A Little Night Music Read Online Free PDF Page B

be all wrong for a formal French garden.”
                          “Already taken care of. A small slice of a chamber orchestra from nine to eleven.”
                          “Let me guess—Cedric?”
                          “Superhero, that man.”
                          Elli flipped to the budget spreadsheet for the event. Her nerves squirmed at the bottom figure in red. “Green Lantern with an asthmatic wheeze and a nose bleed more like”
                          “He was seven. And I heard you had a wicked-tight rainbow afro for Halloween that year. Don’t go there.”
                          Elli preened an invisible ‘fro that would make Erykah Badu weep, picked up the first message skewered on the holder—the florist—and dialed.
                          “Speaking of superhero…” Macy gravitated to the front window. Her work ethic was erratic at the best of times, Elli could have replaced her six times over, but no one had a bigger heart than Macy. Or the tolerance for near-squalor.
                          Mid-confirmation of delivery time for the seventeen lily centerpieces, Elli zeroed in on what had caught Macy’s eye. A guy in tight jeans and a black and yellow leather jacket unseated himself from a dazzling red sportsbike parked out front.
                          Elli wondered how long it would stay parked in this neighborhood.
                          Macy made a Weight-Watchers-versus-jelly-donut moan.
                          The florist said, “Hello? Are you there?” in Elli’s ear.
                          The biker removed his black helmet.
                          The cell phone slid from Elli’s grasp.
                          Jon .
                          Elli scrambled for the phone, its rubber case bouncing along the scratched wood floor. She stammered something close to “Sorry, I dropped the phone,” while trying to remember how her hands functioned.
                          Macy mumbled, “That’s not all you dropped, Sister. Swallow a fly with that mouth.”
                          “Gotta run. Thanks. I’ll bring the check on Thursday,” though Elli couldn’t say what millionaire Macy would need to prime to pay the balance. Elli ended the call. She felt naked, exposed. With the front room visible from the street, she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t here—anymore than she could pretend the man entering her foundation office hadn’t given her the first kiss in her life that had made her toes curl.
                          Bastard.
     
                          As Jon entered the Foundation office, Elli stood. In bare feet and a peasant dress. A far cry from Valentino. A far cry from the only upscale shorts-suit she owned.
                          Jon’s gaze dropped from her scarf-wrapped hair to her red toenails.
                          Elli curled her toes then straightened them.
                          The planets aligned. Meteors showered in a rare millennial display. Then Hell froze.
                          Jon smiled.
                          The rare and visually-stunning display caught Elli so off-guard, she found she was at an even rarer loss for words.
                          Bastard.
                          “Hi, Elli.”
                          Macy, ever-present in Elli’s moments of extreme awkwardness, charged forward, her hand extended. “You must be Jon.”
                          Jon shook her hand, blinking back a measure of