She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Different professions. Same instinct."
"Different professions," he agreed. "Yes."
They looked at each other across the office table with the particular quality of two people who had arrived at the same place from different directions and were finding, upon arrival, that it was the same place. The specific quality of being seen clearly by someone who knew your work and had been in your bad moments and your honest moments and had been paying attention throughout.
"The presentation is on Thursday," she said. "I'll use the one-pager approach."
"Let me know how it goes."
"I will." A pause. "Have lunch with me after. Thursday. After the committee."
He looked at her. The directness of it — she had, he had understood by now, two modes: the careful professional mode, and the direct mode she used when she had decided something and was not going to perform uncertainty about it. This was the second mode.
"Yes," he said.
"Good." She picked up another biscuit. "These are quite good."
"I know."
"You didn't know when you bought them."
"I know now," he said. "Some things you have to be in them to know they're right."
She looked at him. The almost-smile. Then the real one — the same one he'd been cataloguing since the first day in this office, the one that was worth waiting for. "Some things," she agreed. She turned back to the presentation. "Now tell me again about the non-linearity approach. I want to get it exactly right."
He told her. She listened. She made notes. Outside, the Vasant Vihar afternoon went about its business. Inside, two people who had arrived at the same place from different directions sat with good biscuits and a ward seven correlation model and the particular quality of a Friday afternoon that had been worth the week it ended, and the weeks before it, and all the careful professional patience it had taken to get there.
The door was open, as it usually was. The street sounds came in. The afternoon was excellent. Everything was, for now, exactly what it was supposed to be.
