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McCaughlin, my biggest supporter on the board, and perhaps my closest friend. It was a Thursday, midway through the morning. He had been lingering too long on niceties.
    “Chester,” I said, interrupting some prattle about golf or a boat of some kind.
    “Yes, Adam?”
    “You’re doing it.”
    “What?”
    “That thing with your brow,” I said. “Like you’re trying to squeeze your eyeballs out of your skull.” It was good for Chester that he’d been born to old money, he didn’t have the poker face necessary to make his own way in the world.
    There was a hesitant knock on my office door. Dammit. I shut the thing for a reason.
    “Colorful,” Chester said, without a smile. It didn’t appear he’d heard the knock. I chose to ignore it.
    “Well, you should know by now I don’t need easing - in when it comes to difficult discussions. Rip off the Band - Aid ,” I said.
    “I had dinner with Wes and Robert last night.”
    “Wes getting any better at keeping his mouth shut while chewing?”
    Chester’s smile was too full of effort and too devoid of humor.
    “And Kyle Thomas,” he said.
    “Hope he had the spot directly across from Wes,” I said, hiding any potential shock.
    Again, the tapping on my door. This time Chester heard it, turning slightly.
    “Chester,” I said from the gut, yanking his eyes and his focus back to me. “What was the general topic of discussion?”
    “I’m guessing you know,” he said.
    “You tell me. Global warming? The Red Sox middle relief issues?”
    “Dammit, Adam, talk is talk. You’ve got to expect that.”
    “Sure I do. Who paid the tab?”
    He did that thing where his eyes cross for a second, then looked at me questioningly. “What’s that matter?”
    “It matters, Chester. At the end of every meal, someone reaches out and says ‘I got this.’ So I’m asking you a relatively easy - to - answer question. When the bill was dropped in the middle of the table, who reached over and said ‘I got this’?”
    “Kyle,” he said after a pause (in which his eyes danced on the ceiling as he tried to connect the dots). “Though I hardly see how that matters.”
    I froze, looking directly in his eyes. Creating the void.
    After clearing his throat, he said: “He has some good points, stuff we need to consider. You do know that in the last five years, the market cap for Resortex has, you know, gone through the roof.”
    Resortex was the closest thing we had to a competitor. “Not exactly McDonald’s versus Burger King here. There are significant differences, as I’m sure you explained to Kyle.”
    “Of course, but…”
    “He’s making assumptions and using those to try and make decisions based in ignorance. Now what we need to do…”
    Again, the knock on the door. Chester looked back over his shoulder. “Maybe you ought to…”
    I took a deep breath, rubbing my temples. “What?” I said loudly.
    A moment of silence. Whoever was on the other side of the door, (probably Joanne, my assistant, who typically was much more mindful of the purpose behind a closed door) hesitated. Then slowly the knob turned and Joanne slid her head into the room.
    “I’m so sorry, Mr. Mann,” she said, with a slight shake in her voice. “But she insisted.”
    “Who insisted?”
    “Your wife. She couldn’t hold on the line, but asked me to pass you an urgent message.”
    I looked at Chester. He stood up. “I’ll leave. We can finish up later.”
    “That’s okay,” I said, waving him to his seat. “Sometimes Suze and I have a different interpretation of what should or shouldn’t be classified as urgent.” I looked back up at Joanne. “What’s going on?”
    “It’s your son, sir. It appears there’s been an accident. He’s in the hospital near his school, and she’s on the way up there.”

    Ten minutes later, I was pulling out of the parking lot (tires all good) and on my way to see Peter. I had assured Chester that our conversation would resume first thing Monday