Chapter 18: The Round Table Fractures

Arthur was in the Round Table room at seven forty-three in the morning, two hours before he'd asked anyone to arrive, rearranging nothing.

He stood at the window that wasn't there — the room had no windows, by design, his design, the deliberate architecture of equality — and he looked at the wall where a window would have been and understood, for the first time, why every other conference room in every other company on earth had windows. Not for the view. For the exit. The mind's need to locate itself somewhere outside the room when the room becomes too much.

He had his notebook. He had not opened it.