Robert Bidinotto - Hunter

He followed her down the hallway, and they turned through open double doors into a vast function room.

Huge chandeliers blazed over a sea of round tables covered with white linen cloths, alternating red and green napkins, and glittering crystal and dinnerware. Twisted strands of green and red crepe paper ribbons stretched across the expanse of the ceiling. An enormous, decorated Christmas tree stood in the right front corner of the ballroom. On the left, workmen were laying down sections of a parquet dance floor over the blue-and-gold-patterned carpet.

“This is really great,” he said, surveying the place.

She smiled. “Well, Mr. Stone, do you need any help from us? Or are you able to handle things on your own?”

“Thanks, Ms. Wright, but I think we’ll manage. We appreciate all your help.”

*

He went outside to where he had parked the panel truck near the delivery entrance. Snow was already falling, though the temperature was not yet cold enough for it to stick. That made his work less problematic.

He opened the back doors of the vehicle, lowered the rear ramp, then rolled out a utility cart. He brought it in through the delivery entrance, down the hallway, and into the ballroom. He put on work gloves. Then, he pushed the cart over to the corner platform housing the sound board, microphones, computerized audio-visual equipment, and video cameras.

For the next hour, he strung cables, fiddled with the equipment, enlisted the staff for sound checks and lighting levels. At one point, he opened a tool kit on the cart and bent over the laptop computer running the audio-visual system. He also borrowed a long ladder from the maintenance staff and climbed up to the ceiling near the back, installing several electronics components on some high braces.

Just before 4:30, he left as he had come.

*

At 5:30, the hotel’s event technicians entered. The head of the wait staff paused to watch them work, wondering why they were performing the same sound and light checks all over again.

These rich people, he thought; for them, everything has to be just so. He sighed, then went to see how things were going back in the kitchen.

*

At 6:45, a black 2007 BMW 7 Series rolled into the hotel parking lot. The driver didn’t leave it with the valets, but parked it himself, front facing outward, at the side of the building, not far from the delivery entrance.

A dark-haired man with a goatee emerged, wearing an expensive black wool coat over a tuxedo, and carrying a large black-leather briefcase. He walked through the falling snowflakes to the front entrance, then headed straight to the elevators, where he pressed the button for the third floor.

*

When Annie entered the ballroom at 7:30, she spotted her father in the midst of a knot of guests near the dais. She threaded her way through the tables and arriving guests.

His eyes lit up when he saw her. “There she is!” he said, spreading his arms for her.

With his strong features and boyish shock of strawberry hair, he was still movie-star handsome, and his tuxedo revealed a body that was still tall, lean, and erect. Yet she saw in his face what the recent months had cost him. There was something different about his eyes-a missing sparkle, perhaps-and his cheeks looked drawn, as if he had lost weight.

“Hi, Dad.” She stepped into his embrace.

“I’m so grateful you decided to come,” he whispered in her ear. “It means so much to me, especially right now.”

“I know,” she whispered back. “I’m here only for you, Dad.”

In fact, she hated being here. She didn’t believe in his cause. During the past few months, she had come to despise it. And she wouldn’t have attended, except for his pleas.

*

In Room 315, he had tossed his overcoat on the bed and hung his tuxedo jacket on the back of a chair. Now he sat at the room’s desk, watching the screen of the powerful wireless laptop that he had removed from the boxy briefcase.

The image on the screen was being transmitted from the tiny, battery-powered, wireless-operated video camera that he had installed overhead in the ballroom a few hours ago. He could use his laptop mouse to direct the movable lens of the camera, panning or zooming in and out. The whole setup was expensive and hard for most people to obtain.

For most people.

He spotted her almost immediately when she entered the ballroom. He was not particularly surprised that she was present. Nothing much surprised him anymore.

He zoomed in on her, then panned the camera to follow as she and her father walked up the steps onto the dais and took seats next to each other in the center of the long table. She wore a long, pale yellow evening gown. Her beauty was breathtaking. But his appreciation felt abstract and remote, as if he were in a museum looking at some ancient sculpture of a beautiful woman.

He glanced at his watch. It would still be a while before it was his turn to participate in the festivities. He sat back to watch.

*

She had insisted to her father, as a condition of her attendance, that she would be seated as far as possible from Carl Frankfurt. She was relieved that the shrink was sandwiched between two dowagers near the end of the dais.

The older man to her right, a trustee, had given up on her quickly when she responded monosyllabically to his attempts at small talk. And her father, on her left, was engrossed in conversation with the politician next to him. For the moment, she could be alone with her thoughts.

Thoughts of him.

She still could not come to grips with the chaos that had engulfed them. It was as if they were trapped between two colliding realities: one, a sane, joyous world that they inhabited together; the other, a nightmarish, paranoid universe where no one could be trusted and nothing understood. And it felt as if they had been slipping back and forth, unpredictably and disastrously, through some black hole that connected those incompatible worlds.

She had tried countless times to resign herself to the impossibility of their relationship. Yet something deep within her rebelled. Rebelled at the indignity of being a victim of circumstance. She had never submitted to “fate” in her entire life, about anything else.

How could she surrender to it now, over something this important?

How could two people, so close and so right for each other, have allowed outside circumstances to drive them apart?

*

The wait staff had cleared the main course, poured more wine, and served dessert. Ken MacLean saw the hotel’s event coordinator nod at him from below the dais. He checked his watch; just after nine. He returned the nod, then turned to the guest of honor. “It’s about that time. We’ll run the film first, then I’ll introduce you.”

“That’s fine, Ken,” said Congressman Morrie Horowitz.

MacLean got up and went to the podium. He looked out upon the eight hundred faces that turned to him expectantly. He let their conversations die down, then spoke.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I do hope you’ve enjoyed your dinner. Now it’s time for us to reflect upon and celebrate the foundation’s many achievements over the past year. It has been a year of both triumphs and challenges. But thanks to your faithful support and participation, the MacLean Family Foundation is poised to make the coming year our best ever.”

He smiled and waited for the applause to end.

“To remind you of where we have been, and to excite you about where we are headed, a new foundation benefactor, Mr. Wayne Grayson of Los Angeles, has prepared a short film. I’ve not yet seen it, but he assures me that it will help us remember this very special occasion. If we could have the lights lowered a bit, please?”

MacLean returned to his seat. His daughter smiled at him and patted his knee. The lights went down in the ballroom. He turned to the big screen.