Jeff Burkhart: Is this for business or for pleasure?

Frankie Frost/IJ archive

The stage of seduction was set, as it so often is, with both soft lighting and soft music. Wine was flowing, cocktails were being had and oysters had been ordered.

Pitching woo, they used to call it. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what they call it now. But I am sure they call it something. However said, what it was then is still what it is now — at least for me it is.

“We are asleep until we fall in love,” once wrote Leo Tolstoy, and...