JULIAN

"Those things," she said, in the specific and quiet voice of a woman completing a thought, "are not the things a man does when he is managing a professional arrangement."

She set the wine down.

"And tonight," she said, "you are being exactly what a man is when he is managing a professional arrangement."

She looked at me.

"So," she said.

She did not complete the sentence.

She did not need to.

The so sat on the table between us with the particular and complete quality of a sentence that was its own conclusion, that did not need the rest of the sentence because the rest of the sentence...