Down on Luck

“Valet parking, seriously?” Maggie asked, as we came up to the blocked off parking lot.

Uniformed valets and tuxedoed security guards were moving back and forth in front of us.

“Names?” asked the woman in the pant suit who had come up to the window.

“Maggie Sanders plus one,” Maggie said, leaning over me.

“Oh, here you are,” the door matron said, after flipping through some pages on her clipboard.

She followed that up by saying, “we’ve got another one coming through,” speaking into her gamer style headset.

At her order we drove through, into the parking lot where we then got out, a valet jumping into the driver’s seat like a carjacker, barely taking time to take my keys and give me a token. Lord knew where he was going to park it.

A third hand VW bug, it was by far the worst motor there, as well as the best thing I could afford when I first arrived, bought off an old Hippie in The Valley.

“Shall we?” I asked, crooking my elbow in the chivalrous way.

“Let’s.”

“She’s done well for herself,” I said, trying to be charitable as we walked up the literal red carpet toward the tent.

“Her dad paid for it. He’s richer than God and dumber than a sack of hammers. I never really knew what my mom saw in him.”

I had to hand it to the designers: the inside of the tent was amazing, looking very much like a ball room, though one with a translucent room with a view of the night sky. There were no chandeliers, for obvious reasons, but there were several well-placed candelabras.

Everyone there was fancy, what we would have called a “toff” back home. No one was looking out of sorts or out of place. All looked completely at their ease in the elegant surroundings.

Even so, several of them had to do a double take when they saw us coming, the attention on the engaged company momentarily broken. Maggie was simultaneously beaming and blushing, the latter just making her look all the more radiant.

Raquel was less than happy, shooting us several dirty looks as we whirled around the dance floor. My dad may have been a useless lump of nothing, but my ma was a different story, making sure we knew all the necessities of life, including proficient ballroom dancing which she had learned out of a book when she was a teenager.

We did so well with our attention-grabbing gambit that there were several occasions during breaks that Raquel tried to entice me to dance with her. I was always nice, never directly insulting her, but still making it clear that I wasn’t interested. And I really wasn’t. The simple truth of the matter was that I only had eyes for Maggie.

Then things took a turn. Following her fifth attempt to cut in, Raquel stormed over and ranted at Kenny. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I knew it wasn’t good.

I didn’t think anymore of it, though – not until Kenny came over as soon as I had left Maggie’s side. I was sure that he thought I couldn’t hear him, but he didn’t know that I had very good hearing – a McSteele family trait that had been passed through the generations.

“You can’t bullshit me,” he hissed, “no way a guy like that is really interested in a waste like you. He must have no money or self-respect at all because you clearly had to pay for him to come with you and pretend to be your fiancée.”

“Hold me beer,” I said, passing my half-finished bottle of Guinness to the slender young socialite immediately to my right.

I swooped in like a superhero, taking Maggie into my arms like a knight of old and kissing her passionately. It was a bit of a risk, but I could tell by the way she responded that the feeling was mutual.

“Sorry, my dove, I just saw ye over here and couldn’t help meself,” I said, before kissing her again on the tip of the nose.

Kenny stormed off to yell somewhere, clearly too pissed off not to believe the veracity of our love. The thing was, it was actually beginning to feel real. I didn’t know that I was quite ready to propose for real, but I was falling deeply and madly in love with the shy, beautiful girl in the head-turning dress.

I wanted to go so much further with her than a kiss, passionate as it may have been. I could feel that Maggie was in agreement, not least by the way she had kissed me back and was currently trembling in my arms – not from cold or out of fear but in pure, loving desire.

This night wasn’t turning out exactly as I thought it would go. But Maggie was in my arms, and letting me kiss her lips, so that was all that mattered to me. In that sense, this night was turning out just as well, or even better, than I could have possibility hoped or dreamed.