“People tell on themselves with their questions,” he once said while sliding a legal pad toward me. “Listen long enough, and you’ll know if they love the door or what’s behind it.”
I learned how to read a lease and how to spot vanity in a proposal from him. Most importantly, I learned how to sit still while other people made the mistake of showing me who they really were.
When I was twenty-eight, I promised myself that I would fall in love with someone who knew me before he knew what I owned. At the time, that felt like a necessary survival tactic rather than a strategic move.
I met Simon Vane at an art gallery in the Inner Harbor seven years before the gala. He was standing under a spotlight explaining skylight placement to a donor, and I liked how he spoke about buildings as if they were alive.
We left the gallery together to walk the cold sidewalks with cups of coffee. When he asked what I did for a living, I told him the partial truth.
“I’m a freelance illustrator,” I said. I truly did design packaging and annual reports for nonprofits, and I genuinely enjoyed the quiet independence of that work.