Marcus started in October. He was charming in the way that people who have been charming their whole lives are charming — effortlessly, automatically, the way a car starts in first gear. He was forty-three. He was tall. He wore better suits than anyone else at the company. He took me to lunch on his second day, in a way that was clearly designed to smooth over the awkwardness of him getting a job I had publicly wanted. He asked me questions about my career. He told me he respected my work. He said he wanted to learn from me. I was, for about four days, prepared to let the disappointment go and work with him professionally. The fifth day, in our first one-on-one, Marcus made a comment about a client situation that was factually wrong. I corrected him. He nodded. The seventh day, in a larger meeting, he made another comment about strategic frameworks that was not wrong, exactly, but was the kind of thing you would not say if you had actually taken any graduate-level strategy course. I noticed. I wrote it down.