Celia approached Victoria before the departing guests reached the door.
“You are welcome to leave,” she said, “but please don’t solicit guests inside the restaurant.”
“Solicit? I’m offering them an alternative.”
“Then offer it outside.”
Victoria looked around the room with a theatrical smile.
“You see what has happened. A place famous for good service has decided customers should be grateful merely to be allowed inside.”
Celia kept her voice low.
“You threw water at my employee. Every conversation since then has been an attempt to make that detail less important.”
“She provoked me.”
“She brought a hungry man soup.”
Victoria’s cheeks flushed.
She collected her coat and left with six guests, two of whom returned moments later because they had forgotten their umbrellas.
The loss of those customers did not settle the argument.
The restaurant had committed to an expensive production, and the night’s budget depended on selling nearly every seat.
Celia counted the empty places while Mara rearranged the room to improve sightlines.
Walter looked at the remaining audience and made a decision.
“We begin on time,” he said.
“We’re short six people,” Oliver Knox objected.
“We are not short an audience,” Walter answered.
Emily watched the departing guests disappear behind the revolving door.
“Doesn’t that cost you money?” she asked Walter.
“Yes.”
“And you don’t care?”
“I care about the actors getting paid. I care about the restaurant paying its staff. I also care about making a piece of theater worth attending. There are nights when caring about three things is unpleasant.”
“Who pays the actors if the event loses money?”
Mara answered before Walter could.
“Our contracts guarantee the cast fees. We negotiated that before accepting the booking.”
“Who guarantees ours?” Luis asked from behind them.
The question stopped Emily.
He was carrying a tray of freshly polished silverware, and his face showed no trace of humor.
“Nobody tells us whether the staff gets paid if these rich people walk away,” he continued.
Celia appeared to have heard him.
“The shift is paid whether the room fills or not,” she said.
“What about the gratuity pool?” Anika asked.
“The restaurant will cover the amount that was projected for the private service,” Celia replied after a pause.
“Can we have that in writing?” Peter asked.
Celia glanced at the clock, then took a pen from Oliver’s hand.
She wrote the guarantee on the back of the event schedule, signed it, and handed it to Anika.
“You’ll get a formal notice tomorrow,” she said.
Anika read the words twice before passing the sheet to Luis.
Emily saw how much that little piece of paper changed his expression.
At the Clarion Hotel, Victoria was discovering that a ballroom arranged in twenty minutes did not create the evening she had promised.
The carpet was beige, the flowers were artificial, and the banquet director did not have enough staff to serve a complicated meal.
Victoria asked for champagne, only to learn that the hotel could provide sparkling wine after the bar manager returned from another function.
One guest complained that the promised entertainment had not arrived.
Victoria called Conrad, who answered from the Halcyon Room’s office.
“You assured me the performance depended on my backing,” she said.
“The contract was written that way,” Conrad replied.
“Then why is it going ahead?”
“Because Celia has decided she would rather burn money than maintain standards.”
“Can you stop the musicians?”
“Not without creating a scene.”
Victoria stared at the bare little platform in the hotel ballroom.
“I did not rent this room to sit in silence,” she said.
