Have you forgotten that too?”

I stared at the white paper lying between Frank’s hands, my right thumb rubbing hard against my knuckle.

“This meeting is adjourned,” I said, shutting my planner.

Frank didn’t get up from his chair.

“We have to settle this proxy question before the board vote on December fifteenth, Raymond.”

At one fifteen I walked down the second-floor hallway and stopped right at Valerie Hayes’s desk in the accounting department.

Three junior clerks sat in the cubicles around her, their typing slowing to a halt as I pulled open the top drawer of her file cabinet.