Her answers were fine. She had given a thousand like them in rooms like this. But she could feel her face doing something she couldn't see, and she kept her eyes on the Woolworth Building over his shoulder, on the green copper, as if it might lend her some of its composure.
At 11:20 the meeting ended. People stood. Douglas was already at Turner's elbow, saying something about lunch at his club, about some people he'd love Nathaniel to meet. Lindsay gathered her tablet and her untouched water and made for the door, and she had her hand on the glass when he said her name.
"Ms. Corrigan."
She turned. The room went quieter, the way rooms do.
"Your ten o'clock," Turner said. "Ms. Osei. She's still in reception. She's been there since a little after nine."
That was all. No edge on it. He said it the way you'd tell someone their headlights were on. Then he turned back to Douglas, and Lindsay went out into the glass hallway, where three people she knew suddenly needed to look at their phones.
Kyra Osei was sitting very straight on the long grey couch in reception, a canvas tote at her feet, a binder open on her knee. She was thirty-four, Lindsay knew from the file, a former nurse's aide with an MBA from Baruch earned at night, and she wore a navy dress and the expression of a woman who had waited in a great many reception areas and had made her peace with it on the condition that she use the time. Rafael Santos, Lindsay's assistant, sat on the edge of the next chair with his laptop, and there were two empty coffee cups on the low table between them.
Kyra stood when she saw her. Lindsay heard herself begin to apologize — the meeting, an announcement, completely unavoidable, so sorry, unforgivable really — and heard how much she was saying and could not stop.
"It's all right," Kyra said, in the tone of someone for whom it was not all right but who had decided it was not worth the breath. "Rafael kept me company. And I met your new chairman."
Lindsay's mouth went dry. "You did?"
"Just after nine. He sat right there for a few minutes." Kyra nodded at the spot on the couch where Rafael's bag now lay. "He asked what I was here for. I told him. He asked how long I'd been coming. I said four months." She paused. "He said that was a long time to wait for an answer."