A price is not respect.

The whole of what I learned, standing in a wine-soaked gown in the most expensive ballroom in the city, was to tell the difference between the two — and never again to mistake a raised valuation for a change of heart.

So I do not answer the forty-seven calls, or the thirty-one, or the mixed messages of insult and apology.

Not out of cruelty, and not out of any lingering wish to punish.

Out of clarity.