Lena

The venue was called The Meridian, and it was the kind of place that made you understand, in your bones, what the word grand actually meant.

Not grand the way Bridget used to describe her dinner parties, which were really just aggressively decorated rooms full of people performing wealth at each other. Grand the way old buildings were grand, with intention behind every proportion, every ceiling height, every arch, like the architect had understood that the space itself should make people feel something before a single chair was placed inside it.

I stood at the entrance of the main hall on a Tuesday morning and looked up at the...