The second thing that happened was Simone Ekwueme, and it took her nine days.

I had told her, on the Wednesday, that my firm had lost two deals in eighteen months to a Boston shop called Halvorsen Bray under circumstances I had put down to bad luck, and that a third had come apart in a way I still did not understand.

She asked me for one thing: not our financials, not our deal files.

My calendar.