Chapter 13: A Different Gala
Arden bought a table at a different charity gala the following spring—health research, not defense-and-energy reputation repair.
I attended because the cause was real and because avoiding every chandelier would have been its own kind of superstition. My name card was white stock, black ink, placed correctly. No one moved it. A young associate from another firm recognized me, hesitated, and then asked a substantive question about grid policy instead of about marble floors. I answered the policy question. The evening remained an evening, not a sequel.
May you like
Near dessert, a man I did not know leaned in and said he had been at the Halden Grand. He wanted me to know he had thought Cameron an embarrassment in the moment. I thanked him for the delayed solidarity and returned to my conversation. Solidarity that arrives a year late is still data about a room; it is not a gift I was required to cradle.
In the car home I checked the markets out of habit. VeyraTech was quiet. Cameron’s lifestyle fund, according to a quick search I should not have performed, was already the subject of a soft skeptical item in a trade newsletter. I closed the phone. The universe sometimes rhymes. I was not required to recite the poem aloud.
