Chapter 6: The Dinner

"Isla," he said, taking her hand. "Wonderful to see you. And this is Cole Mercer. Your husband. I have to say, I did not see this one coming."

"We surprised everyone," Cole said, pulling Isla's chair out for her. The gesture was smooth enough that it probably wasn't calculated, but Isla had learned that with Cole, smooth gestures were usually very calculated. She was beginning to notice the calculation and appreciate it anyway.

"How did you two even meet?" the retail CEO asked. His name was Jonathan Price and he had probably asked this question to a hundred couples. "I heard you were already running Quinn & Earth when Cole came on the Landmark board."

"He was at a Landmark meeting," Isla said. She had decided to trust Cole's version of the story. "I was pitching. He was listening more carefully than the other investors."

"To vertical integration, specifically," Cole said. He turned to her like he was delivering information she would find interesting, which was a strange way to have a conversation in front of three powerful people. "You had been dancing around the concept for the entire presentation, and I thought you were going to bury it in the operating plan. Then you didn't."

Isla had not realized he had noticed this. She had not realized anyone had noticed this except her, and she had spent the entire pitch wrestling with how directly to address her manufacturing vision.

"You buried it in the operating plan anyway," Cole said, reaching for his water. "In the final slide. Distribution channel, subheading. Like it was an afterthought."

"It needed to seem like an afterthought," Isla said. "Most investors don't want to hear that you're planning to take manufacturing in-house. It reads like operational risk."

"It is operational risk," Cole agreed. "But it's the only way to actually execute on the sustainability promise. If you keep using contract manufacturers, you're dependent on their compliance. You wanted to control the entire process."

"Still do," Isla said.

"I know," Cole said. He was looking at her like this conversation was interesting to him. Like they were discussing something that mattered. "That's why I thought you were impressive."

Marcus was watching this exchange like it was tennis. "You two talk about her business a lot," he observed.

"We talk about everything," Cole said, which was not technically a lie. They did talk about everything. They also didn't know each other at all. The sentences could be true simultaneously.

"She's annoyingly right about most things," Cole continued. "I'm annoyed about it frequently."

Isla laughed. It came out before she could stop it, which meant it sounded genuine, which it was. Cole had delivered a complete non-sequitur about how annoyingly right she was in the middle of a business dinner like he was making a comment about the weather.

"When did you get married?" the retail CEO asked.

"Saturday," Isla said. "City Hall."

"That's very fast," the Landmark managing partner said. His name was David, and he had been carefully neutral all evening. "Romantic, though. Just the two of you."

"And my brother Robert," Cole said. "He's a lawyer. He witnessed. We had lunch after."

This was becoming a recognizable pattern with Cole. He would answer a question with complete information, delivered without inflection, that somehow managed to make the situation sound both more formal and more intimate than it had been before he started speaking.

"Congratulations," David said. "To both of you. This changes the risk profile of Isla's round, actually. The personal stability clause is satisfied. You can close the investment as soon as Monday if you want."

Isla felt the air shift. She had known this intellectually. She had known that closing the investment would happen once the marriage clause was satisfied. But knowing it and hearing someone say it across a table at a three-Michelin-star restaurant were different things.

"That's excellent news," Cole said.

"For Isla," Cole amended, looking at her. "Not for me, obviously, but excellent for her."

"Why not for you?" Jonathan asked, which was the one thing Isla had been thinking of not asking.

"My grandfather's will specifies that I need to be married by thirty-six to retain my board seat," Cole said. He said this with the tone of someone reading an insurance document. "I'm thirty-five. I just turned thirty-five actually. Three weeks ago. I've now satisfied the requirement."

"That's quite a deadline," David said.

"It was," Cole said. "Isla's venture round was also on a deadline. We solved each other's problems. It's efficient."

The dinner went on. The wine list arrived. Isla looked at the wines while Cole and Jonathan discussed something about vintage years and tannins. She flagged one. She wasn't an expert, but she had spent eighteen months in Portugal and had learned to taste well enough to know when something was good.

When the sommelier came, Cole ordered her wine.

"Actually," Isla said, "I'd like to suggest one. The 2016 Priorat in the left column, third from the bottom."

Cole looked at the list. He looked at her. Then he smiled. It was a small smile, the kind of smile that probably had its own specific usage instructions. "Order that one," he told the sommelier.

"I'm taking a bet that you know what you're talking about," Cole said to Isla when the sommelier had gone.

"I spent a year and a half in Portugal," Isla said. "I learned some things."

"Your interviews didn't mention that you knew wine," Cole said.

"I didn't," Isla said. "I learned it after. You wouldn't know that because it hasn't happened yet in the timeline of your research."

"Noted," Cole said. "You're learning me wrong. That's going to be a problem."

"How so?"

"I assumed I was the only one with information asymmetry," Cole said. "It's unsettling to discover I'm not."

The wine arrived. It was good. It was exactly the wine that should have arrived at this table at this moment. Cole tasted it and then looked at her.

"You were right," he said.

"Yes," Isla said.

"You sound like you expected me to notice that you were right," Cole said.

"I did expect it," Isla said. "Most people would assume I got lucky with the wine. You're not most people."

"No," Cole agreed. "I'm annoyingly thorough."

"You're annoyingly thorough," Isla confirmed. "I'm annoyingly right about wine."

"We're probably going to annoy each other frequently," Cole said.

"Definitely," Isla said.

"That's actually reassuring," Cole said. He was eating his appetizer, his attention back on the plate. "I was concerned this might feel artificial."

"Does it feel artificial?" Isla asked.

"No," Cole said. "Which is surprising because it is entirely artificial. You're a venture capitalist's spouse for business reasons. I'm a sustainable fashion CEO's husband for inheritance reasons. This is as artificial as it gets."

"And yet," Isla said.

"And yet," Cole said, meeting her eyes across the table. "I find myself actually interested in your opinions about wine."

The dinner continued. Marcus talked about Landmark's portfolio. Jonathan talked about retail distribution. David talked about market conditions. And somewhere between the second course and dessert, Isla stopped thinking about the fact that she was performing a marriage and started thinking about the fact that she had married someone who could make her laugh in front of investors without it seeming like a calculated move.

They left the restaurant at 11:47 p.m. Cole offered to drive, but Isla suggested a cab instead. In the cab, sitting in the space between them on the seat, she thought about saying something. About asking what that dinner had been. About asking if he had felt what she had felt, which was not the feeling of performing and not the feeling of false intimacy but something else entirely, something that looked like the two of them actually understanding each other.

"We're actually good at this," she said instead.

"Good at what?" Cole asked.

"This," Isla said, gesturing at the cab, the city, the space between them. "Being married. In public. Out loud."

"We're good because we're not trying to be good," Cole said. "We're just trying to be accurate. Everything I said tonight was true. Everything you said was true. We're just not mentioning the context in which the truth exists."

"So we're lying," Isla said.

"We're editing," Cole said. "Everyone edits their truth when they're in public. We just edited more consciously than most people."

"That's not reassuring," Isla said.

"No," Cole agreed. "But it's honest. Which is what we're trying to be."

In the cab, he reached over and took her hand. Not like he was reaching for something. Like he was placing something down and wanted to make sure it stayed. His hand was warm. His thumb was on the inside of her wrist. And Isla realized with a kind of sick certainty that this was the moment she should have been watching out for.

This was the moment where being good at being married was going to stop being a professional achievement and start being something she actually wanted.

They got home at 12:34 a.m. Cole walked her to her bedroom. He didn't let go of her hand until they reached the doorway. Then he said goodnight and went to his own room like they were two people who had decided nothing had happened in a cab.

But something had happened. In a cab, in Manhattan, with the city lights reflected in the window, Isla had discovered that she was not actually as good at keeping her life compartmentalized as she had thought. She had married a man for business reasons and then discovered he was interesting. And then discovered that being married to someone interesting was more dangerous than being married to someone cold.

She lay in her high-thread-count sheets and thought about his hand on her wrist and wondered what would happen if she asked him to do it again.

She was beginning to suspect the answer. And the answer was that everything would change.