He turned. Delphine Okafor stood at his elbow in a dark red gown, holding a glass of champagne she had clearly not touched. They had known each other for thirty years, since she was a young lawyer at the Legal Aid Justice Center and he was a young architect losing a fight about a public housing renovation in Gilpin Court. She had gone on to build a civil rights practice that had sued half the police departments in central Virginia; he had gone on to restore the other half of central Virginia's old buildings. They had served on enough nonprofit boards together to know each other's tells.
"Doing what?" he said.
"Watching people look at your ceiling like it's your child's piano recital."
"It's a good ceiling."
"It's a great ceiling. You're still allowed to eat the crab cakes." She nodded across the room, where Hollis Brandt held court at a high-top table with two state delegates and a bank president. "Has he spoken to you?"
"He raised his glass at me. With his middle finger along the stem."
"Classy."
"He's angry. I don't blame him. He spent a year and a lot of money on that tower."
"Julian. He's been telling people at every table in this room that you cost him forty million dollars."
"I didn't cost him anything. Gravity did. I just read gravity out loud."
She laughed, then didn't. "Be careful with him. I mean it. Men like that don't take a loss as a loss. They take it as an insult, and they don't let insults go."