“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Five minutes, Zee. Five minutes after I left the Brotherhood he came at me, which means he was waiting. Just like the guy outside the Groveland Tap had been waiting. Now, why do I have a feeling that everything that’s happened today was staged for my benefit? Like I’m a minor piece being maneuvered around a chessboard.”
Lindsey paused for a moment before saying, “If you’re being maneuvered, then so am I.”
“I don’t know what to do about it.”
From the expression on her face, Lindsey didn’t have a clue, either.
“This is bigger than it seems,” I told her.
“You will help me, though, won’t you, Mac? You’ll help me despite everything?”
“Everything?”
“The Brotherhood and all that.”
It was back—the feeling I had had at the Groveland Tap that Lindsey wasn’t telling me the truth, at least not the whole truth—but I said yes just the same, for old time’s sake.
“Good.”
“Zee,” I asked innocently.
“Yes?”
“Tell me about Troy Donovan.”
“What do you mean?”
“How well do you know him?”
“Not well at all,” she answered easily. “We’re acquainted through events like this, but I don’t think I’ve spoken more than a dozen words to him. Why?”
“The way he looked at you when you first arrived . . .”
“You’d be amazed at the way some men look at me.”
“The way he looked at us when we danced together.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Okay.”
“Is it?”
“Sure.”
“What happens next?”
“Good question.”
I gave Lindsey a head start before leaving the restroom and making my way back to the atrium. I searched unsuccessfully for Nina, wondering if she had become so fed up with me for ignoring her that she left the ball. Couldn’t say I blamed her.
The orchestra was taking a break and there was no one on the dance floor. It was getting late for a weeknight. Wives were looking at husbands the way they do when they want to go home, and husbands, at least for the time being, were pretending not to notice. Yet the exodus would soon begin. The couples with younger children would depart first, followed shortly by those with older children, followed by the single and the childless. Most of the partygoers would be gone by the time the orchestra finished its final set.
I thought the set might be about to begin when Bobby DeNucci walked to the microphone at center stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” DeNucci announced. “We have a treat for you while the orchestra takes a few moments to catch its breath. Please welcome Nina Truhler.”
Oh my God.
Sparse applause followed Nina across the stage. She briefly hugged DeNucci and sat at the piano and immediately began to play. I moved to the edge of the sunken floor while a few partygoers ventured onto the dance floor itself. They were met there by a piece of classical music, one of the variations on Bach’s Goldberg Variations; I didn’t know which one. The would-be dancers glanced at each other as if to say, who is this woman? Wait for it, wait for it, I urged them silently.
After a full minute of playing the slow, melodic music, Nina’s left hand began to beat out a hard rhythm. The dancers looked up at her in anticipation. People who weren’t listening suddenly were. DeNucci and a few of the other musicians gathered next to the stage. I was sure I heard Abby Hunter exclaim, “Bring it, girl.” Nina brought it. After establishing the baseline with her left hand, her right abandoned Bach’s sweet sound for something much grittier—Jay McShann’s bluesy “My Chile.” When she squeezed as much out of the song as she wanted, Nina segued without pause into “Cow Cow Blues” by Meade Lux Lewis. Soon a few of the musicians joined her on stage—she had percussion, a bass keeping time for her, and Abby Hunter’s violin lending unexpected shadings to the melody she riffed. The floor began to fill, yet the people didn’t dance so much as they swayed and hopped to the sound Nina was laying down. At the edge of the sunken floor, I clapped my hands in delight.
