I slipped through the darkness into a state somewhere between lucid dreaming and vivid remembering.
The grand chandelier of a ballroom came into focus overhead, and when I dropped my gaze, I found I was at the Steel Pharmaceuticals holiday party of a few years previously. Jared had invited me as a fellow business owner in the Little Rock area and asked if I would bring some of my more outgoing girls to “talk to other party guests,” which I knew was code for, “save me some potential drama and give the old men something to leer at besides each other’s trophy wives,” but I felt it was good for the girls to be seen in case someone wanted to hire one of them for a commercial or some other small job to build her portfolio.
The crystal glass of water sweated through the black napkin I had wrapp
