At first I could not understand what was going on, nor why my I’m sorry and nos and my stop and eventually my desperate please, please leave me alone were so ineffective. And then I realized he was actually pretty clever, because he used words in a careful manner which always gave the impression that he was answering me, but he was in fact ignoring my lines, and reading from his own much-rehearsed script, which came from a story in which he always, always gets what he wants.
