The suit felt like a straitjacket.

I could not stay in that room another second — I had to see them up close, I had to know — and I turned my back on my furious wife and the wreckage of her expectations and started a slow, heavy march toward the backstage doors, walking straight into the reckoning I had earned.

We did not make it to any reckoning that afternoon.

By the time I reached the corridor they were already gone, and I will come to that.