He had spent more time in that building than in either of his homes. He knew which elevator hesitated on the twenty-seventh floor, which executive pantry stocked the coffee Margaret preferred, and where the afternoon sunlight struck the boardroom table in winter. The sight had always reassured him because the tower seemed to make his importance visible. That night it appeared to belong to the city rather than to him, and he found the distinction intolerable.
At home on the Upper East Side, Eleanor removed her earrings in front of the bedroom mirror while Charles poured himself a glass of expensive whisky. He began explaining that Isaiah had concealed his identity as an act of deliberate provocation and that no serious businessman would expect courtesy without an introduction. Eleanor listened for several minutes, then turned from the mirror. "Did he stop you from asking his name?" she asked.
"He told me his first name," Charles replied. "He was evasive."
"Did he ask you to move him?"
Charles stared at her. "Whose side are you on?"
Eleanor placed one earring carefully into its case. She had been married to Charles for twenty-six years, long enough to recognize the moment when his anger was protecting him from embarrassment. She had once admired his certainty, back when certainty meant he could make difficult decisions in a crisis. Lately it had meant he never believed he owed anyone an explanation.
"I was sitting there," she said. "I laughed when you made the remark about the invitation, and I shouldn't have. He wasn't doing anything wrong, Charles. We both saw that, and we both acted as though the problem was him."
He looked away. "This is not a marriage counseling session. The company is on the line."
"Then stop talking about the dinner as though the dinner were the whole problem," Eleanor answered. She walked to the bedroom door and paused with her hand on the frame. "Margaret has been asking questions about the financial reports for months. You've been telling everyone she doesn't understand how the business is run. Perhaps tomorrow you should listen to someone besides yourself."
After she left, Charles stood in the darkening room with the glass in his hand. He wanted to dismiss her remarks as nerves, but he knew Eleanor rarely intervened in his business affairs without a reason. She had watched him rise from vice president to division head to acting chief executive, attending the dinners, learning the names, and tolerating an astonishing number of people she did not like. Her disapproval that evening felt less like betrayal than like a witness refusing to support his version of an event.
Charles had not inherited Meridian outright. His father had been a senior investment banker who helped finance the firm's early expansion, and the family name opened doors, but Charles had still spent real years mastering client relationships. In his thirties he could work through the night, remember the terms of complicated agreements, and calm a nervous client with a conversation that seemed effortless. There had been a time when people praised him because he solved problems rather than because his father knew the people appointing directors.