JULIAN

I watched Ellison.

Ellison was sixty-two and had been on the board for nine years and was the kind of man who formed his positions slowly and held them stubbornly, which made him both difficult and reliable depending on which side of an issue you were on. He was looking at his wine glass with more attention than the wine glass required. He had done this three times in the last twenty minutes in the specific moments when Thomas had said something that I could not hear the beginning of but that had clearly been a continuation of an earlier thread.

So: the thread was about me.

I had...