Page 68 of Dropping the Ball

One of the donations is cool. Angeline Bourque agrees to offer up two seats on the front row of her show during Paris Fashion Week with a VIP experience at her atelier two days later. Thosetickets are a nearly impossible coup, but her creative director has been dressing Mom for major events for over ten years. Additionally, her ready-to-wear line is manufactured in Dhaka. She understands the need.

Other than that, Sara Elizabeth isn’t going to have much emcee work to do that night.

I normally visit Harper most days when I leave work, but now I avoid it. Madison always wants to ask about the gala, and I can’t stop by with nothing new to report.

By Friday, I’m desperate. Five weeks to go, and even if our guests are at their most generous, the current auction offerings will bring in a quarter million at best. I google even more articles on how to procure high-value donations, and I get the sense that only one writer researched it and the rest of them are written by AI regurgitating the same information.

I know all this stuff. I know all of it, and I’ve been trying, and it isn’t working. But I spend the morning doing all the brainstorming the article suggests, listing out even more unusual experiences or pieces that guests might open their wallets for, as well as who might be willing to donate them.

After a lunch of a limp spinach salad at my desk, I start emailing and calling.

By midafternoon, I get somewhere.

I’m so surprised, I blink at the phone for a couple of seconds until the voice on the other end says, “Hello? You still there?”

Last month, one of Mom’s friends on the symphony board, Deborah Fisk, was raving about an installation of glass bluebonnets a local artist had done on the grounds of the Blanton Museum of Art. Even I had heard of the glass artist, who shot to fame a few years ago after winning a reality show about glassblowers, then got tapped to do a chandelier in the home of the woman who owns the San Antonio Stingers.

There are eleven known billionaires living in Austin, and Deborah Fisk is one of them, so I called her, and now I’m speechless that she’s agreed to donate a commissioned piece by the artist.

“Hello?” Deborah repeats.

“Hey, yes, sorry, Miss Deborah. That’s so generous of you.” I can’t believe this worked.

“Don’t say thank you yet. Gabriela is hard to book. I can put in a word for you, and I’ll donate a commission worth fifty thousand, but she can pick and choose her projects now. You’ll still have to talk her into saying yes.”

I thank her a dozen more times, and thirty seconds after we hang up, I’m on the phone with the glass artist, who agrees to a meeting the following Tuesday. I take what feels like my first deep breath in days. Of the four major auction items I’ve procured, three have come through face-to-face meetings. This is good.

So good that I stop by to see Harper on my way home because I can actually tell Madison we’ve got a nearly done deal. That’s one more day before I have to worry her with otherwise catastrophic auction shortages.

Saturday morning, I even spend the day studying when I get home from the gym. I only have to refrain from making up an excuse to text Micah five times. I wish it was him every time a text comes in, but it’ll take practice to smother that reflex. If I can avoid seeing him as much as possible until this whole thing is over, then maybe I have a shot.

Gabriela Juarez ruins thatshot.

I leave her glass studio in the Arts District after our meeting on Tuesday without a commitment. I didn’t think it would be aslam dunk, but I also didn’t think it would be the reason I’d have to call Micah.

I start my car, hands curled around the wheel, bracing myself to make that call. We’ve only emailed in the last ten days. His emails are professional but friendly, and I try hard to respond that way. It only takes me about an hour of overthinking to send a reply that amounts to “Looks amazing over there. Keep up the good work!” And yes, every reply sounds that forced.

Today, I have no choice but to call him, because I’ve made a deal with Gabriela Juarez, but I can’t deliver on it without Micah’s cooperation.

This is going to require a large dose of calming tea before I do this. I hit the Starbucks drive-thru for a chamomile mint blossom tea and sip enough of it to soothe my nerves before I swallow hard and order my phone to call Micah.

“Kaitlyn? Hey.” The only thing I hear in his voice is surprise.

“Hey, Micah. Would you happen to be at the warehouse today?”

“I’m at the office,” he says. “But Eva has a couple of her guys in there if you need something.”

Sometimes I forget that everyone else has a life outside of this project except for me.

“This is something I’ll need to run past you. For the gala,” I add, so it’s clear this is business.

A beat of silence follows. “I’d like to say I’m intrigued, but if you’re running it past me, it means you need me to incorporate a design change.”

“I wouldn’t go as far as design change,” I hedge.

“Not reassuring.” He’s kept his tone courteous without being overly familiar. I hate it.

“I’m not going torequireyou to do anything,” I say. “But I want to run a request past you and see if it’s possible.”

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