And then, Scarlett realized that something had just happened. That she had been moved like a pawn in a chess game. She didn’t know the overall strategy or what her fate was to be—but she felt it as clearly as if an enormous pair of fingers had picked her up by the head and moved her a square or two.

“Why am I going to this show?” she asked.

“It’s a free ticket!”

“You said it’s horrible.”

“Yes, but it’s barely two hours.”

“Why?” Scarlett asked again.

“What’s the first rule of this agency?” Mrs. Amberson asked. “Our first rule is…and make a note of this, O’Hara…you must always do a little spying.”

“It is?”

“Yes. And that’s exactly what I did. Before we met Chelsea, I took one of the dancers from The Flower Girl out for cocktails on the roof of the Met and got the whole story on the family. The wild card here is Max Biggs. Max is sixteen and generally considered to be the family liability. Quite bright by all accounts—he did get into your school, after all. But there have been issues along the way. He is less motivated than his sister, but his mother is convinced he’s a latent genius.”

“So you want me to go to a bad show with him,” Scarlett said. “For what? How does that help?”

“I want you to get a good look at him. You’ll be going to school with him, after all. Just go to the show. Talk to him a little. We need to seem to be everywhere—you at the school, the show. Signing with us will just feel inevitable after a while. It’s just a show, O’Hara. You see shows all the time. Is that asking so much?”

It was, but Scarlett shook her head no. She was trained to obey. It was sad.

The cab approached Mrs. Amberson’s new apartment, which was on Fifth Avenue, on the east side of Central Park. It wasn’t too far from the Hopewell, actually, a five- or ten-minute walk at most. But those few blocks seemed to span several worlds. This was a lush neighborhood of embassies and museums. The park was the front lawn, fifty city blocks of emerald green grass, ponds, and paths. Even by the standards of the neighborhood, this was a nice building, twenty chalk-white stories of parkside elegance, with a long green awning that extended almost to the curb to protect its residents from rain and snow and sun.

“Do me a favor, O’Hara,” Mrs. Amberson said, shaking the nearly empty box of tea tree sticks. “Run down to the health food store and get me more of these? Also, some more umeboshi plums. I’m out.”