Chapter 5 - Lipstick on a Champagne Coupe
The dressing suite was colder than the ballroom, and the door clicked shut behind me too loud. I stood there a second with my hand still on the knob, listening to the muffle of the band through the wall. My wrap was on the velvet bench where I'd left it, folded neat by one of the attendants. My clutch was beside it. Nothing had been touched, except the air smelled different. Sweet. Wine-sweet and perfume.
I slipped my wrap around my shoulders first because my arms were shaking and I didn't want to look at my phone while I was still shaking. The pleats of my dress caught on the bench when I sat down. I smoothed them flat over my knees, that emerald green gone dull under the single vanity bulb. In the mirror, my updo was still pinned. My earrings caught the light. I looked like someone who was supposed to go back out there.
That's when I saw the cart.
It had been rolled close to the screen in the corner, the one women stepped behind to fix a strap. Two champagne coupes sat on the silver tray. One was empty. The other was half-finished, and there was a perfect red crescent on the rim where someone's mouth had been. Not a smudge. A print. Blue-red, deep enough to stain.
I didn't touch it right away. I just stared at it, because my brain was doing that slow math it does when it doesn't want to get there too fast. We'd been assigned this suite at check-in. Daniel had the key code in his tux pocket. I'd left at eight-fifteen to walk the reception line with him. No one else should have been in here.
I pulled my clutch into my lap and took out my phone. The screen lit up too bright in that dim room.
Missed Call (1) — Daniel. 9:42 p.m.
No voicemail. No text after it. I checked twice, scrolling down like a second message might load if I gave it time. Nothing. At nine-forty-two he'd still been inside the ballroom. I'd said his name at maybe nine-forty. He'd looked back. Then he'd kept walking.
My thumb hovered over his name. The old habit was right there, press to call back, fix it, ask where are you, keep your voice light so he doesn't get defensive. I could hear what he would say. It's loud in here. I'll meet you out front. Give me ten minutes.
I didn't press it. I locked the screen instead and set the phone face-down on the bench, and my hand stayed on it, holding it down like it might call him on its own.
The attendant had left a card on the bench about the foundation's live photo gallery. For guests to download the evening. I'd glanced at it hours earlier and forgotten. Now I picked it up, typed the short link with fingers that kept hitting the wrong letters, and waited for the thumbnails to load.
Row after row of chandeliers and tables and smiling people. I scrolled past the speeches. Past the check presentation. Then I stopped.
Table 12. 8:57 p.m., stamped white in the corner.
Daniel, half-turned from the camera, laughing at something out of frame. And close to his shoulder, close enough that her hair touched his lapel, the woman in the red satin gown. Smiling straight into the lens. Her hand wasn't visible, but the way he was leaning toward her, you could tell they were sitting together. You could tell it wasn't the first photo of the night.
Eight fifty-seven. An hour before he walked out with his arm around her. Before I ever said his name across that floor.
I sat very still and looked from my phone to the coupe with the red mouth on it. Same shade. That blue-red that didn't come off on napkins. She'd been in here. They'd been in here, with the door coded shut, drinking champagne while I was out at our table answering where's Daniel with I think he stepped out.
I stood up and crossed to the cart. This time I picked up the clean coupe first, held it by the stem, set it down a few inches to the left so the two glasses weren't touching anymore. Evidence, I thought, and the word embarrassed me even as I thought it. But I left them separate anyway. I didn't wipe the rim. I didn't pour anything out.
Back on the bench, I unlocked my phone and screenshotted the gallery photo, the timestamp and all. Then I saved the original to my camera roll and emailed it to myself with the subject line 8:57. My hands were steadier now. The wrap kept sliding off one shoulder and I kept pulling it back up.
May you like
The phone stayed silent on the bench. No second call. No sorry. The band started another song beyond the wall, bass thumping faint through the marble and carpet.
I powered the screen off, dropped the phone in my clutch, and snapped it shut. I wasn't going to call him back into a story he'd already written. I was going to keep the glass the way I'd found it and the photo with its time burned in, and walk out of this suite knowing exactly what I had.
