Money to Burn

6

MALLORY CANTELLA CHECKED HER WATCH. SHE WOULD HAVE BET her Jimmy Choos that Michael was going to be late, as usual, so there was no point getting upset about it. But with nearly a hundred of his closest friends and colleagues waiting, she couldn’t stop the stress from turning the back of her neck into one huge knot.

Where the heck are you, Michael?

By Saxton Silvers’ standards, Michael’s surprise thirty-fifth birthday party was hardly an exercise in keeping up with the Joneses. That would have meant five hundred guests at a society-page event-perhaps a re-creation of Havana’s famous Tropicana nightclub in its 1940s heyday, complete with a salsa orchestra, casino tables, showgirls in feather headdresses, and dinner catered by Bobby Flay. Mallory hadn’t even considered it. Michael wasn’t cheap, but a blowout to end all blowouts in celebration of an accomplishment as meaningless as reaching the age of thirty-five? Never. Not Michael. She had to keep it simple. The Pierre Hotel didn’t really fit that bill, but it was needed for the ruse-a venue she’d chosen to make Michael think that he was on his way to another dull black-tie business event. All would be well when he unwrapped the case of Montepulciano that she had been able to cajole from an obscure Tuscan vineyard by learning to pronounce it with feeling-“Mon-tah-pool-chah-no.”

Assuming he ever gets here.

Mallory downed a Cosmopolitan and was headed toward the bar for another when her best friend came over and grabbed her.

“He’s in the building!” Andrea told her.

Since marrying Michael, Mallory had struggled for acceptance by the Saxton Silvers “It girls,” and Andrea was the first real connection she’d made. It was probably because Andrea wasn’t in the club either. Andrea’s fiancé was new to the firm, the couple having moved from Seattle just eleven weeks earlier.

“Are you sure?” asked Mallory.

“Has my intelligence ever failed you?”

It was true: Andrea’s information was consistently reliable, unlike the usual Saxton Silvers gossip that wound its way from the Pilates studio, to the coffeehouse, to the Madonna-inspired Power Plate workout, to the white-wine-and-salmon-tartare lunch at Barneys.

Mallory hurried up onto the stage and grabbed the microphone. The band stopped, and the event coordinator flashed the lights to get the crowd’s attention.

Exactly on cue, the main doors to the ballroom opened, and Michael entered in the company of two men wearing trench coats. The band immediately started playing “Happy Birthday,” and from the stage Mallory caught Michael’s eye as she led the crowd in singing to him. It had been Andrea’s idea to hire the actors to pose as G-men and haul Michael into the ballroom-a gag that Mallory loved. He looked genuinely stunned.

“Happy birthday, Michael,” she said when the song ended. “I love you.”

A long round of applause followed. A waiter handed Michael a glass of champagne, which he raised in a toast to his wife as he mouthed the words back to her, I love you, too.

It probably would have been too much to expect Michael to climb on stage and say those words into a microphone so that everyone could hear. It would have made Mallory’s night if he had, but it was enough that the weight around her neck was finally lifted.

Mission accomplished.