In the Age of Love and Chocolate

anything with you, I will press charges. Do you know what statutory rape is?”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I would, Natty. Don’t test me.” I felt absurd even as I was saying this.

Natty had started to cry. “Why have you become so horrible?”

“I don’t want to be,” I said. “I’m trying to protect you.”

“Protect me from what? Protect me from having friends? Protect me from having a life? I have no friends at school, do you know that? I’m, like, a freak. Pierce is seriously my only friend there, Annie.”

I looked at my sister and realized I had no idea what was going on with her. “Natty, listen. We have to get ready for tonight. We can talk about this later. I’m sorry I haven’t been here more. I really do want to know what’s happening in your life.”

Natty nodded. She went to her room, and I went to mine. I no longer had time to shower.

For the opening, the branding people had chosen for me a pure white dress, skintight, made from a stretchy silk-wool blend. The dress had a very low back with multiple straps running horizontally across it. The neckline was an extreme V that ended in the southernmost region of my cleavage. The dress left nothing to the imagination. I was told that the color of the dress was meant to convey innocence, but that the cut said the Dark Room was the most exciting place in New York. What the dress said to me was nudity.

I flat-ironed my hair, put on red lipstick and dark eyeliner, threw on black bondage-style heels that Scarlet had picked out, and went down the hall to Natty’s room.

Natty was lying in bed with her head under the covers. “Annie,” she said, “I don’t feel well.”

“You have to get ready. The car is going to be here in two minutes, and you’re supposed to be my date.”

She poked her head out. “Oh, you look pretty.”

“Thank you, but seriously, Natty, you have to hurry up. I can’t be late.”

Natty didn’t move.

“If you’re doing this because you’re mad at me, I think it’s incredibly childish.”

“I’m a child. Isn’t that what you said before?” I started to pull the blanket off her, and she pulled back even harder.

“Please, Natty. Come on.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“I want you there.”

“You didn’t want me there before. So, what? Am I supposed to show up now? Your obedient little sister? I had nothing to do with the club so I’d like to continue to have nothing to do with it.”

I did not have time for this. “Fine. Don’t come,” I said, and then I left.

* * *

At the club, the steps were already scattered with people. I could see photographers and journalists lining the red carpet, preparing for the VIP arrivals. The media blitz had worked. Now we’d have to see if actual people came. One of the journalists called me over. “Anya Balanchine! Have a minute for an interview with the New York Daily Interrogator?”

I was in a terrible mood after my discussion with Natty, and I did not like giving interviews in the first place. But I was a grownup and that meant doing things I didn’t want to do. I shook off my bad mood, smiled, and went over to the reporter.

“This is fantastic!” the reporter enthused. “The buzz is deafening! How does it feel to be the girl who is single-handedly giving chocolate back to New York City?”

“Well, it’s not chocolate per se. It’s cacao. Cacao is the—”

The reporter cut me off. “In two short years, you’ve gone from being the most infamous teenager in New York City to a club impresario with the most audacious idea this city has seen in a decade. How did it happen?”

“Back to your other question. I wouldn’t say single-handedly—I’ve had a lot of help in making this come together. Theo Marquez and Charles Delacroix, for instance, have both been instrumental.” Theo was inside, but I could see Mr. Delacroix down the steps from where I stood. He was talking to a different group of reporters. He was much more skilled than I.

Although the alliance had cost me my relationship with Win, Mr. Delacroix had absolutely been the right choice for my business partner. He knew everyone in the city and he knew how government worked. As I had hoped, people had believed him when he said our venture was legal.

“Interesting,” the reporter said. “Delacroix was once your greatest enemy and now he seems to have become your greatest ally.”

I took Mr. Delacroix’s advice and steered the conversation back to what I wanted to talk about. “Once you taste Theo Marquez’s cacao drinks, you might think he’s my greatest ally,” I said. I answered a few more questions, and then I thanked the reporter for her time.

When I went inside, I did a quick walk-through. The doctors were in their carrels. The chandeliers were lit. The big band was warming up. The ceiling fans kept the rooms cool and carried the soft, melancholy scent of chocolate—I mean, cacao—from room to room. For once in my life, all seemed right with the world.

I went into my office. I hadn’t slept in close to twenty-four hours, and I was contemplating a short nap when Mr. Delacroix came into the room.

He studied me for a second. “You look very sleepy. Awaken, Anya Balanchine. Our doors open in ten minutes and there is still much for us to do and to see.”

“Like what?”

He offered me his hand to help me out of my chair, and I followed him to a window with a view of the eastern exterior stairs of the club.

He parted a red velvet curtain. “Look,” he said.

Every space on the steps was filled with a body. The line to get inside extended down the sidewalk. I could not see where it ended.

“They haven’t even tasted it yet,” I whispered.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

He was smiling and that was a rare occurrence. When he smiled, I could see a bit of his son in him and I couldn’t help wishing that Win were here.

He went on. “You’re giving them something they wanted, something they missed. In this small way, you’re making people whole again. I wanted to do such things myself, once upon a time.” He paused. “It’s probably not my place to say, but I’m sure your parents would be proud of you.”

“How are you sure? Based on what evidence exactly do you conclude that my parents would have been proud?”

He laughed at me. “Oh, you can never have a nice moment, can you? You can never let anything go. It must be exhausting in that head of yours.”

“Please. I’d like to know. You don’t say anything without having considered your angle, so give me your rationale for my parents’ theoretical pride. Or was it only a load of politician crap? Were you offering up a few benedictory words, like a low-level government official at a ribbon-cutting ceremony?” I was cranky from lack of sleep and this might have come out more harshly than I had intended it.

“I think I should be insulted.” He furrowed his brow. “Okay, proof of dead parents’ pride. I can come up with that. Your mother was a cop, wasn’t she?”

I nodded.

“Is it a stretch to suggest that she would have been proud of you for figuring out how to turn your father’s business legal?”

“Maybe it would have irritated her that I was bending the law.”

He continued. “And your father. At the end of his life, he was trying to push Balanchine Chocolate into the modern era, was he not? The Russians killed him for it. You’re barely out of high school and you’ve already managed to do what your father could not. And without any bloodshed.”

“Any bloodshed so far.”

“You’re in a cheery mood. In any case, I think I’ve presented ample evidence that both your parents would