OVERHEARD

I just came from one of those common New York society occasions: The Fund Raising Get-Together at The Apartment of a Rich Person. I'm not a donor; I was there as a creative consultant to the organization.

After the formal presentation, the group of 50 or so was invited into a lavish living room where we chatted and mingled and chomped hors d’oeuvres. After about 15 minutes, our attention was called. A thin woman dressed in a black jumpsuit-type outfit, in her early forties, I'd guess, stood with the organization's founder in the middle of the room and pronounced she was going in full bore: she would donate $500,000 then and there. Who was committed enough, she asked, to join her in the cause?

I was standing in the next room, right at the doorway when this happened, on the outer ring of the gathering. Just ahead of me, on the inside, was a well groomed man in a blue blazer and striped pants. He leaned in conspiratorially toward his wife, both of them oblivious to my being within earshot.

"Next time you go anywhere without me...", he whispered to her, "don't do that."