Tessa had informed her that she was either a complete menace or an artist.
Maggie had replied that the distinction was becoming increasingly difficult to make.
They had been friends ever since.
Maggie worked as an architectural illustrator and restoration designer for a small Manhattan firm called Bell & Whitcomb.
At least, that was her official occupation.
In reality, she spent most days producing elegant drawings for projects designed by men who earned four times her salary and occasionally congratulated themselves for allowing her to contribute.
She had studied architecture at Pratt Institute, worked for two years preparing historic building surveys, and possessed a talent for understanding how old spaces could be made useful without losing their character.
Her drawings were beautiful.
Her practical calculations were meticulous.
But she was still regularly introduced to clients as the young lady who handled the sketches.
Three months earlier, she had been passed over for a senior design position.
Her employer, Arthur Whitcomb, had explained that the promotion required someone who could command the confidence of important investors.
Maggie had asked whether that meant someone with a deeper voice.
He had not found the question amusing.
That same week, she had discovered that Sterling Properties had acquired the Starlight Theatre.
The announcement appeared in a small real estate column of the New York Times.
MIDTOWN REDEVELOPMENT PLAN UNDER CONSIDERATION.
Maggie had read the article three times while standing in the kitchen, still wearing her pajamas.
Then she had telephoned the theater.
Rose Daley answered.
“Maggie, sweetheart, don't believe everything you read.”
“Rose, is the theater being sold?”
A pause.
Then a sigh.
“It's already been sold.”
Maggie had closed her eyes.
The Starlight Theatre stood on West Forty-Seventh Street, tucked between a faded hotel and a narrow commercial building with a bright red awning.
It had opened in 1929, when movie palaces were built like fantasies.
Its facade was decorated with pale pink terra-cotta roses. Inside, a sweeping staircase curved beneath a painted ceiling of midnight-blue stars, and an enormous crystal chandelier hung above the auditorium.
There were red velvet seats, gilded balconies, and a stage framed by carved plaster swans.
Once, the Starlight had hosted orchestras, premieres, dancing, and glamorous evenings attended by women in satin gowns and men wearing white dinner jackets.
By 1988, its glory had faded.
The marquee flickered.
Several seats were broken.
The carpet was worn thin, and water stains had begun spreading across the ceiling.
But every Friday night, it still screened old movies to an audience that included students, retired performers, neighborhood families, and anyone willing to spend four dollars to sit in a room where the world seemed temporarily more beautiful.
Maggie's father had worked there as a projectionist for thirty-two years.
Her mother had met him in the lobby in 1955, after dropping a glove on the staircase.
He had returned it.
She had thanked him.
And according to family legend, he had told her that losing a glove was a rather expensive way to meet a man.
They married eight months later.
Maggie grew up in the theater.
She learned to read beneath the glowing EXIT signs, ate sandwiches in the projection booth, and spent rainy afternoons watching her father thread film through ancient machines.
When she was twelve, he showed her the old architectural drawings stored in the manager's office.
She had been enchanted.
The lines on those yellowing sheets were not merely measurements.
They were instructions for creating wonder.
Her father had watched her trace the curves of the balcony with one finger.
“See that, Maggie?”
“What?”
“The man who drew this never met the people who would sit here. But he gave them something beautiful anyway.”
She never forgot it.
Her father retired the previous year after his hearing began to fail. He now lived in Queens, tended a small vegetable garden, and complained about modern cinema with the bitterness of a man who believed films had been infinitely better before everybody began blowing things up.
Maggie visited him every Sunday.
When she told him the Starlight might be demolished, he simply sat at the kitchen table for a long time.
Then he said, “Buildings don't last forever, sweetheart.”
“I know.”
“Sometimes they ought to.”
That was when Maggie decided she would do everything she could to save it.
She prepared an independent restoration proposal.
She spent weekends measuring the building, photographing damaged plasterwork, consulting engineers, and interviewing local shop owners.
Rose Daley provided access.
Tessa helped prepare presentation boards.
A neighborhood committee gathered signatures.
Maggie worked until midnight for weeks, surviving on coffee, Chinese takeout, and the stubborn certainty that the Starlight deserved a future.
Then, almost by accident, she received an invitation to a Sterling Foundation benefit.
The foundation was considering proposals for community-oriented redevelopment projects.
A friend who worked for the city's arts office had managed to put Maggie's name on the list of prospective presenters.
It was not a guaranteed meeting.
She would have only a few minutes to place her proposal before the executives.
But a few minutes were better than nothing.
Which was how she ended up wearing Tessa's beautiful cherry-red silk evening gown, fighting a zipper in a mirrored elevator, and describing Nicholas Sterling as a very expensive parking meter.
The Sterling reception was exactly the kind of evening Maggie ordinarily avoided.