He was asking me to counterfeit a son.

To take the most sacred thing a person can offer another, presence, attention, the simple act of showing up, and to fake it for cash, so that a wealthy man would not have to feel the discomfort of his own neglect and his associates would not have to hear the truth.

I understood, sitting in that leather chair, that I was being invited to help a man hide from his mother’s loneliness, and to be paid for it, and that there was something rotten in the whole arrangement that no amount of money could quite wash off.

And then I thought about the four hundred and twelve dollars.