But had the Von Bizmarks seen? They were closer to the stage, so they would have had to fully turn around. A possibility. Particularly if Mrs. Von Bizmark had tried to get Anna’s attention about something. They were already filing out of the box with the mayor. Anna willed herself to wake up.
“I . . . ,” she said to the prince, who looked thankfully more amused than annoyed.
“I don’t think you love opera after all,” he said. He offered her his arm.
“I have to ask,” she said, leaning in for some discretion, “did the Von Bizmarks notice?”
“Oh no,” he reassured her. “She turned around a few times, but I blocked you with my body.”
I’m sure she loved that, Anna thought. “Thank you so much!”
“I think it annoyed her a lot,” the prince added, and they shared a laugh. “How lucky!” he remarked when he found their place cards next to one another: Julie’s doing for sure.
According to the menu card and program on her plate, the art auction was to occur between the salad and main course, which meant Anna sat and nervously picked at some lettuce leaves and carrot curlicues while waiting for the nerve-racking verdict on her work. She admittedly did not make the best tablemate, but after a lifetime of formal meals with reticent strangers, the prince was not put off.
“Where did you learn to paint?” he asked.
“Well, really I think I’ve been painting my whole life. Not professionally, of course, but then I studied at Yale.”
“Yale! There is a great pizza place there—”
“Frank Pepe!” Anna said.
“Where they have that crazy—”
“White clam pizza!” they said together.
And then, before she could even experience another moment of anticipatory anxiety, a young fresh-faced auctioneer from Sotheby’s, who plainly took the job seriously, strutted onstage in a simple black evening gown, pumps, and a headset. There, she joined an empty easel under a spotlight. Anna felt for her; it had to be daunting trying to sell an unknown’s work and perhaps even insulting for her to bow to the sort of prices she might actually realize—something in the ballpark of, say, $1,200. The auctioneer called for the first piece, and a stagehand placed the lips center stage.
“I thought we’d start tonight with my personal favorite, the pièce de résistance, the cornerstone of our evening, the graphic, the stark, the intense Julie.” From across the room, Anna made out Julie’s distinctive guffaw. “Let’s start the bidding at twenty-five thousand!” Anna choked on her water, spitting it out and onto the unfeeling shoulder pad of a nearby tuxedo. She coughed a few times, the prince patting her back. Once her diaphragm had finally stopped spasming, Anna heard how truly quiet it was in that enormous room. “Twenty-five thousand, ladies and gentlemen! For a school! For the children!”
Anna felt the silence in her bone marrow. No one responded or even moved. This inexperienced nitwit is going to embarrass me and raise no money, Anna thought. The silence extended into eternity. Anna wondered if there was a way to just restart the whole thing. Should she interrupt? Leap to her feet? Stop this car crash in progress?
“Twenty-five!” Lindsay shouted and raised her numbered sign. Anna felt tears of love spring from her eyes.
“Twenty-five, I got twenty-five!” the auctioneer shouted, trying for some momentum. “Do I have thirty?”
“Thirty!” the prince shouted, raising his number. He winked at her again, and Anna smiled broadly.
“Thirty, do I have thirty-five?”
“Fifty!” Mrs. Von Bizmark shouted from a nearby table. Anna thought she might faint.
“Come on, people, it’s for education!”
Between the luncheon and the art auction, the school ended up netting almost $1.5 million. This more than addressed their structural problems, and without a single dollar from the city. The mayor applauded the loudest, jumping up from his seat when the final canvas got snatched up. Across the room, Julie mouthed to Anna, “I told you so.” But surely no one would care that the mayor had scored a ton of free publicity, even if it was an election year.
Mrs. Von Bizmark herself took the podium. “Thank you, everyone. We have paid the opera’s annual budget and saved a school here tonight. Enormous thanks to our artist, Anna—please stand.” Anna rose to her feet, a flush of warm happiness flooding her toes and climbing all the way up to her shoulders and the tops of her ears as the room applauded. The prince grinned at Anna, proud to be seated next to her.
They talked to other people through dinner, having ignored them the entire time. So blissed out from the auction, Anna hardly remembered the name of the billionaire to her left, the male half of the international yacht duo. He wanted to do all the talking, anyway, mostly about the art collection on his boat and how hard it was to insure something like that. Anna offered a few pointers on the topic of art insurance. They traded stories of priceless pieces lost in tornadoes, fires, floods. At one point, the prince straightened the napkin in his lap; his pinky brushed Anna’s thigh. By accident?
“Thanks for bidding on my piece.” Anna almost had to shout as the Motown band started up.
“Don’t be silly. The sheep need to know where the grass is,” he said. Anna cocked an eyebrow at him. “An old Umbrian saying,” he added sagely.
“That means what, exactly?” she said, smiling.
“In my town, where I grew up, there are these three old men—”
“Hey, you guys!” Lindsay interjected, popping up as if from a secret compartment behind them. Anna embraced her, squeezing her extra tight and whispering, “You! Thank you!”
“I’m so proud of you,” Lindsay whispered back. “Who is this hottie?” They separated.
“Prince Valdobianno, my sister, Lindsay.”
“Salvatore, please!” the prince said to Lindsay. He kissed her hand and said, “A pleasure. Would you like to dance?” Anna watched, astonished, as the prince accompanied her pregnant sister across the room. Lindsay looked back at her and jokingly fanned her face.
Dessert served, the band kicked it up a notch, and everyone hit the dance floor. Mr. Von Bizmark bopped stiffly back and forth with Peony, who giggled and bounced along. Josefina danced with Ilana while Alicia ate their cake. The head of the VBO real estate group sipped brown liquor with the mayor, softly pitching some enormous new development downtown that Anna had only heard whispers about. The mayor listened closely. The prince returned with Lindsay, all flushed.
“May I?” he asked, extending his hand to Anna. This man was every inch an international playboy, a professional charm artist, a man who would ultimately settle down with someone twenty years younger, twenty pounds lighter, twenty centimeters taller, and twenty IQ points lower than Anna. Or was she selling him short? He wiggled his hips a little and smiled. Anna struggled to maintain her cynicism in the face of such enticements.
They kept dancing into the next song and the next. Faces swirled around them. Anna spied Mrs. Von Bizmark in the arms of the tenor she’d fawned over at auditions. Julie danced with Max, who talked a mile a minute at her, probably about publicity concerns. Cristina glided by with, oh my God, Villson, in a tuxedo. How did . . . ? Whatever. Cristina looked up at him with such adoration, and he seemed to be returning this feeling, gazing into her half-blind purple-rimmed eyes.