And I said yes.

And Marisol Quintanilla said: “My mother had hydrangeas.”

And that was the whole conversation, and she went and got a drink, and I stood there for a minute.

The company is fine now.

That is the flat truth and it belongs here more than anywhere.

It did about ninety-four million dollars last year, it has two hundred and thirty-one people, it has a real audit committee and a whistle-blower line and a payment policy with a twenty-five thousand dollar threshold and no single-signature category above it at all.

None of which existed before, because none of it is required by law for a private company of that size, and because for seventeen years two men who trusted each other completely ran an eighty-million-dollar business on the basis that they trusted each other completely.