I don’t remember much of the interview, only that I wasn’t at my best. I’d gotten sick a few days before, but – with matching gaps in our respective schedules hard to come by, tickets scheduled and a hotel booked on my behalf – I decided to fly to New York anyway.
It was one of those times where you don’t realize how okay you’re not until somebody else notices.
“You really don’t look good,” was the first thing Stephanie ever said to me. She was waiting for me in the lobby of the hotel, blonde and thin and pretty, younger than I’d expected but cutting a severe figure in a dark business suit, her hair pulled back in a tight bun.
“I’m surviving,” I said.
Which was true. I felt like garbage and I was sweating despite the frigid temperature outside, but I’d made it through five hours on a plane and forty-five minutes in New York traffic. I could manage an interview.