I used one seat.
I gave the other to Everett Pruitt, who had the night off, and who wore his own suit, and who sat at Table One.
Corinne saw us at seven-forty.
She was mid-round of the room.
She stopped.
“Danielle.”
“Corinne.”
“You — this is a private event.”
“It’s my building.
Two seats, every event.
It’s in the agreement your assistant signed in January.”
Garrett was there.
Of course he was.
He came across the floor fast.
“Danielle, this is — you can’t just — “
“Sit down, Garrett,” I said.
“I’m not here for you.
I’m here because there’s a decision on the table and I’d like to make it in front of people, the way decisions about me have been made in front of people for two years.”
The tables near us had gone quiet.
Two hundred and forty people notice a still spot.
Corinne drew herself up.
“If this is about the wedding — “
“It’s about the renewal.
Your foundation’s contract for the ’27 season is on my desk.
Three years, this room, the second Saturday of April.
Your assistant has called my events director four times this month.”
Her chin came up.
“And?”
“And I’m going to sign it.”
I watched two hundred and forty people not understand.
I watched Corinne not understand.
“You’re — “
“I’m signing it.
Same rate.
Same date.
Same room.”
“Why?”
And here is what I said, quietly, at a table, to a woman who had spent two years teaching a ballroom how to look at me.
“Because the rent from your gala pays for eleven caseworkers for four months.
Last year, your two hundred and forty guests drinking champagne under that chandelier paid to get eighty-one women’s names off mortgages they never signed for.”
“Because my mother cleaned floors four through seven of this building for seventeen years, took the bus at nine at night, and came home at six in the morning, and she is the reason there’s a fund at all, and I am not going to let what your son said in this room turn her building into a place where I settle scores.”
