The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,89

for the default excuse.

“My car was late.”

From the exasperated look on his face, it wasn’t the first time he’d heard that one tonight.

“Rich-people problems,” he sniffed, and pressed the talk button on his headset mic. “I’ve got her.”

Lucy felt like one of those animals that occasionally escaped from the zoo and wreaked havoc. Rounded up.

Captured.

“What, no tranquilizer gun?”

“Dinner is almost over,” he said dismissively, taking her forcefully by the forearm. “You’re first up for the auction.”

As she was led around like an amateur dancer on a ballroom TV show toward the curtained back of the stage, Lucy noticed a line of heads dangling upside down under the lights above the hors d’oeuvre stations inside the dining area. They were all molded in the likeness of the city’s most rich and famous. As the heat lamps above were switched on, the heads, made of actual cheese, started to melt slowly, drizzling onto the crackers of the patrons positioned expectantly below. The heated heads gave the appearance of a fire at Madame Tussauds.

Lucy noticed one of the heads was in her likeness.

She had been beheaded.

And set on fire.

Her features slowly disappearing under the lamps and dripping down in long strings into the hungry mouths.

She couldn’t have been more honored.

Lucy came to an abrupt stop and the minder released her at the foot of a small staircase. “When they say your name, step up and out onto the stage.”

“Then what do I need to do?”

“Just stand there,” he said, resuming a crackly conversation on his radio with a colleague at some unknown location in the museum. “You’re good at that.”

A pack of obviously supercompetitive, well-married thirtysomethings, all members of the donor class, sneaked peeks at her over the rims of their half-empty champagne flutes, whispering. The knives were clearly out. Lucy became increasingly uncomfortable as she waited to be introduced. She felt their eyes on her, glaring savagely, picking her apart, appraising her outfit and calculating her worth. Covetous of her youth, her look, her ambition, her success. Lucy tried to hold her chin up high, but her head still hurt. She could count the beats of her heart by the throbbing in her scalp.

“ . . . Brooklyn’s own Lucky Lucy Ambrossssse.”

She’d become so fixated on the pain, which instantly brought back thoughts of Sebastian, that she barely heard her name mentioned by the MC and the polite applause and catcalls that followed.

The minder came up behind her and gave her a shove. “Go!”

Lucy burst through the curtain and practically galloped to the lip of the stage, hands on hips, ready to void the warranty. It was a confrontational pose, seductive, but if she knew anything, she knew how to sell herself. And on this night, she had literally offered herself up to the highest bidder. The crowd ate it up.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen, how much for a private dinner date at the River Café with this lovely young lady?”

Bids came in fast and furiously, one higher than the next, table by table, along with whoops and hollers, all decorum tossed to the wind. Well-to-do men, mainly, put down their utensils, wiped away the runny au jus from their chins, loosened their ties and shirt collars at the sight of her, and reached for their checkbooks. Husbands and boyfriends were watched closely by disapproving wives and green-eyed girlfriends. It was a primal scene as even the smell in the room changed subtly from a floral-laced scent thrown off by the table centerpieces to the raw musk of a hot, sweaty gym.

“The food pantries need filling, folks. We can’t do it without you!”

She wondered what it must look like from the outside. All these people making offers for her time, her attention. It was all so transactional. Did they even know what charity they were supporting? She barely did, but like the bidders, she wanted to win, she wanted to be the most valuable, the most prized of the night. And besides, it wasn’t up to her who paid the price.

“Make it rain, gentlemen!” she shouted brazenly. “Give until it hurts.”

Lucy was caught up and she worked it. The higher the bid, the farther she retreated from the front of the stage, teasing them, coaxing them along with the MC to go bigger. It was demeaning and oddly empowering all at the same time. To have such control, such influence. To command such attention.

“Let’s not have any short arms, deep-pockets people,” the MC barked. “It’s all for a good cause!”

With that challenge,