LENA

Three minutes and fourteen seconds.

He spoke about the disbursement delays with the tone of a man describing an inconvenience inflicted on him by an indifferent universe. He spoke about the specific obligations, a property tax on the Hamptons house, a loan that had come due on timeline he had not expected, the particular and miscellaneous accumulation of a wealthy man's expenses in the specific and temporary condition of a cash flow interruption, with the detailed and particular quality of a man who had decided that the details made the request reasonable, that the specificity of the need was its own justification.

He used the word loan once. He...