The feeling didn’t last. The fact was, I hadn’t actually expected to learn the name of the man in the photo, so I had not planned my next move. But here it was, four-thirty on a Friday afternoon, and here I was, just downstairs from this Derek Hayden’s office. Derek Hayden. Once I was able to attach a name to the face in the photo, I composed his biography with quick, broad brushstrokes in my head. It was a harmless and sometimes satisfying hobby of mine to fashion life stories on the thinnest of evidence, such as a name and a picture and the little snippets I got from Les Katz. What was instructive was comparing my imaginings with the reality after I learned it. It was amazing how rarely I even came close. A humbling lesson in my own proclivity to stereotype. But I kept doing it. Derek Hayden’s father, I guessed, was a Wall Street attorney. Specialty in mergers and bankruptcies. Expert on Chapter Eleven. Raised his family on a safe, maple-lined cul-de-sac in Scarsdale, from where he commuted every day.
