IT WAS SURPRISINGLY uncomplicated to arrange for a transfer to London and to start up again, this time in a corner office that permits me, depending on which way I spin my chair, to admire St. Paul’s Cathedral or the Gherkin. Of course, it felt strange to be back. In the first week I was sitting at one of the long tables that litter the bank’s cafeteria—we lunch in rows, like monks—when I noticed a familiar-seeming face a few spots away. I was almost through with my lunch before I realized, with a little shock, that this was the same S.V.P. who’d ominously stepped into my cubicle half a decade before. I felt a strong impulse to approach him, say something about our shared exilic lot. But what to say, exactly? I was thinking it over when he got up and left. Since then I’ve seen him around quite regularly—he’s with the M-and-A crowd and every now and then puts his name to a fairness opinion—but in two years I have not spoken to him. I still haven’t figured out what there might be to say.
