Calamity

CHAPTER 2

No one had explained to Rose that the Harrington Gala was the sort of party where the chandeliers were more expensive than her grandma's house. She knew it when the car pulled into the long curve drive and she could see the building light up inside like as though had swallowed the moon. She had done her hair and the best dress she had ironed, the deep burgundy one she only wore when it really mattered, and pinned up her hair, the way Grandma Lou used to say, that made her look like she knew what she was doing. She had her notepad. She had her phone.

She was ready.

She was not prepared for this.

On his part, Williams did not explain. He opened the door, flicked one button of his jacket, and walked leisurely up to the entrance with the easy assurance of a man who had attended so many of these affairs that the pomp had long since ceased to impress.

He didn't wait to see whether she was following.

He simply expected it.

She followed.

The room was noisy inside, the noise not of noise, but of the slow self-congratulation fa-fa hum of folks who were extremely glad to be present in the same room as other folks like them. Waitstaff went back and forth between groups of people carrying trays of sparkling things. In the distant corner was a string quartet, with resigned skill, playing to nobody who had any hope of hearing.

Williams was sucked into the room nearly at once. A touch on the shoulder here, a nod here, a quick word of good-naturedness with a silver-haired man in the corner which was polite at least, and was certainly not.

Rose remained near by, made notes where necessary, gave him documents of her portfolio where there were requests, and otherwise rendered herself as helpful and unobtrusive as circumstances demanded. She was good at that. It was her entire life in which she was practicing invisible.

The woman had not seen her until the woman stood in front of her.

She was beautiful. That was the first thing, and one could not deny that. Tall, and with the type of bone structure that photographers had devoted careers to seeking to acquire, and wearing a gold gown that had not been selected, but used. She was holding her champagne flute loosely, as people hold things they are not drinking, and she looked at Rose the way some women look at things they are not supposed to be.

Williams was six feet away talking with someone. He had his back turned.

"You must be the new secretary." The woman's voice was smooth. Sociable. The lines were pleasant and the delivery was a blade. The sixth, as far as I can count. Rose looked at her steadily.

"I am. Rose Adom."

"Anna." There was no last name provided by her, as she obviously did not believe she needed one. Once, she glanced over Rose, in the manner that a man would examine a price label when he is certain that he can afford whatever it costs.

He changes secretaries quite fast. I'm sure you've noticed.

I noticed that the ones before me did not stay, said Rose. "I intend to be different."

Something changed in the expression of Anna. What had been pleasantly scornful, now very soon became in truth and what was in truth was not pleasurable.

She leaned in slightly.

Close enough that Rose could smell her perfume, which was costly and flowery and a little excessive.

"Let me be very clear with you," Anna said, the sociable warmth was absolutely dead now. "I know exactly what you are, and I understand just what you are not. Whatever you believe is going on, whatever little you believe you are constructing, I want you to realize that it dies before it becomes.

Do you understand what I'm telling you?

Rose said nothing. She looked into the eyes of the woman and told her nothing, which was worse than anything she could have told, and Anna appeared to know it.

Then the champagne glass tilted.

It happened very fast that it was almost an accident. The wine poured on Rose's dress; the front of it, a spreading dark stain across the burgundy fabric and Anna acted surprised, her hand covered her mouth in practiced horror.

"Oh," she breathed. "I'm so sorry. How clumsy of me."

She smiled

She was already turning away. Making a step towards the room. The apology and the smiling and the withdrawing gold gown, all so natural and so rehearsed, that a person looking on at a distance would have thought that it was but a little domestic embarrassment between two strangers.

Rose stood still, with cold champagne running through her and she uttered not a word.

The lavatory was small and luckily unoccupied. Rose used a cold paper towel and rubbed it on the stain and thought very carefully of nothing. She was not going to cry. She was not going to spiral.

She took care of the stain and got out to get the job she had been sent to do, as the medicine that Grandma Lou is taking did not pay itself and that Tobias had to go back to school.

she took care of the stain the best she could. She blotted. She breathed. She ran fingers through her hair and glimpsed herself in the mirror; she remained steady, she said to herself, steady and she walked back out.

The next thing she knew she was almost on the floor, and her heel had clutched to the edge of the raised step of marble. It occurred within one-half second. Her ankle was turned over, her weight had been displaced and the floor had risen with harsh and abrupt assurance. She tried to reach out at the wall and hit nothing and then there was a hand.

Strong, steady hold upon her forearm. Her body shrank away at the fall and leveled itself and she was on her feet once more, a little out of breath, her heart pounding too hard, and the hand of Williams Orchid grasping at her arm.

He had snatched her unconsciously. She could tell that much. It was the type of reflex that precedes the decision his body had just moved before he had even given it the order to do so. He looked at her with an expression which she had never seen on his face before.

Not the cool, distant efficiency which she had the three weeks endeavored to equal. Something else. Something which had been a moment then his jaw returned and the walls had gone up again.

"Thank you," she said.

Her voice was steady. She was proud of that. He released her arm.

"Next time, watch your step," he said

"Yes sir", she replied

His hand. The one that had relieved her, the right one. The knuckle was cut across new, still angry-looking, in a little manner of wound which opens easily when it is not moved in the right way, and bleeds more than it ought.

She did not think. She just acted, as she used to act around things, that had to be done. She took the muffler about her neck, ivory colored, soft, one of the few possessions she had that were really nice and before he could act or say or re-compose whatever look he was about to adopt, she took his hand in both her hands and started to wrap it.

He went very still. Not tense, still. The peculiar stillness of an individual who has not been abused with in a very long time and has rather forgotten how to use it.

Rose continued staring at the knot which she was tying. She kept her hands careful. She did not say anything, because it was not necessary to say anything, there was a cut and it had to be covered and that was it.

The moment she was finished and looked up he was staring at her. The room continued to circle them the string quartet, the laughter, the ice in the glasses, neither of them took a step, which was almost definitely too long, nor did they speak at all and something that had no name moved in the air between them.

Then his jaw tightened. He looked away first.

In twenty minutes, the car would be ready, he said. His voice was precisely what it always was. Flat. Professional. Controlled.

"Yes, sir," she said. He walked away.

And Rose was there clutching the little remaining portion of the thread in her muffler and telling herself that whatever she fancied she had just imagined in his face. Men such as Williams Orchid did not stare at their secretaries in such a manner. She almost believed it.

On the other side of the room, Anna was standing next to her mother. Mrs. Tate was not a loud woman. She had never needed to be. She was sixty-one years old, and her hair was silver and streaked, and she sat very much like someone who had lived a lifetime to see that the world perceived her just as she wished it to be perceived, powerful and impregnable and above the day-to-day turmoil of the emotions of other mortals. Her champagne glass, held just below the mouth, she looked with, and said nothing long.

Anna's jaw was tight. Her eyes were not out of the position in which Williams and the girl had been standing.

"Mother -- "

"Quiet." Mrs. Tate spoke in a low tone scarcely more than a murmur. The term fell as an object on a table.

She could see Williams walk away.

She could see Williams walk away. She saw the girl flatten the front of her dirty dress, and pull herself together in that irritating, inarticulate dignity. She stood and looked the distance between them six feet of ballroom floor and walked out like she worked everything out.

Then she put her champagne glass on the tray of an oncoming waiter, unzipped her clutch, and took out her phone.

"Come," she said to Anna. She was already walking towards the exit, already dialing. She stood in the cold darkness of the car park, outside, and waited two rings with the phone to her ear.

She talked quietly, hedging out, unemotional, when the voice answered.

"The girl," she said. "Find out where she lives."

Before the other party could reply, she terminated the call. She did not require their opinion. She just required them to be good at their work.

She put the phone back in her clutch and stared up at the windows of the ballroom above, where the people were moving about, laughing, quite oblivious of their surroundings, and her face was the one it always was.

Composed. Patient. Certain.

She buried issues in the past.

She was very good at it.