Good bankers are usually clever rather than intellectual, quick rather than thoughtful. They get paid for getting deals done; the bigger the deals and the quicker they’re closed the better. They tend to be the least self-reflective species on earth-self-centered and self-involved, yes, but hardly self-reflective.

I’ve thus never understood the questions that some of my colleagues asked of business school students, another species not known for their personal depth. When I interviewed students, I tried to understand whether a candidate was strong quantitatively, would work well with others and not embarrass us in front of clients, and had the drive and endurance required to handle the grueling pace of the job. Many of my fellow bankers, however, preferred to approach interviewing in a more Freudian way.

Scott, for example, loved to ask students about the biggest challenge they had faced and how they had overcome it. I never asked this question because the answer usually bored me-students were prepared for it, and they would usually give a canned response describing motivating an unwilling team or solving a thorny analytical problem. Scott, however, seemed disappointed with this sort of reply, but he would crow with enthusiasm over any candidate who used the question as an opportunity to discuss her parents’ tempestuous divorce or when his dog was run over by a truck. “That really shows incredible character and sensitivity,” he would say. That neither trait was particularly important in our line of work didn’t matter much to Scott. Nor did he seem to realize that he was completely lacking in both.

My other pet peeve was the subtle undercurrent of sexism running through the discussion. It was rare that a male candidate was asked to do off-the-cuff bond math or grilled on his SAT scores to test his quantitative abilities. But female candidates were routinely asked to compute complex algorithms in their head or opine on options theory. The seven men and lone woman who’d performed that day’s interviews weren’t much different. I listened silently as a female student’s quantitative skills were debated ad nauseam until I had to point out that she’d been an applied math major in college and earned top grades in her finance courses at the business school. I’d probably been only a low-grade feminist when I started at Winslow, Brown, but my experience there had turned me into a full-fledged radical. Compared to me, Gloria Steinem’s politics were practically red-state.

We finally wrapped up at half past seven, and I was pleased with the results. Regardless of the various irrelevancies that Scott and like-minded participants kept harping on, we’d emerged with an accomplished and diverse slate of candidates to send to New York for the final round of interviews. I left a message for Stan Winslow to update him and took the elevator down to the lobby. The doorman put me into a cab, and I gave the driver the address for the restaurant in Central Square.

I felt pleasant anticipation as the taxi sped up Mass. Ave. I pulled my small cosmetics pouch from my shoulder bag to reapply lipstick and blush. My midwinter pallor needed all the help it could get.

Then I checked myself. What was I doing, putting on makeup for dinner with Jonathan? It was probably presumptuous of me to even think that he thought of this dinner as anything resembling a date. Furthermore, if he did think it was a date, I was ethically obligated not to primp and to at least drop a passing reference to my boyfriend. Yes, old crushes die hard, and it had been the crush to end all crushes, and Jonathan was even more gorgeous now than he’d been in college, but I was in a committed relationship. I was in love with Peter.

This line of thought was the cue for the mean-spirited little voice in my head to chime in. “Peter hasn’t exactly been acting like he’s in a committed relationship these past couple of days. Interrupting romantic evenings to take calls with Abigail, leaping out of bed at the crack of dawn, canceling dinner…”

“He’s busy,” I told the mean-spirited little voice.

“But what’s more important, you or his work?” it answered. “Or maybe he’d just rather spend time with Abigail and is trying to let you down easy?”

That was especially mean-spirited, so I didn’t justify it with a reply. Besides, the cab driver was looking at me oddly in the rearview mirror. I guessed he wasn’t used to passengers who talked to themselves. In New York, he wouldn’t have batted an eye.

I paid the fare and stepped onto the curb in front of the address Jonathan had given me. The restaurant was flanked by a newsstand, and I caught a glimpse of a headline as I walked past. Prostitute Found Strangled, it blared. Yuck. I wondered if it was the same woman who had been Matthew’s patient, or yet another victim. It must be another victim, I surmised, if the paper was leading with the story.

Inside, I saw Jonathan already seated at a corner table, an open menu in front of him. He smiled and waved me over, standing to greet me. My heart did an involuntary flip. He really was beautiful. But, I reminded myself, I was going to mention Peter to him as soon as I found an appropriate opening.

“I’m starved and I’m thinking we should get some appetizers. Any interest in samosas?” Jonathan asked after leaning down to kiss my cheek, which caused the tingling from earlier that afternoon to begin anew.

“A lot of interest. That sounds perfect.” A waiter hurried over to pull out my chair, but I was too busy tingling to see him coming and accidentally elbowed him as I was taking off my coat. He accepted my apologies with grace and got me into my seat without further incident.

Jonathan ordered samosas and two Kingfishers and we consulted over the menu. “How do you feel about spice?” I asked, trying neither to tingle nor nurse my elbow in any visible way. It seemed to have connected with a particularly bony part of the waiter.

“The hotter the better.”

“Good answer.” After some debate, we decided to share a vegetable biryani and a chicken vindaloo billed as “fiery.” Jonathan gave the order to our waiter when he returned with our appetizers and drinks.

“I spoke to Clark Gibson this afternoon,” Jonathan said, as I cut off a piece of the flaky potato-filled pastry and dipped it into coriander chutney.

“Clark Gibson? Oh, your old roommate.”

“He sends his warm regards.”

I laughed. “Like he remembers me.”

“He remembers you all right. You made quite an impression. He always had a thing for redheads.” There was an indefinable gleam in Jonathan’s blue eyes as he spoke, and I felt my face turning the same color as my hair, the better to complement my tingling.

“That’s embarrassing.”

“Trust me. Nothing to be embarrassed about. So, tell me what you’ve been up to since English 10. You gave me the condensed version over lunch, but I want the details.”

We filled each other in on the last decade between sips of beer and bites of vindaloo. I told him about my years at Winslow, Brown, and he told me about his path to professor-hood. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised when Jonathan mentioned he was divorced. I knew he’d had a serious girlfriend in college-I’d spent a lot of time resenting her from afar. I even had my own private nickname for her: Perfect Girl. She was a willowy blonde with a sweet smile, and she was head of Phillips Brooks House, the organization that ran all of the community service programs on campus-pretty much the last thing you’d want for the guy you had a crush on.

But while Jonathan and Perfect Girl, whose real name, appropriately enough, was Angela, may have looked perfectly matched to the hopelessly pining freshman observer, the match wasn’t made in heaven. They married shortly after they graduated but had divorced a couple of years ago.