Chapter 5: The Seat
A month after the Halden Grand, I attended a different dinner in a quieter room for a different portfolio company.
My name card sat undisturbed. White, this time. Not silver. I took my seat without incident. No one filmed my arrival. The wine was adequate. The conversation was about margins.
Near the end of the main course my phone showed a headline: VeyraTech closes reduced Arden facility; CEO cites “renewed discipline.” The photo was Margaret at a podium. Cameron was not in the frame.
I set the phone screen-down and returned to the margins.
He had wanted a chair for his girlfriend.
He had stepped on a name that represented a committee, a fund, and a memory of every room in which I had been told to find another seat.
I had not shouted.
May you like
I had priced the evening correctly—
and $1.3 billion had moved
not because a woman was angry,
but because capital
has a long memory
for the sound
of a shoe
on silver.
