The articles he’s texted—one review of a movie we both want to see, and one press piece for some legislation he’s been drafting about voters’ rights—are quickly shuffled to the bottom of my screen as my launch prep team blows me up.
The cake balloon crisis is still unfolding, and there are fifteen dramatic messages in the text thread to prove it. Two dozen balloons, at six dollars apiece, are missing from the order my assistant, Aude, picked up this morning. Calls to the bakery have been made. Refunds have been demanded.
At last, the message I’ve been waiting for appears. It’s Terry.
Stuck in traffic. Signed books in my possession. Stop freaking out.
I flip the bird at Terry’s patronizing message, but I also feel relief spread through my bones. I text Meg the good news, slide Ryan’s gift into my tote bag, and google the bakery to see whether I might stop in and solve Balloon-Gate on my way downtown.
Out my window, as the sun shimmies over the river, and it begins, very lightly, to snow, I feel a sense of calm. I love my fiancé. I love my job. Noa Callaway’s launches are celebrations of all that love put together. Tonight, two hundred and sixty-six women will go home happy with their new books. I think that my mom would be proud.
Everything’s going to be fine.
Chapter Two
Half an hour later, stepping out of the snow and into the warm and buttery bakery, I glimpse our balloons at the back.
At Dominique Ansel now, I chime in on the text thread. Reclaiming lost balloons!
On my phone, Meg dashes back:
Lanie, you really don’t have to do that.
I know this is less about the errand being below my pay grade and more about the fact that Meg suspects—not without reason—that I shouldn’t be trusted around objects so fragile. I have run through more computers and Kindles and photocopiers （yes, I actually slaughtered two photocopiers in my seven years at Peony） than the rest of the fourth floor combined. If you need someone to spill a big glass of water as soon as you sit down at an important agent lunch, I’m your gal. It’s a good thing I’m confident in my skills as an editor, because the whole publicity department still makes fun of the day I tried to help them mix a batch of sangria for a bookseller award celebration. The punch called for three cups of sugar, and I added salt. The containers looked the same. While people walked around gagging, I made matters worse by adding more salt. No one’s ever let me live it down.
But I’m here, and I have two hands and a good feeling about today. When my assistant, Aude, chimes in, texting crisp, clear instructions for the balloons, I know the team is strapped at the venue. They need me. It seals the deal.
Balloons under your name. Keep in protective plastic wrap until arrival on-site!!!! Please, Lanie. Inconvenience cost charged back to your card. Ask for Jerome.
Jerome is behind the counter, his name tag prominent on his starched white shirt. He’s reading Proust and looks less than enthused when I sidle up in front of him. I notice his tip jar is low.
“Hi, I’m Lanie Bloom. Here for the balloons.” I gesture behind him at the floating bouquet on the other side of the kitchen’s glass wall.
“No.” Back to his book Jerome goes. “Those are for someone else.”
“Aude Azaiz? She’s my assistant.”
Now Jerome looks up. “Ms. Azaiz works for you?” There’s shock in his voice, and honestly, I can’t blame him. With her boy-short black hair, silver skull nose piercing, and punctuating French Tunisian accent, Aude might be the world’s most intimidating twenty-three-year-old. Meg and I marvel at her outfits, the necklines of dresses that rise asymmetrically above her chin. We covet her rotation of leather jackets in surprising colors like marigold. When we order lunch to the office, Aude sends our food back for the slightest infraction—mayonnaise when she asked for aioli, improperly emulsified dressing, the wrong kind of crab in a California roll. Nobody fucks with her.
The mere mention of Aude’s name has Jerome behind the glass retrieving the balloons. When he brings them out, they’re lovely, gauzy gold, and sheer enough to suggest the sliver of angel food inside. But before he bequeaths them, he nods at my outstretched hands.
“One graze of that hangnail will pop them,” he says.
Hastily I gnaw off a thumbnail.
“Your breath will pop them,” he says, “and the pastry chef can make no more today. So—” Jerome mimes sucking in his breath, a snide look in his eyes.
I’m about to ask who hurt him as a little boy when he surprises me.
“Ms. Azaiz . . .” His face has gone slightly splotchy. His tone has dropped its scathe. “Is she . . . attached to anyone?”
I grin at Jerome and slip a ten-dollar bill in his tip jar. “Quite single.”
That’s the thing about romance. Its prospect can make even the most curmudgeonly blush. And though I’m fairly certain Aude would eat Jerome for breakfast in between bites of croissant, I’m always happy to be proven wrong when it comes to things like this.
Jerome nods, his mood elevated. “The reimbursement— back to the same card?”
“Actually,” I say, thinking of Meg and Aude and the rest of our launch team, the long hours they’ve put into tonight. “Can I get that in pastries to go?”
* * *
“Lanie arrives!” Aude calls over her shoulder as I step out of the elevator onto the sleek white-tiled hallway of the Hotel Shivani’s twelfth floor.
Even though Aude quit smoking last year, she greets everyone as if she’s just stamped out a cigarette. She glides forward to relieve me of the balloons.
“Shit, these are so fragile,” she says. We both exhale once they’re in her well-manicured hands.
“Lanie!” Meg says, rushing toward me, pushing her glasses higher on her nose. “I can’t believe you got those.”
“Accept the miracle.” I pass her the box of pastries, my hands now free to brush the snowflakes from my hair. Meg’s going to love the Jerome anecdote, but I’ll save it for a calmer moment. “Get in the zone with a scone.”
“Scone zone,” Meg repeats, taking a bite and chewing morosely.
“What’s the word on the signed books?” I ask.
Finally, Meg smiles, and I know Terry delivered.
“Come on,” Meg says, “I’ll show you.”
We maze through tables draped in golden cloth, past Aude schooling a group of publicists on how to fill satchels of rice for the table setting, and how not to wedge white candles into the wicker Chianti bottle centerpieces.
“Look at that chip in the taper! Stand back, I will do it myself.”
There’s a white aisle for guests to walk down with their books and a photo booth with rotating Amalfi Coast backdrops. Cases of prosecco and Campari chill on ice. Twinkle lights have been strung from the ceiling, drawing the eye toward the red ranunculus altar in the center of the room. Behind it, Styrofoam boulders form an oceanfront Italian bluff. Out the window, snow falls on the Hudson.
“This is all so perfect,” I tell Meg, who’s tying the last of the cake balloons to the last of the chairs. “Like Cupid exploded.”
“It’s a mood,” Meg says.
“Should the confetti be scattered or, like, placed?” Meg’s assistant calls.