The seat beside me at Vanity Fair’s 2013 Oscar dinner in the Sunset Tower Hotel, on Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, was empty and it remained so for about 20 minutes into the dinner. I looked at the placename and read “Kamala Harris”, which meant nothing to me, and started talking to the then CEO of Yahoo!, Marissa Mayer. Then a blur of an evening dress to my right and the attorney general for the state of California slipped into her seat beside me and irradiated the table with the smile that infuriates Donald Trump, probably because it’s as natural as his scowl.
If the future senator, vice-president and now presidential candidate was disappointed about her place next to the least powerful person in that room, she had the grace not to show it. The rest of the table consisted of three well-known power couples and one restless billionaire, so, Kamala and I, while not exactly paired off, were thrown together for the next three hours of intermittent dining and watching the glacial business of Oscar distribution on the TV screens around the room.
