The waitress came and they ordered a bottle of white wine. Gorham glanced outside; the sky was darkening as it began to fill with clouds. After they had poured their wine and the waitress had told them the two choices, Janet turned her attention on Gorham.

“So you’re a banker?” she said.

“That’s right. And you?”

“I work in a literary agency at the moment. It’s interesting.”

“She just sold the serial rights of a new novel today,” Juan informed him proudly.

“Congratulations—we’ll drink to that. My father wrote a novel once.”

“I heard,” said Janet. “Verrazano Narrows. That was a big deal.”

Juan had observed the redhead at the next table. She couldn’t fail to hear their conversation, but was politely ignoring them, and glancing toward the door from time to time. At the mention of the famous book, however, she did steal a quick glance toward Gorham, out of curiosity.

“Janet’s wondering whether to try to get into the television business, however,” said Juan. “She has a friend who works in production in NBC.”

It was one of the things Gorham loved about the city that, just as in his father’s young days when the great men of letters sat at the Algonquin Round Table, the big publishing houses were still here, and the mighty New York Times, and leading magazines, from Time to the New Yorker. The great television networks had joined them too—all gathered within walking distance of each other in Manhattan’s Midtown. But it seemed Janet didn’t want to talk about her future in television just now.

“What I want to know,” she said, “is how you two met.”

“At Columbia Business School,” Gorham told her. “That was the great thing about the MBA course. You had all kinds of people, from conventional banking types like me to really unusual guys like Juan. Plenty of the people I knew in the MBA program went into not-for-profit organizations, careers in charity, hospital administration, you name it.”

Gorham had been very impressed with Juan and so had the admissions office at Columbia. By that time, Juan had already worked for Father Gigante, the priest and community leader who was helping the poor up in the South Bronx, and he’d spent another year in the South Bronx with the Multi-Service Center in Hunts Point. Before trying to use his experience in El Barrio, he’d been told he ought to try for an MBA program, to which he’d not only been accepted, but got grants to pay for everything.

“I’m sure Columbia reckoned that, with his background, Juan could become a leader in New York,” Gorham said. Then he grinned. “Of course, I have even higher ambitions for him.”

“Tell me,” said Janet.