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Gil. Andrew Redgrave, the invitation read, requested their presence at his Hillsborough home on Saturday evening to join him in a soirée celebrating the recent acquisition of an 1872 Renoir painting and a 1684 Stradivarius cello. Evening entertainment would include catering by La Folie and a brief recital featuring international cellist phenomenon Matthew Nakamura.
    Gil was sitting in a chair across from Alice, studying his own invitation.
    “This is big,” he said in a reverent tone. “This is really big.”
    “A serious lead, just like you promised. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”
    He wagged a finger at her. “That’ll teach you to mistrust my skills.”
    They studied their invitations for another long moment. “This will open the door there in a major way,” Gil said. “Do you know how much we could ask from the Redgrave Foundation?”
    She hardly dared say it out loud. “Fifty thousand? A hundred?”
    “Double that. Hell, I’m going to say 250K.”
    More than the amount they’d lost from the Prescott Foundation.
    It would save them.
    “And I’ll tell you what, Alice,” Gil continued. “We’ll get it. Go ahead and start up on that proposal right now, for $250,000. I’m going to work him. I’m going to carefully, meticulously reel Mr. Andy Redgrave in, and he’ll never know what snared him.”
    Grinning, he stretched himself out luxuriously in his chair, looking beautiful and carefree and carnal, like a centerfold model, a mental image she’d never been able to fully erase since his admission that he’d once posed nude for a porn magazine. The easiest 10K he’d ever made, he’d boasted, although he declined to elaborate, saying it had been a long time ago, another Gil. She sensed he harbored a rather colorful past. But she agreed with him that the past held little bearing on the present. Look at her life, after all. Devoting every waking moment to a craft she revered beyond all else, for two decades, until a chance slip destroyed that career in one night.
    He sat up suddenly. “Hey,” he began, but hesitated.
    “Yes?”
    “Change of subject. Remember that dancer we bumped into, as we were getting onto the elevator, the afternoon we met Andy?”
    I knew it! a voice inside her screamed. I knew she’d be trouble.
    “Yes.” She kept her voice calm. “What about her?”
    “Well, I ran into her yesterday. On the Marina Green.”
    She waited for more, but he only ducked his head and chuckled to himself.
    “You ran into her,” she said. “Goodness. That sounds painful. Did you apologize?”
    “Oh, stop it. You know what I mean.”
    “Fine, boss. You met the new dancer. And this clearly was followed by something auspicious, otherwise you wouldn’t be here now, stumbling over words.”
    “All right. So I met her, we spent some time talking, she’s just the sweetest, cutest thing you could imagine. And now, well, I need your help.”
    “Help, how?” She had an uneasy feeling that whatever it was, she didn’t want to participate.
    He looked down at his invitation as if it were a cue card that might provide the words eluding him. “Well, I’d like you to go down there. Check her out in company class.”
    “Why?” she protested.
    “I want to know what she’s like. How she dances, and such.”
    “Why me?!”
    “Because there’s no one here in this office who fits in as seamlessly downstairs as you do.”
    “Gil, that was eight years ago. I don’t do that anymore. I haven’t been down there in so long, it would make me uncomfortable.” She’d maintained contact only with Ben, now Anders’ assistant, partly because injuries had forced him, too, to switch from performing to administration. He understood how it was. They saw each other and chatted at WCBT functions. That was as far as connection to the “down there” world went. She aimed to keep it that way.
    “C’mon, Alice, be a sport.”
    “The answer is, forget it.”
    “Seriously.”
    “No . ”
    “You know,