In the end, she settled on a standard white linen hemstitch napkin, which she insisted be custom made for the occasion so that “the children can have them as heirlooms.” Olga easily obliged, knowing that they would cost her $7 apiece to have made by a Dominican woman she knew in Washington Heights and that she could very easily charge the client $30 a napkin, attribute the cost to Mrs. Henderson’s exquisite taste in fabrics, and pocket the difference. Of course, even a seasoned professional like Olga could never have predicted that Mrs. Henderson’s neurosis about the napkins would escalate to the degree that it did. Fear that her guests would, at any point, be forced to use a soiled napkin gripped her. Gradually, she increased her original order of three hundred napkins until eventually she doubled it. Of course, Olga knew there was simply no fathomable way that her guests could possibly go through this many napkins. She also knew that telling Mrs. Henderson that her fear was irrational? Well, that was pointless. Instead, Olga assured her that such a degree of thoughtfulness was the sign of a truly considerate hostess, while silently delighting in the knowledge that she’d concurrently figured out the perfect touch for Mabel’s big day while also earning a few extra thousand on this job.
Olga did not see this as a theft as much as an equalization of resources: Mrs. Henderson had aggressively accumulated too much of something while her family had acutely too little. At the Henderson wedding, despite all the time and energy spent discussing, procuring, pleating, and angling these napkins, they would go unnoticed. But at Mabel’s, like a black Chanel suit in a sea of knockoff Hervé Léger bandage dresses, they would stop people in their tracks. “？Qué elegante!” she could hear her Titi Lola saying. She could picture her Tío Richie holding two of them over his chest and saying, “Hey, how many do you think I’d need to make a guayabera?” There would be countless cousins uttering, simply, “Classy,” as they thumbed the fabric between their fingers. This was the least Olga could do, she felt. Why shouldn’t her family get to know the feeling of imported Belgian flax against their laps? Because Mabel’s father was a janitor? Because that was the job he could get after he dropped out of high school? Because he dropped out mainly because he was dyslexic? A disorder that the family only learned of, mind you, when one of his grandchildren was diagnosed with it at school and Tío JoJo, to comfort the child, said, “It’s okay, mijo, I’ve seen the letters backwards my whole life, and I’ve been okay.” Her family should have to wipe their mouths with $3 polyester rags because Tío JoJo’s teachers were too fucking lazy to ask why he struggled with reading? Because no one blinked at another dumb Puerto Rican dropping out of a shitty public high school? Fuck that.
Also, it was doubtless that her family would attribute this elegant touch to Olga, and that would absolutely kill Mabel. Titi Lola, Tío Richie, Tío JoJo, all of them would immediately know that this was something only Olga would think to do. After the cousins said the word “classy,” then they would say, “Olga.” That was just the way it was in her family. This was her role.
“Meegan,” Olga called out to her assistant, who was busy sorting through seating arrangements. “Meegan, at the end of the night, get the soiled napkins to the laundry service and have them messengered to Mrs. Henderson first thing Monday. Take the extras back to the office.”
“Wait. Aren’t we sending those, too?”
“Nope.” Olga knew what was coming next.
“But she paid for those.”
“She did.”
“So, if you take something that she paid for, isn’t that…？”
“Isn’t it what, Meegan? Because what I know I’m doing is executing our clients’ wishes. Mrs. Henderson wants the napkins used at her daughter’s wedding to pass on to her someday grandchildren. We are sending those. We are not sending her the hundred or so napkins that will sit in a box in the back of the kitchen, unused, for the rest of the night. Not only is that not what she asked for, but ask yourself why, after she is delighted with the entire thing, we would advertise to her that we allowed her to wastefully indulge in such an irrational expenditure?”
Meegan was about to say something and then paused. The suspiciousness in her eyes faded and a smile came over her face.
“This is why you are the best. You are so right. I wouldn’t have thought of it that way, but you’re right. This is why I begged my mom to get me this job.”