I took another Diet Coke from the minibar. Something told me that I would need even more than the recommended daily allowance of caffeine to get me through the day, what with a memorial service and the inevitable unpleasantness of my recruiting duties to look forward to. I popped open the can and crossed to the window to check out the weather, wishing it was evening already and time to meet Peter for dinner.

The morning light showed the view off in a way that I hadn’t been able to appreciate the previous night. The sky was gray, in keeping with the forecasts, which called for lots of snow. Still, the air was clear, and across the river I could see the familiar red bricks of the business school campus to the south and Soldiers Field Stadium to the west, nestled in the slush-spotted green of the athletic fields. In the foreground, a traffic jam was taking place on Memorial Drive. Its source appeared to be a flock of police cars parked at the junction of the drive and JFK Street, at the foot of the bridge.

I pressed my nose against the glass for a closer look.

There was a crowd surrounding the Weld Boathouse, home to several of Harvard’s crew teams. A bright stripe of yellow crime-scene tape held back onlookers, while uniformed policemen clustered in front of the building.

I wondered what could have happened. Some sort of crew team prank, perhaps, gone awry? One never knew what sort of hijinks rowers could get up to. I’d had the misfortune to date a rower my freshman year, and I’d never been so bored in my entire life. Our relationship consisted of lots of long, tortured conversations about his rowing, usually conducted over dining-hall meals with his teammates. I would watch in awe as they consumed enough food to feed small developing countries. I still vividly remembered my boyfriend commandeering an entire loaf of bread, loading it onto the toaster, slice by slice, then using up two sticks of butter, packet upon packet of sugar and a shaker-full of cinnamon to make cinnamon toast. He’d eaten it all in one sitting. And later that night he’d ordered in pizza. He was the only guy I’d ever gone out with who made my eating habits seem birdlike.

I pulled my attention from the view and my gluttonous ex-boyfriend and gathered my coat and purse. It was time to get going.

Winslow, Brown had set up its recruiting headquarters in a suite identical to my own but one floor down. I arrived a few minutes before the meeting was to start. Cecelia Esterhazy, the administrator from Human Resources, was already there, setting out name tags and schedules on a side table. While I was the titular head of the recruiting effort, most of the actual work fell to Cece, who had the unenviable job of liaising with the Career Services office, scheduling information sessions, reserving blocks of hotel rooms and cajoling unwilling bankers into showing up to interview eager students. Fortunately, she had an unflaggingly sunny disposition, and her fresh good looks ensured that most of my male colleagues were easily persuaded to do their part.

“Hi, Cece. How’s it going?”

She gave me a look that managed to be both harried and good-natured at the same time. “The usual. Three interviewers have already canceled on me. But I overbooked, so everything should be okay.” While recruiting was vital to Winslow, Brown’s future, it didn’t generate fees, and fees were the lifeblood of the firm. It wasn’t uncommon for bankers to decide at the last minute that whatever deals they were working on took precedence over a commitment to participate in recruiting.

“I’m sorry. I’m not making things any easier for you by cutting out this morning.”

“You, at least, have a valid excuse.” I’d told her about the memorial service earlier that week, and she’d been sympathetic.

“You’re doing great,” I reassured her.

She rolled her eyes.

“Courage,” I said. She rewarded me with a smile.

Colleagues from Winslow, Brown began trooping in, descending upon the breakfast buffet like vultures, most of them simultaneously talking on their own voice-enabled Blackberries. I helped myself to a bagel and cream cheese and another Diet Coke and found an empty chair. We needed to wait for a quorum to get things started, so I used the downtime to scroll through the accumulated e-mails on my own Blackberry before pecking out a quick message to Peter, wishing him luck with his pitch. Scott Epson was among the last to arrive. Today he was wearing a tie that put yesterday’s to shame-green silk dotted with little red golf tees. If he had been anyone else, I would have suspected sartorial irony.

When the room had filled, I cleared my throat and called the meeting to order. “I’d like to thank you all for being here. I know how busy everyone is, but we have an ambitious hiring goal this year, and your participation is very much appreciated.” I said a few more words by way of introduction, reminding everyone of the qualities Winslow, Brown deemed desirable in its prospective employees, and then turned the meeting over to Cecelia to explain how everything would work over the next two days.

I ate my bagel and listened while she smoothly ran through the day’s logistics. “We need everyone back here at five o’clock for the roundup session. Please don’t be late-we’ll try to finish up as quickly as we possibly can.” With that, she began handing out name tags and schedules.

No sooner had she finished than the first students began trickling in for their interviews, neatly turned out in aspiring Wall Street wear. Cece efficiently matched them up with the pairs of bankers to which they’d been assigned and sent them off to the interview rooms. By ten past nine, she and I were the only ones left. I was relieved-Scott Epson hadn’t seemed to notice that I wouldn’t be interviewing that morning. If he had, I was sure he would waste no time in letting Stan know in some backhanded fashion that I was shirking my duties. My absence that morning could be easily explained, but I’d rather not have to explain it. The partners at Winslow, Brown had strange ideas regarding how one should prioritize one’s various commitments. The memorial service for a client seemed to me to be an important event, but firm lore was sufficiently rife with stories of bankers being called back from hospital beds, bar mitzvahs, honeymoons and graveyards to make me hesitant to publicize the trade-off I was making.

I exchanged a few final words with Cece, thanking her and assuring her I’d be back by noon. Moments later I was in a cab bound for Trinity Church in Boston.

T he taxi turned from Eliot Street onto JFK Street, passing the police cars that still swarmed around the Weld Boathouse. We crossed the bridge over the river and made a left onto Storrow Drive.

“What happened back there?” I asked.

“Dunno,” the driver said. “But whatever it is, it’s sure screwing up traffic.”

Unenlightened, I pulled out my phone and dialed Emma’s mobile number. I’d talked to her the previous day, on my way to the airport in New York, but she was my best friend, and we usually talked daily, at least.

It took several rings before Emma picked up, and when she did, she sounded distracted. “Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Oh, hi, Rach. I’m glad you called. Did you get into town all right?”

“Yes. I’m in a cab on Storrow Drive right now, heading into Boston. Are you at Matthew’s?”

“Yes. He just left for the clinic, and I was about to start on some sketches for a series I’ve been thinking about.” Now I understood the distracted tone. When Emma was starting a new series, her existence bifurcated into two worlds, one filled with ideas and shapes and color, and the other filled with reality. Needless to say, the former usually eclipsed the latter. Emma was a gifted artist, the daughter of a world-famous painter. After a difficult summer, during which she’d narrowly escaped an unfortunate marriage via a set of even more unfortunate circumstances, she seemed to be back on an even keel, happily dating Matthew and climbing to new heights of artistic success.