Searching for Grace Kelly by Michael Callahan

was. “I really have to go. I’m sorry.”
    He walked out alongside her. “I’ll escort you out. This way you won’t be able to avoid my invitation.”
    She turned to look at him as they moved out onto the mezzanine. “Are you always this persistent?”
    â€œOnly when I want something badly. And you owe me, you know.”
    â€œI owe you?”
    â€œYou called me out for being named for a cardboard box.”
    Laura laughed, bemused while also quickly becoming unhinged. She looked over the railing and saw the
Mademoiselle
group below, gathering near the main exit. Cat Eyes was milling about. It looked like she was counting heads. Laura hustled toward the staircase, Box still beside her. She went down the first few steps and then turned back to him, started to say something.
    He cut her off. “Thursday,” he said. “Just say yes. One little word. Yes.”
    She let out a big exhale, smiled. “I can’t. I would love to, but I already have plans that I simply can’t break.”
    â€œOkay. Saturday, then.”
    Her mind was whirling. Was he just going to keep throwing out dates until she relented? “I don’t know . . .”
    â€œOf course you do. Saturday. Don’t worry. You’ve played hard to get enough. You’ve turned down the first offer. But you really must take the second. It would be uncivilized not to.”
    â€œI . . .” She shrugged. “Okay. Saturday.”
    â€œPerfect. Saturday was my first choice anyway. I’ll pick you up at nine.”
    â€œNine? Where are we going at nine?” she said.
    â€œTo dinner at El Morocco.”
    El Morocco. The most fashionable nightclub in Manhattan, tucked away on East Fifty-Fourth Street. “I don’t have anything to wear to the El Morocco,” she said feebly.
    â€œYou’re in luck,” he said, backing away on the landing, his face exploding into a cocky grin. He spread his arms wide. “I know the guy who owns this place.”

SEVEN
    Dolly nodded as Oscar the doorman opened the door to the Barbizon and wondered, as she did almost every time she saw him, how he kept cool wearing that ornate formal uniform in the middle of summer. She thought maybe that was part of the interview process: They forced you to put on this ridiculous outfit that made you look like you were a Napoleonic general, then asked you to stand in a ninety-five-degree room to see if you didn’t sweat. She loved Oscar—all the girls did—because he was always jovial and kind, because he knew the art of a well-placed compliment when you needed it most, and because he was almost leonine in his protection of the young women whose residence he stood sentry for. He was constantly being offered bribes—for introductions or to assist slipping some cad upstairs when the desk matrons were occupied. But he never relented. Girls besieged by overly amorous suitors knew they could count on Oscar’s protection.
    If only I were one of them
.
    The late-day lobby was quiet, just a few girls taking refuge from the stuffy city streets. The lobby itself was a huge rectangle framed by a vast Oriental rug, on which was placed an imposing pocked leather couch and various tasteful upholstered side chairs, with a long mahogany coffee table in the middle. The lobby’s focal point was the curving staircase that led to the mezzanine, which for some reason always made Dolly think of the one that Clark Gable carried Vivien Leigh up in
Gone with the Wind
, though the Barbizon’s was neither as wide nor as grand. But Dolly often mused that perhaps that was what the Barbizon did best—provide a tableau where girls got to indulge their romantic fantasies, to play Scarlett O’Hara, looking down amused at all of the boys of the county who had come courting.
    She spied Laura, in a pale pink linen suit, sitting in the far side of the room, lazily flipping through a copy