“Look at me,” the ghastly maître d’, who was not a native English speaker, said, sitting back again. He made a sweeping gesture there in the back seat of the taxi, taking in his kingdom whole. “I have a nice lunch, and I kiss two very pretty girls.”

Whitney and I hadn’t perceived an id so unchecked, an imbalance of power so vast, that the maître d’ felt entitled to his own personal editorial assistant harem. She and I had gone into this lunch thinking that it would be a weird, fun little adventure, thinking we were all on the same team, thinking that each actor at the table would play an equal role, and we left it thinking, Man, your soul is just so bad.