THE CLIENT DINNER — The client waited until dessert to mention a tiny update: a different venue, a different stage and a different idea of what the event was for. The date would remain tomorrow.

Producer Mina smiled. Witnesses confirmed that her face remained professional while everything behind it attempted an emergency evacuation.

'No problem at all,' she said, then opened a notebook titled Problems. The client praised her flexibility and asked whether the changes could stay within the original budget. Mina's smile became a structural engineering achievement.

Back in the service hallway, she wrote the revised cost and schedule, sent them for approval and exhaled for the first time in eleven minutes. Professional composure, she explained, is not the absence of fire. It is keeping the fire out of the centerpiece.