Gabrielle Zevin - In the Age of Love and Chocolate

“You have to get ready. The car is going to be here in two minutes, and you’re supposed to be my date.”

She poked her head out. “Oh, you look pretty.”

“Thank you, but seriously, Natty, you have to hurry up. I can’t be late.”

Natty didn’t move.

“If you’re doing this because you’re mad at me, I think it’s incredibly childish.”

“I’m a child. Isn’t that what you said before?” I started to pull the blanket off her, and she pulled back even harder.

“Please, Natty. Come on.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“I want you there.”

“You didn’t want me there before. So, what? Am I supposed to show up now? Your obedient little sister? I had nothing to do with the club so I’d like to continue to have nothing to do with it.”

I did not have time for this. “Fine. Don’t come,” I said, and then I left.

At the club, the steps were already scattered with people. I could see photographers and journalists lining the red carpet, preparing for the VIP arrivals. The media blitz had worked. Now we’d have to see if actual people came. One of the journalists called me over. “Anya Balanchine! Have a minute for an interview with the New York Daily Interrogator ?”

I was in a terrible mood after my discussion with Natty, and I did not like giving interviews in the first place. But I was a grownup and that meant doing things I didn’t want to do. I shook off my bad mood, smiled, and went over to the reporter.

“This is fantastic!” the reporter enthused. “The buzz is deafening! How does it feel to be the girl who is single-handedly giving chocolate back to New York City?”

“Well, it’s not chocolate per se. It’s cacao. Cacao is the—”

The reporter cut me off. “In two short years, you’ve gone from being the most infamous teenager in New York City to a club impresario with the most audacious idea this city has seen in a decade. How did it happen?”

“Back to your other question. I wouldn’t say single-handedly—I’ve had a lot of help in making this come together. Theo Marquez and Charles Delacroix, for instance, have both been instrumental.” Theo was inside, but I could see Mr. Delacroix down the steps from where I stood. He was talking to a different group of reporters. He was much more skilled than I.

Although the alliance had cost me my relationship with Win, Mr. Delacroix had absolutely been the right choice for my business partner. He knew everyone in the city and he knew how government worked. As I had hoped, people had believed him when he said our venture was legal.

“Interesting,” the reporter said. “Delacroix was once your greatest enemy and now he seems to have become your greatest ally.”

I took Mr. Delacroix’s advice and steered the conversation back to what I wanted to talk about. “Once you taste Theo Marquez’s cacao drinks, you might think he’s my greatest ally,” I said. I answered a few more questions, and then I thanked the reporter for her time.

When I went inside, I did a quick walk-through. The doctors were in their carrels. The chandeliers were lit. The big band was warming up. The ceiling fans kept the rooms cool and carried the soft, melancholy scent of chocolate—I mean, cacao —from room to room. For once in my life, all seemed right with the world.

I went into my office. I hadn’t slept in close to twenty-four hours, and I was contemplating a short nap when Mr. Delacroix came into the room.

He studied me for a second. “You look very sleepy. Awaken, Anya Balanchine. Our doors open in ten minutes and there is still much for us to do and to see.”

“Like what?”

He offered me his hand to help me out of my chair, and I followed him to a window with a view of the eastern exterior stairs of the club.

He parted a red velvet curtain. “Look,” he said.

Every space on the steps was filled with a body. The line to get inside extended down the sidewalk. I could not see where it ended.

“They haven’t even tasted it yet,” I whispered.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

He was smiling and that was a rare occurrence. When he smiled, I could see a bit of his son in him and I couldn’t help wishing that Win were here.

He went on. “You’re giving them something they wanted, something they missed. In this small way, you’re making people whole again. I wanted to do such things myself, once upon a time.” He paused. “It’s probably not my place to say, but I’m sure your parents would be proud of you.”

“How are you sure? Based on what evidence exactly do you conclude that my parents would have been proud?”

He laughed at me. “Oh, you can never have a nice moment, can you? You can never let anything go. It must be exhausting in that head of yours.”

“Please. I’d like to know. You don’t say anything without having considered your angle, so give me your rationale for my parents’ theoretical pride. Or was it only a load of politician crap? Were you offering up a few benedictory words, like a low-level government official at a ribbon-cutting ceremony?” I was cranky from lack of sleep and this might have come out more harshly than I had intended it.

“I think I should be insulted.” He furrowed his brow. “Okay, proof of dead parents’ pride. I can come up with that. Your mother was a cop, wasn’t she?”

I nodded.

“Is it a stretch to suggest that she would have been proud of you for figuring out how to turn your father’s business legal?”

“Maybe it would have irritated her that I was bending the law.”

He continued. “And your father. At the end of his life, he was trying to push Balanchine Chocolate into the modern era, was he not? The Russians killed him for it. You’re barely out of high school and you’ve already managed to do what your father could not. And without any bloodshed.”

“Any bloodshed so far. ”

“You’re in a cheery mood. In any case, I think I’ve presented ample evidence that both your parents would have been absolutely delighted with you, my colleague.” He offered me his hand, and I shook it.

Glasses were broken. Drinks were spilled. The occasional punch was thrown. Girls cried in the bathroom. Men and women left with people different from those they had arrived with. We ran out of cacao—we were going to need to increase our supply—and only half of the people who wanted to come in were able to get through the door. It was dirty and noisy and I loved it more than I had ever dared hope.

A small miracle: I, who always worried, stopped worrying. Maybe it was toward the end of the night when Lucy beckoned me to the dance floor, where a group of women who worked at the club were dancing together. I liked these women, though they were my employees, not my friends. (Indeed, I had barely seen my best friend that night—she’d left early, kissing me on the cheek and whispering a rushed apology about Felix’s babysitter.)

“I don’t dance,” I yelled to Lucy.

“You’re wearing a dress that was made for dancing,” she yelled back. “You can’t wear a dress like that and not dance. That would be criminal. Come on, Anya.”

Elizabeth, who worked in the press office, waved her arms at me and said, “If you don’t dance with us, we’ll think you’re a snob and we’ll probably talk about you behind your back.”

Noriko was with them, too. “Anya! Silly to start dancing club and not dance.”

These were valid points, and so I made my way to the dance floor. Noriko put her arms around me and kissed me.

Years ago, Scarlet, who loved to dance, and I had been at Little Egypt, uptown. I had said to her, “The more I think about dancing, the more I don’t get it.”