Laughter. Real laughter this time—the kind that comes from relief. Relief that someone else is the target.
Tessa's hands curled into fists at her sides. She said nothing.
Holloway wasn't finished. He set down his scotch and stepped closer to the piano, running his fingers along its lid with exaggerated reverence.
"You know what? I had a performer lined up tonight. Apparently, she's stuck in traffic or something very inconvenient." He spun back to Tessa. "So, how about you fill in?"
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
"Sit down." He pulled out the bench and patted it. "Play us something. Anything. 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,' 'Mary Had a Little Lamb,' whatever they taught you in... Where did you grow up? The Bronx? Harlem?"
"Harlem," Tessa said quietly.
"Harlem, of course." Holloway grinned. "Tell you what, I'll make it interesting."
He reached into his jacket and pulled out his wallet. Slowly, deliberately, he counted out hundred-dollar bills: one, two, three... all the way to a hundred.
$10,000.
He fanned them out on top of the piano like a deck of cards.
"$10,000 says you can't play a single real piece on this instrument. Not a pop song, not a hymn. A real piece. Classical. The kind this piano was built for." He leaned into the microphone. "And if you can't—which we all know you can't—you walk out of here tonight, no pay, no tips, and you never set foot in this building again."
The room went quiet. Not the polite quiet of a speech—the sharp, breathless quiet of a crowd watching someone get cornered.
At table nine, a woman in a beaded gown whispered to her husband, "This is awful." She didn't stand up. She didn't say it louder. She just whispered it and took another sip of wine.
At table three, Darnell Walker stood frozen with a tray of champagne flutes, his knuckles white around the handles.
Bradley Nash, Tessa's manager, was by the service entrance. He stared at his shoes.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Nobody told Grant Holloway to stop.
Holloway spread his arms wide, basking. "What do you say, Tessa from Harlem? You want to earn $10,000 the hard way?" He tilted his head, mock sympathy dripping from every syllable. "Or is this too much for you? Because I completely understand. Not everyone was built for this stage."
Tessa stood at the foot of the platform. The spotlight above her was blinding. She could feel the weight of 400 stares pressing against her skin like hands.
She could turn around, walk to the kitchen, clock out, take the bus home, sit in the dark with her dead keyboard, and pretend tonight never happened. She could do what she'd been doing for six years: she could disappear.
The silence stretched.
Holloway's smile widened. He was already tasting the punchline: the waitress who couldn't play, the humiliation that would become his favorite dinner party story for years.