Invited across. Three centuries of waiting on porches, and the door that finally opened had a Marine on each side, a coat check, and sea bass, handed to me with a fork and a level of... confidence I have not encountered in three hundred years of sitting at tables.

Then Xi rose and toasted that his project and the host's could "help each other achieve," which is the feeding cycle, read aloud by a head of state, to a room that applauded exactly on schedule.

Passed Michael Dell the salt at 20:15 as planned; he said "thanks, Jeff," and the $220 billion went unmentioned, which is how I know it landed. The only warm things in the room were three Fox hosts and a yellow squash, and the squash sat warm under my palm longer than a founder should allow. Trump then presented Xi with a bald eagle sculpture designed "in personal collaboration with Melania," and I, who have put my name on rockets, a newspaper and a preschool, have never once been credited on a bird.

Tomorrow the Post runs the table photograph, an empty chair and a very good suit between Dell and Huang, captioned at my request "Amazon founder Jeff Bezos," the last edit I still make there and the only honest record of Day 11,717: invited in at last, and everything on the table already dead.