“I mean, come on,” she said, “who exactly is being snobbish here? I’m fifty years old, I know what I like, I can endure a fast-food joint or a frozen dinner, but do I really have to pretend the apple-brown-betty is crème brulée? I spent my youth drinking sour coffee from paper cups. I graduated from that.” She added, “You will, too.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Confess. Crossbank was a washout for you.”

“I picked up some useful material.” Or at least one totemic quote. It could end at any time. Almost a Baptist piety.

“I have a theory about you,” Elaine said.

“Maybe we should just eat.”

“No, no, you don’t escape the obnoxious old harridan quite as easily as that.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Just be quiet. Have a breadstick or something. I told you I read Sebastian’s book. I read yours, too.”

“Maybe this sounds childish, but I’d really prefer not to talk about it.”

“All I want to say is, it’s a good book. You, Chris Carmody, wrote a good book. You did the legwork and you drew the necessary conclusions. Now you want to blame yourself for not flinching?”

“Elaine—”

“You want to flush your career away, pretending to work and not working and blowing deadlines and screwing waitresses with big tits and drinking yourself to sleep? Because you can totally do that. You wouldn’t be the first. Not by a country mile. Self-pity is such an absorbing hobby.”

“A man died, Elaine.”

“You didn’t kill him.”

“That’s debatable.”

“No, Chris, it’s not debatable. Galliano went over that hill either accidentally or as a willed act of self-destruction. Maybe he regretted his sins or maybe not, but they were his sins, not yours.”

“I exposed him to ridicule.”