“I hope you get a little rest while you’re away,” I said.

He smiled, relieved, I think, at how easy I was making it.

I have replayed that dinner many times, because it was the first performance and in some ways the hardest.

He sat across from me eating the meal I’d made, describing a Chicago that did not exist, a conference room and a client roster he was inventing in real time, and he did it so smoothly, with such small convincing details, that I understood for the first time the sheer scale of what I’d been living inside.

This was not a man who had told one lie and gotten trapped in it.

This was a craftsman.