“It’s weird,” he said. “Breakfast is good. Lunch is hanging in there okay. It’s hard to justify staying open for dinner when you get six people the whole night.”

I had a cup of coffee. Before long, my companion showed up. Then, after a while, our third guy, her colleague, materialized, too. The 7/8ths rule applied, as it always does at breakfast. Seven parts chitchat. One part business.  It went fine. Just because the recovery is in the flat part of the L doesn’t mean you can’t sell stuff.  It just has to be better, faster and a little bit cheaper right now is all.

The check came. We all looked at it sitting mutely in the middle of the table. “How’s your T&E going?” she said to her buddy across the linen divide, just by way of making conversation, you know. “I’m over,” he said.

“I came in under for the year, but only because I didn’t do anything between January and March for obvious reasons,” she added. Those months coincided with a massive reorganization of her company, a fact known to all of us around the table. “The worst part of the whole thing is sitting there with somebody you’re taking out, and terrified that they may order an appetizer,” she said.

“I take all my people out to the Hamburger Shack,” he replied with great professional gravity. “I just tell them, hey, if you want to have lunch, that’s where we’re going. I tried to move to the new panini place across the street for a little while but it kicked me up over the $40 limit.”

“Last week I went out with somebody and I figured what the hell, and we both had appetizers and everything,” she said rather wistfully.

Good Lord, I thought. I picked up the check. It wasn’t that much. Breakfast, you know. One course and you’re out.