The event was a merger celebration.
Not ours a different firm, a deal that had closed the previous month, the kind of party that existed to allow two sets of people who had spent six months arguing over documents to drink champagne in the same room and pretend the arguments had been collegial.
Desmond was there because his firm had been involved in the property side. I was there because we had handled the consulting. We had not discussed arriving together. We arrived separately, within ten minutes of each other, and spent the first twenty minutes across the room doing professional things.
Then his eyes found mine across a conversation I was having about Q2 projections and I saw him and thought: there he is. The involuntary thought of someone who has learned to locate a specific person i
