It had been twenty years since I’d started at Harvard, and now I was going to go back—although in my three years in Cambridge I never went into the Fogg. For the first time in twenty years I had a warm feeling about my alma mater. The Fogg was definitely where I wanted to be. No blue jeans tonight. Tonight a new suit, a new tie, and we were on our best well-mannered behaviors.

There was a small problem, though, when Howie Balter and I arrived at the museum. Appetizers and drinks were being served, and people were standing around eating them and making polite conversation. The appetizers, however, were not kosher, and so we couldn’t partake. On the other hand, if we just kept turning them down, this would also draw attention to us and make us seem not to fit in. Discretion being the better part of valor, I suggested to my colleague that we walk around the museum and pretend to look at the art until dinner (at which kosher meals had been specially ordered for us) was served.

The museum actually had an unbelievable collection and I became lost in a reverie trying to figure out how much the many Monets, Rembrandts, Degas, and Picassos added to Harvard’s endowment. I was also trying to figure out how much my stock would have to be worth to have enough to invest in this kind of extravagance.

As we stood in the third gallery filled with various crucifixions and other scenes of religious bloodletting, who should come walking through but Maria Lewis accompanied by Lisa Powell, our investment banker at the firm. “Why, Howard,” Maria said, “I didn’t know you were an art connoisseur. Joe Cohen, the head of our firm, would be so pleased to know that. He’s quite an avid private collector, you know.

“But, actually, Lisa and I were just talking about what an impressive presentation you made this morning, and I was wondering about some of the numbers in your projections.”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted, staring around at the ominous artwork on the wall. “Could we move to the next room? I think I like the artwork much better there, and I can see we’re going to be talking a while.”

“My, you are a connoisseur,” she said. And so we moved on to a room containing “gentler,” more auspicious art, without the crucifixions.

There, among the Old Masters, the four of us gathered as if in a football huddle, expressing our comradeship and discussing strategy and the anticipated game plan for going public.