I met him at a non-profit fundraising event. I guess that shouldn't have been too surprising, because I did consulting work for non-profits and he was someone with deep pockets. Ordinarily, though, I didn't go to these things. Not that I had any problem with separating wealthy people from their cash for a good cause, and I could be choosy enough to only work for organizations with good causes. I just didn't like being the one begging for the money. Mind you, I do a lot of things well. Begging for money is not one of them. Give me the money and I'll tell you how you can and can't spend it, and how to make it go as far as possible. But this particular group was one of my best clients, and they were desperate to get a banker on their board. They'd invited a bunch and wanted my opinion. They wanted something a little more insightful than my immediate answer, which was 'pick whoever donates the most.'
So there I was, wandering about the fringes of the room with a glass of cheap champagne, looking at displays of auction items. The items all basically fell into two groups. Those I had no interest in whatsoever, and those I couldn't begin to afford. Actually, I couldn't afford most of the 'no interest' items either, and I was entertaining the idea of sneaking off during the auction, until I looked at the program in my hand and realized that the auctioneering was taking place in between the salad and entre and again between the entre and desert. Since desert was usually the only edible part of these banquets, I had prepared to settle in for the duration.
At some point in my wandering, I became aware of a well-dressed – and by well-dressed I mean not just expensive suiting but well-tailored on an equally well-crafted body – gentleman who seemed to be looking my way several times. I had to smile at my flight of fancy. I had a mirror back home, but I didn't need it to know that I was no Angelina or Beyonce. I was as plain as Janes came; even my name was Jane. I had dug out my one and only little black dress for the night, and managed to pull on a pair of thigh-highs without putting a fingernail through them. I was wobbling on two inch heels and staring unabashedly at the women gracefully cat-walking in four- and five-inchers. Beyond that, I was wearing my mother's beloved ruby ring, and a necklace I'd made of ruby glass. My hair was down, long and wavy, but not in any intentional way, and my makeup was the very definition of minimal, because anything beyond minimal made my ghostly pale face look like a painted doll.
When someone began playing around with the mike, I figured it was time to find my table full of bankers and investment advisors. They'd given me a cheat sheet of who was supposed to be there and I done some brief bio work. I'd already ruled out the investment guy. I knew of him and he'd screwed up enough deals that I wouldn't trust him with my piggy bank. Of the bankers, one was a junior officer, so probably didn't pull much weight, but might be bright enough with advice and guidance to be considered. The other three had been around a while, sat on other boards because it was what bankers were supposed to do, so if I was going to consider any of them, it would probably be more for how flexible their lending, line of credit, etc., policies were than what they had to offer as a board member. As was not unusual, all of the targets were male, most were bringing wives. I groaned inwardly. Twenty-first century or not, I was going to once again have to scale that I'm-not-just-the-little-woman mountain. That meant involving the wives in conversation about what they did for a living, moving that over to what I did for a living, and finally getting the men to acknowledge that I had some commonality with them and their careers.
After some searching, I found the table and sank into a free chair. There were nods all around and hurried introductions as whoever was playing with the mike started to get more serious. One of the older bankers and his wife hadn't shown up, leaving two empty chairs. I explained my connection to the non-profit. I liked to get that out of the way, since I wasn't wearing a name badge. Save them the embarrassment of making an unfavorable off-hand comment. The Executive Director finally took the stage, made a few introductions, then introduced a brief video about the organization. During the video, my well-dressed gentleman joined us at the table. I looked up in surprise. He definitely wasn't the sixty-year-old banker I had bioed in advance. He nodded politely at me and some of the others who had looked over, then turned his attention to the video. I studied the back of his head. It was more interesting than the video, which the overly enthusiastic development department had already made me watch. Several times. Even after I warned them about using music they didn't have the rights to in the video.
Anyway, his hair was dark, tinged with a steely grey, like the color of his suit. His shirt was white, no flashy colors for him. His tie, I'd noted earlier, was an unpatterned silvery grey. Other than the classy tailoring, his clothing was unremarkable, not unlike mine. He wasn't looking to stand out in the crowd. When he reached for his wine glass, I realized he had French cuffs; the cufflinks were some kind of marbled grey stone set in silver. I also noted he was actually watching the video, unlike the others at the table who were surreptitiously looking around at the crowd to see who they might recognize. All very curious.
As the video wound down, the ED was back on stage with the standard hanky story for the organization. It was actually a conglomeration of stories about the children and youth the non-profit supported. No one child's story was ever told in whole because there were always ugly details somewhere in the story. Sometimes those ugly details became part of press reporting, or court testimony. One prime goal of the organization was to help the children and youth move beyond the ugly, create new stories for themselves, so they went out of their way to make sure a fundraising story couldn't be tied back to headlines in the news a few years back. No way were they going to destroy some kid's life all over again, just to raise a few bucks. That's why I liked them. And why I was suffering through yet another banquet to help them.
Salads were not so quietly appearing on the tables as the crowd was encouraged to enjoy the evening. I picked at my greens as the newcomer introduced himself as Gary something or other. It turned out he was a developer. He lived on Bainbridge Island but worked around the greater Seattle metro area. He'd been able to make the banquet at the last minute and was given the seat freed up by the missing banker. Introductions were made around the table again. I was trying to come up with a conversation starter for the wives' club, when he turned to me and asked what I did.
I was thrown off my game. I think I may have even stammered as I explained that I was a consultant for the non-profit. He immediately asked in what fields, and I got my feet back under me and launched into my song and dance, explaining that finance and administration were my strong suites. I helped non-profits streamline their admin not only to have more funds to devote to direct service, but also to better appeal to donors. The others at the table were drawn into the conversation and I marveled that the evening was turning into one of my more successful nights for promoting the mission of a non-profit. Keeping people's attention from wandering at one of these events was always a challenge. He not only dominated the conversation around the table, even moving it away from his own interests and back to the non-profit's, but he hinted at a personal interest in the mission, dropping just enough clues that I could tell the others were hooked like fish, hoping for more hints. And he kept throwing open doors for me to walk through with my memorized list of needs and wants and sponsorships that could be fulfilled for just pennies a day.
When the first auction started, he playfully dared others at the table to bid, then playfully bid against them. By the time the second auction rolled around, he was seriously bidding on the use of someone's vacation home on Big Sur, and jousting good-naturedly with one of the bankers seeking to bid him up the way he had been doing earlier. I couldn't imagine why someone who lived on an island surrounded by ocean would need to spend a week at a vacation home on the ocean, but who was I to argue?
As desert was being served, the ED was once more in ask-mode, pointing out the envelopes left on the tables and asking everyone to donate what they could before the rest of the evening was turned over to a live band and dancing.
I always made a point of filling in credit card information, a sign to others that I trusted the organization with the information. The intriguing developer, though, pulled out an elegant black leather checkbook and wrote out a check which seemed to have several zeros involved in the number. I smiled to myself as I finished my desert. All in all, a good night. I had a head full of notes about the bankers at the table, had managed to successfully duck the investment advisor's undue interest in my bank account, and I'd been able to turn in a good table take. Add to that a few auction purchases, and I figured I'd earned my keep. Save it would probably only make them more insistent on my attendance the next time a banquet came up.
The crowd was beginning to mill, some heading for home and some for the dance floor. I stood and tried to spot the Executive Director so I could make a graceful exit when Gary appeared suddenly in front of me. "Dance with me," he said, his voice soft as if he didn't want anyone else to hear.
