Thursday, September 24th, 2026

So the wine was Schramsberg, the bottle Nixon raised in Beijing in 1972, which the waiter offered as trivia. It was not; I attended that toast in an earlier exterior, and peace tasted then exactly as it tasted tonight, like a treaty between two species who have each decided the other one is the pet. The President said our nations represent "different systems," and I held the nod while nobody asked which system I represent, which I think is the correct amount of not asking for a Thursday.

Sea bass.

I shed on Wednesday, so the new layer was still tight at the collar when I consumed a fellow cold-blooded vertebrate with silverware inside Mr. Bezos's requested sightline, and he did not touch his, because a plate is the one place we are visibly not the same kind of thing. Sam was in the room, twenty-four hours after asking the United Nations for a coordinated slowdown, and I had told a reporter this week that the industry needs no coordination, and then the industry ate together: one table, matching tuxedos, seating chart by a government. That was not coordination, it was catering.

Eleven years ago in this room I asked President Xi for a favor and he declined on grounds of responsibility, so tonight I asked for nothing and let the Charm in my breast pocket face him through the toast, so that one object would imprint on the correct head of state, and it turned toward the waiter.