The board dinner was the real test.
Not the gala, with its hundred guests and its ambient performance of wealth. The dinner with seven board members and their partners, a private dining room where the menu had no prices and the carpet absorbed sound and the light was the kind that made everyone look like they had been arranged by a photographer. A room designed to make people feel observed. A room where everything communicated something.
Damian had briefed me on every person at the table with the precision of a military operation like who mattered, what they cared about, what to ask, what to avoid, what they had publicly said about the acquisition strategy and what they actually believed when no one was writing it down.
In the car he said "Marlene Cho will want to talk about your work."
