Michael laughed. He saw immediately, of course, that I was playing on his pride as well as offering my sacrifice as an olive branch, and was pleased by both. It is our pattern to grumble and itch at one another, and then to make amends in openly devious ways. Recently he has become almost artistic, going so far as to seat me, at a corporate charity dinner, next to a mildly notorious actress of decades gone with whom I once had a brief and passionate romance. I think he hoped we might find a late love, and in the event we giggled smuttily at shared recollections and discovered a mutual fondness for Bach, but nothing more.