I have thought a great deal, in the years since, about the lesson of that ballroom, and I have come to believe it is a lesson worth more than any deal I have ever closed.

Some people, I learned, only begin to respect you when they discover how much wealth you possess, or whom you married, or how much power you can quietly wield.

And when that respect finally arrives — warm, sudden, effusive, thirty-two years too late — it feels, for one disorienting moment, like vindication.

It feels like being seen at last.

That is the trap.

Because respect that arrives only with your net worth is not respect for you at all.