wrong reasons.
Tessa’s dark red eyebrows flatten. “If you’re done…?”
I feel really stupid, but I’m good being stupid. I hang on doggedly; I hang on and don’t let go. “Olivia doesn’t want me involved with the ball. I’m coming to you behind her back, and she wouldn’t like me coming to you. But this ball means everything to David, and I respect David. A lot.”
“Olivia would fire you if she found out.”
The cold feeling’s back, but so is a hotter emotion, one I can’t name. The hot threatens to swallow the cold. “David signs the paychecks.”
She leans back in her chair, eyes me for a moment. “So what do you want to do?”
“Whatever needs to be done that I could help do—away from the office, of course.”
“You don’t want Olivia to find out?”
“I don’twantto be fired.”
She puts her feet up on her desk. “We only have a quarter of our tables sold. We don’t have any high-end sponsors. I’m working on sponsorship, and the rest of my team is trying to approach various companies about buying tables, but…” She shrugs, and it’s the shrug that says she’s losing faith.
The event’s been done to death.
“Let me try the media,” I say, and Tessa smiles. I know she’s thinking that this is San Francisco, not Fresno, but she doesn’t say it. “I’ll see if there isn’t a way to generate some excitement that way,” I add, trying to sound convincing.
“Go for it.” And she’s still smiling, but she’s less antagonistic. “You’ll be our media queen, only stealth.” She reaches for her iced mocha, shakes the cup, rattling the ice. “So keep me posted. Let me know how it goes.”
*
It was abold offer on my part, but it doesn’t take me long to discover that being media queen (even stealth) has more lows than highs.
During the next week I make endless phone calls that go nowhere, leave messages that never get returned. I turn to Outlook Express, which isn’t as effective as a personal call, send a flurry of e-mails, introducing myself, asking for a moment of so-and-so’s time. Half the e-mails get ignored. The other half come back with a “thanks but no thanks, not newsworthy, not groundbreaking, not interesting,” the underlying message being that people already know about the Leather & Lace Ball, and people don’t care.
I stare at my computer screen, reading the latest one-line rebuff. At least it’s not as curt as the last.
I rub my eyes, tired. It’s a little after five, and with Olivia leaving just after lunch today, heading down to L.A. to see her boyfriend, I’ve been trying to make some headway on the media list I’d been given.
Maybe people don’t care about the ball anymore, but once upon a time they cared. Once upon a time the ball was fun. Intriguing. A novelty.
Why can’t it be fun, intriguing, a novelty, again?
Maybe the mistake wasn’t in continuing the ball for ten years but in allowing the ball just to endlessly repeat itself without offering anything new or unique.
I can’t really blame people for not wanting to attend again. If you’ve been there, done that, why persist unless you can (a) guarantee a great time or (b) discover something new?
Is it too late for the ball to reinvent itself? Too late for City Events to put a twist on the ball, come up with something new? Or would dramatically changing the ball at the eleventh hour smack of desperation?
My phone rings, and I reach for it. “Holly Bishop.”
“Tom Lehman.”
Oh, no.