"I'm one of the ballet's sponsors," Oz rebutted, though it was unclear whether he was defending himself against the implied accusation of the word rehearsals or explaining why he'd bothered to get tickets. He didn't think this was news to her — it had been nearly a year since he'd made the arrangements, and it certainly had come in conversation with various members of his family since then, when he'd taken them to this show or that one — but they had never explicitly talked about it, so he didn't know whether she had opinions about his giving moderately large sums of money away to performance troupes. Presumably she would have opinions if she knew his motivation in doing so, but that was neither here nor there.

"It's sort of expected that all the sponsors attending the opening night," he continued. "So they've reserved the usual box. But I don't have to go, if we'd rather not."

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