“We’re going to take a stroll through the cloakroom after I get a good look at everyone in attendance. And after we dance.”
Their tickets put them at a table of eight near the dais with a congressman named Sweeney and his wife, Marie, who had the burr of an Irish birth to her voice and kept darting nervous looks at Michael like she thought him delicious and dangerous. The congressman ignored them altogether, his attention consumed by the Catholic bishop on his left and a man named Higbee, whose family established the department store of the same name on Public Square, seated on Dani’s right. Higbee’s wife, Constance, was seated between her husband and her unmarried daughter, who took the final chair at the table, a balance to the unaccompanied bishop.
It was Constance who made sure names were exchanged and pleasantries offered, but Michael introduced them as Mike and Daniela Kos, inferring that they were married and he was the Kos, but gave no explanations as to why they were there or who had invited them. He was quick to pull Dani out onto the dance floor after only a few sips of champagne and that single, stilted exchange.
“Are you good at everything, Michael?” she asked, as he swung into the steps with perfect ease, leading like he knew exactly where he was going. She had only to follow.
“I’m not a particularly good seamstress, and I’d rather not do the Lindy Hop,” he murmured, his lips near her ear.
She laughed, and her heart was as light as his feet.
“I also don’t have magic hands,” he added, but his hand resting lightly on her back felt almost miraculous.
“Magic?”
“You are like an ancient oracle.”
She smiled, but she wasn’t sure it was a compliment. “Didn’t the oracles sleep most of the time and only grant people one question and always at a price?”
He grinned. “That’s definitely not you.”
“No.”
“But you have always been ancient.”
“Is that good?” she whispered. It was lovely to talk this way, heads close together, everything else a backdrop.
“Didn’t you tell me all the best things are old?” he murmured. “You are ancient. And wise. And you know who you are. I find that even more remarkable than your voodoo.”
“Don’t you know who you are, Michael?”
“I do. Yes.”
“Then why do you marvel that I do as well?”
“You have always known, and I had to figure it out,” he said, and he spun her into a new dance.
The room around them was a blur, the music unremarkable, the celebrity attendees almost invisible. When her aunts pressed her for details afterward, it was only Michael she would remember, his hand at her back, his cheek to her hair, his scent all around her. It was Michael and his ease on the dance floor and her ease in his arms. In the end, he was all she would remember.
He was allowing himself to forget. To forget his past and forget his present. To forget that he would move on to the next mess and the next mark, and that he was not free. He was not young and hopeful or even available. But the music was fine and his skin was warm with champagne, and he had a beautiful woman in his arms.
His thoughts didn’t race and his eyes weren’t scanning. He was simply enjoying the sway of the steps and the swish of satin as Dani moved with him. Maybe he was not forgetting after all but remembering. Maybe he was allowing himself to remember what it felt like to live a little.
He kept trying to find the old Malone, but she made him laugh. He tried to rein himself in, but she made him run headlong. He would tighten up and shift away only to step toward her again. And he could not be cold. He could not be firm. He could not say no or even say maybe. Okay, Dani. All right, Dani. Yes, Dani. Please, Dani. And worst of all, he couldn’t find the fear he’d lost, that healthy fear that warned of pain and loss, that kept a child from touching a stove or climbing too high. It was just gone, and he teetered above the earth, looking down, knowing he was going to fall, or worse, perish, and he just didn’t . . . care.
He danced, blissfully uncaring, until Dani lifted her chin and told him Eliot had arrived. Alone. And the room was buzzing. Reluctantly, he turned his attention to the crowd, identifying the players he knew. Eliot was shaking hands with Mayor Burton, who was seated three tables over from Congressman Sweeney. Malone wasn’t sure how he and Dani had managed to be seated beside him, but better Sweeney’s table than Ness’s, which he’d been a little worried would happen, considering Eliot had procured the tickets.
Mayor Burton was an affable enough sort, the kind of staid politician that nobody hates and nobody remembers. There was a place for his type. Folks preferred boring to bold most of the time. But Burton was as ambitious as the next; that had become apparent. Malone reminded himself not to mistake his sedate affability for lack of ambition.
Congressman Sweeney was a former judge who had been in Congress for a while. He reminded him of the Irish rabble-rousers of his father’s generation, the men who sat around American tables and talked of Irish freedom, seven hundred years of British oppression, and Irish patriots, but who wouldn’t go back to Ireland if you paid them. It was an identity. People needed that. But it wasn’t grounded in anything but nostalgia and a desire to connect.
Sweeney was no Michael Collins or Eamon de Valera, but he played the same strings and used some of the same tactics. Malone didn’t mind it, but he didn’t buy it either. He recognized that most politics required manipulation and overwhelming self-interest.
He supposed that was why he liked Eliot, who looked a bit like a kid at a church dance, though he was dutifully making the rounds and shaking hands. He would likely make the social page the next day for coming to the event by himself.