I’m back in touch with M. We sit down to drink a bottle of red wine. When I insert the corkscrew, the top of the cork starts to crumble and dissolve into a sludge. I’m not sure how to get the cork out. I consider pushing it down into the bottle, but realize that will just contaminate all the wine. I decide to try pouring the wine out to see if it will wash the cork away. I decant the wine into a small bowl at first, and when the remains of the cork are gone I pour the rest of the wine into two glasses.
He tells me that he knows a number of people who don’t respect my work and have maligned my reputation. I’m anxious to find out what they’re saying, and I ask him who these people are. He lists off names of people I’ve never heard of and have never worked with. I tell him that I don’t really care if those people don’t respect me, since I don’t know who they are. I list off a few people whose opinions I do respect, but he says they’ve never said a bad word about me.
We descend into the London Tube. The stations are white with bright primary colors, as if they were decorated to mimic the iconic London Underground map.
