I’d worked at the LaSalle Plaza since I was a college student at Roosevelt University. I started as a bellman and worked my way up. The previous events manager, a man named Bob French, hired me as his assistant, and he stuck with me even when my behavior outside the office got me into trouble. Six years ago, Bob left to run the events program at the Fairmont in San Francisco. He invited me to go with him, but I couldn’t imagine a life outside Chicago. Bob did me the favor of telling the hotel managers that they shouldn’t hire anyone but me to fill his shoes, which was a big leap of faith given my age at the time and my tendency to leave the hotel and head straight to the Berghoff for drinks rather than going home. Ever since, I’d tried to prove they made the right call, which often meant fourteen-hour days and long weekend nights. Karly told me more than once that my work was my life. She didn’t say it as a compliment.

My first stop wasn’t in my office but in the hotel ballroom. Karly and I were married here; it was the hot ticket for Chicago weddings. The two-story space was a kind of miniature Versailles, all done up in gold leaf, with chandelier sconces on the walls and cherubs flying above the rounded doorways and murals painted on the ceiling. I hovered in the back, watching the maintenance team set up chairs and a riser for an evening event. Normally, I could rattle off every ballroom event for weeks at a time, but the accident had erased certain details from my memory. I saw a large marketing poster on an easel near the door, and I walked across the stone floor to remind myself who had booked my ballroom for the night.

The poster showed a photograph of an attractive woman in her forties. She had long brown hair that glinted with blond highlights and was swept over her head like a cresting ocean wave. She was white, but the faint almond shape of her eyes suggested Asian blood somewhere in her past. Her eyes were golden brown, staring intently at the camera, with lips creased into a dreamy smile that offered only a hint of teeth. She wore a black long-sleeve knit top, and she leaned forward with her arm on a desk. Her fingers were bent as if in midcaress. The whole effect of the picture was intimate and erotic, as if she were beckoning you to come closer.

Above the photo was her name and the title of her talk:

DR. EVE BRIER

AUTHOR—PSYCHIATRIST—PHILOSOPHER

“MANY WORLDS, MANY MINDS”