“My God,” Margaret was saying outside the cab. She was shielding her eyes and looking up at the two great vaulting windows, the purple curtains just visible from outside, the antiqued wood and slate covering the exterior walls. The hundreds of lights—the entire place was sparkling, flickering. There was a red runner here, a long black awning. There was a man in a uniform and a cap with gold braid, bending over from the waist, talking to her. There were half a dozen valet parkers and a whole lot of photographers standing on a square mat of black carpet set off to the side behind a gold rope. The doorman looked very quickly at the stiff card that was their invitation, returned it, smiling. There was a sudden strobe of camera flashes.
Olli pocketed his change with a little difficulty and pulled himself out of the car using the roof and the door frame as handles. The flashing intensified, bright and hard and white.
“Unbelievable,” Margaret said, looking at the cameras. “They obviously don’t know who we aren’t.” But she slipped a hand around Olli’s waist and turned him a quarter-turn towards the cameras, squeezed him tight. She was smiling broadly, having fun with it. Olli followed her gaze. The cameras flashed again. Now his eyes were dancing with blue and green dots.
“Jumpin’ Jaysus,” he said, covering his eyes.
“Don’t cover your face,” someone said.
Which was all the prompting Olli needed to pull his tuxedo coat halfway over his head. He put his other arm around Margaret’s shoulder and, adopting his best wiseguy voice, he hustled up the runner towards the front door yelling: “No pictures, no pictures.”
The cameras exploded into action again.
Margaret was still laughing when they got inside, when her sense of being in a movie gave way to the sense that they were actually in an opera. The room was spectacularly packed with tuxedos and gowns. She stared around herself as the maître d’hôtel checked their invitations again and the coat-check girl took her coat. She smoothed her own dark green Donna Karan dress down over her hips. Fitted but simple, it had a square neck and wide shoulder straps. A sexy apron, she thought looking in the mirror earlier. Perfect.
A jazz band was swinging up in the far corner of the restaurant, a metronomic, rolling sound tumbling unstoppably forward. Waiters were trolling through the crowd with trays of champagne and martinis. Cigar girls were popping up at your elbow every ten seconds or so. “Monte Cristo? Romeo y Julietta? Uppman?” They all looked like fitness instructors. Everybody warranted a second look. A man floated by with a magnificent sapphire broach at the throat of his tuxedo. A woman carried a gold lamé riding crop. A tall, black-haired waiter stood nearby in a pinstriped suit designed to fit tight—not so tight that the buttons pulled, but tight enough that he was (Margaret looked away, then back)
visible
. All the light seemed to come from candles, hooded on every table, in aluminum wall sconces between the paintings. And above Margaret the high ceilings vaulted like the night sky, punctuated by three massive chandeliers, constellations of crystal and silver and dozens of beeswax tapers. The light swirled through the room. It glowed and refracted in the yellow linen-painted walls. It danced in darkened air.
“Wow,” Margaret said again, this time under her breath.
Olli swept two flutes of champagne off a passing tray and gave her one.
“Is this baroque or decadent?” he asked, from close.
She saw the toque first. One of the quilted-metal kitchen doors had just swung open, far at the back of the room. And above the heads of the guests on the riser, a chef’s hat bobbed its way through the crowd. Stopping frequently.
“Chef,” people would say, greeting him. A well-educated, fooderati crowd.
“Hello. Hi. Welcome,” Jeremy was saying. “Thanks. Thank you for coming. Thanks, really.”
Margaret cut through the crowd towards him, pulling Olli in her wake. When she had Jeremy in a hug she said: “So exciting. All this for you.”
“Well …,” he said, letting her go and taking Olli’s outstretched hand, distracted.
“Well what?” Olli said. “This is the place, isn’t it?”
Jeremy nodded and tried to smile. Yes, they were in the right place. Olli tossed down the last swirl of champagne in his glass and swapped for a full glass that appeared on a tray at his elbow.
“You know you shouldn’t waste D.P. on me,” Olli said.
“They’re wasting Veuve Cliquot on you, in fact,” Margaret said, pointing out the crates of champagne all around the room.
“Oh,” Olli said, sipping, looking around. The band was doing a decent Charles Mingus. “Better Git It in Your Soul.” He was beginning to enjoy himself.
“Your father’s not here?” Margaret asked, having looked when she came in.
“Oh, he’s here,” Jeremy said. An answer for which he didn’t volunteer an explanation.
“It looks really … dramatic,” Margaret said, moving on. But Jeremy just kept stroking his chin and scratching his ear, glancing around the room. He looked pale; had he lost more weight?
“Yeah, it’s so dark,” he said to her. “Candlelight was Benny’s idea—we’ll be using electricity after tonight.” And then, without warning: “How’s Trout?”
“He’s fine,” Margaret answered, surprised. Pleased. “He was very upset he couldn’t come.”
“It would’ve been fine with me.” Jeremy smiled and looked into her eyes, finally.
“Is everything fantastic?” she asked him. Ordinarily, he would have told her what to order by now. If not instructed her, at least given her a few ranked options.
“Right …,” he said, reminded. He stopped and focused. “Salmon appetizer and pesto soup are great. Prawn main is really good. Olli will love the lamb.”
“Baa-aa,” Olli said.
She was just going to give Jeremy a good-luck kiss when Dante leaned into the conversation. “Gentlemen, the Chef,” he said. Behind him stood two men in black suits with black shirts. Margaret thought they must have called each other earlier to co-ordinate outfits. The short one had sleepy eyes that remained intense, pupils locked on target from under lowered lids. The bulgy, mean-looking one had a taste for silver and turquoise—an earring, a bracelet, a belt buckle. Margaret associated both these qualities with show business.
“Of course,” Jeremy was saying. He shook hands with Michael Duke and Luke Lucas. Here they were,
Last Chapter
. He hadn’t thought of them since The Monkey’s Paw Bistro closing night. “Thank you so very much for coming,” he said. He introduced Olli and Margaret.
“Pleasure,” Duke said, taking Margaret’s hand to kiss it. She gently firmed her arm in resistance, and Duke bobbed slowly back into position for a regular handshake. He turned to Jeremy: “I used to come down to your other place. Loved it.”
“The Monkey’s Paw Bistro,” Margaret said.
“That’s the one,” Lucas said. “Near here, I think.”
Margaret and Olli exchanged the near-invisible glance of people who have been married for a while.
“Very near,” Jeremy said.
Dante pulled Jeremy aside. Margaret went off to look at the paintings, leaving Olli to deal with Duke and Lucas. They talked about the show for a few minutes, until a cell phone bleated. Duke did a credible impersonation of a man having an epileptic seizure as he retrieved the tiny phone from an interior pocket and fumbled open the fiddly mouthpiece. Once connected, he signalled
Excuse me
with his free hand and withdrew to the relative quiet at the edge of the room. Lucas turned at the same moment to take a Cohiba off a passing cigar tray, giving Olli three seconds to consider his next move. He slipped into the crowd and over towards the band.
Definitely Mingus. They were doing “Boogie Stop Shuffle” now. An unalterable fact, Olli registered (draining his second flute of dangerously drinkable champagne), despite the fact that the gentleman with the gold cummerbund near the stage was telling his over-perfumed date that it was the theme from
Batman
.
Across the room Dante leaned in close to Jeremy’s ear: “What did you say to Kiwi? What is the ‘Third-Wave Culinary Revolution’?”
“We are it,” Jeremy said, with a smile he hoped was inclusive, soothing. “The restaurant of no place. Post-national.”
Dante considered this idea and Jeremy together before deciding his Chef had something. “That is really quite good, you know? Did you talk to Philly about it?”
Jeremy made his way back towards the kitchen. He was just opposite the bar when he saw Benny. She was alone, drinking something clear out of a tumbler, no ice. He judged it wasn’t water from the wrinkle that formed across her nose with each sip. The hour was marching down on them—he didn’t really have time—but he went over to say hello.
Martini rocks, hold the rocks. Not her first.
“I’m a little high,” she said right off, and leaned into him.
“High as in …,” Jeremy looked at the drink.
“High as in a tab of E.”
What the hell? Was everybody planning to get hammered tonight?
“I was nervous,” Benny was saying. “Normally it smoothes me right out. Makes me …
amorous.”
She pressed a little harder into him. “Tonight it made me more nervous.”
Jeremy put a hand on her shoulder. “Why would you be nervous?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Jeremy,” she said. “I don’t know anything any more.”
Now she threatened to go teary on him and there were people around. “Come on, sweetie,” Jeremy said, very quietly. “This is the big night.”
“For you guys maybe,” Benny said, a shade too loud.
“For you too. What is this?” Jeremy asked. “Everybody loves your work.”
Everybody loved her work. Sure. Benny sipped. Albertini loved her work, true. Philip loved her work. Dante in his own way seemed happy with what she’d done, and he would probably be happy with her again when next he
needed her
, but in the meantime why didn’t she think about a return to the retail side? “The
ree
-tail side?” Benny said. “I knew I was getting used, but I didn’t know I was getting thrown out afterwards.”
What a time to talk to me about career counselling, Jeremy thought. “You gotta be tough, all right?” he whispered to her. “Dante is playing it close, he always does. Remember: tough.”
Benny blew her nose on a bar napkin and looked at him in a way she hadn’t in a long time, her breasts still pressing into his arm. “Will you kiss me?” she said. “Please?”
He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t know why she would have asked, except maybe because the E was kicking in or she
wanted to provide him with further evidence that some faintly hysterical energy was sparking through the crowd this evening. His friends were getting loaded, his guests right behind. You simply couldn’t calculate these things. But now that the hour was on them, he felt it arrive. He turned away from Benny without saying a word more and began to make his way towards the kitchen doors. He heard her release a muffled sob behind him.
Dante was there again; he was everywhere, apparently. He was teleporting himself around the room, appearing at the elbow of a cabinet minister, a favourite tenor, a clutch of agents, a brace of producers, a murder of Inferno lawyers and I-bankers.
Now, his chef. He appeared and locked his hand on Jeremy’s arm.
“Everything OK?” he asked. “Everything is fine,” Jeremy said.
“Are you ready?”
Jeremy paused and nodded. “I am ready.”
Dante smiled hard, hand still on Jeremy’s arm. And when he released, it all began. Dante whispered something to Philip, who had been hovering nearby. Philip turned and whispered to the maître d’hôtel, and the word rippled from there down the chain of command via the telepathic powers people of that important position enjoy. The maître d’hôtel looked briefly around the room—his neck cracked an inch in either direction and he took it all in—and wait staff immediately set down trays, straightened snug jackets and pulled short skirts a fraction of an inch lower over high, round buttocks. They fanned out with that one glance. They appeared at elbows. They murmured, “Dinner is served. Please find a seat.” They encouraged. They herded.
Jeremy made his way upstream and burst into his kitchen.
“Time?” he said to Henk, who was standing ready at the stove top. Jeremy strode down the line.
“1903, Chef,” Henk said.
They took five, leaned against a prep counter and talked quietly. Exactly seven minutes later, Jeremy heard the printer chatter as his first docket spooled in from the dining room. The narrow paper coiled out of the machine and hung there, quivering in place, waiting for his attention.
Jeremy took a deep breath, as if he were about to dive underwater for a long time. When he exhaled, he leaned over and tore off the docket. Dante’s table. They were kicking things off with pesto soup, three salmon kebabs, consommé, a terrine and a boutifar. A tacitly agreed-upon silence hung in the air, enveloping all the kitchen staff. Even Chico stood utterly still in the dish pit without comprehension. A standing eight count of respectful and optimistic silence.
After which Jeremy launched himself off the edge of the prep table, calling the orders as he stalked to his place on the line: “Order three kebab, order pesto, order consommé, order terrine, and order me up some blood sausage.”
“Ordering three kebab,” Conrad said, nodding down the flat top at Joey de Yonker, whose hands were already in action, one on a plate, one reaching for his kimchi.
“Ordering blood,” Henk said, assigning the kitchen name that would stick with the boutifar for the remainder of the evening.
“Order terrine,” Rolando said. “Order pesto,” said Angela.
“Showtime,” said Joey de Yonkers. “Order squirrel soup.”
And they were slammed, no surprise. Swamped from the get-go. “Order consommé, order terrine. Order two escabeche.”
They had five tables in by 1915. Then seven. Minutes later, twelve.
Jeremy worked with Joey on the consommés. The broth was perfectly clear with a rich golden hue, great flavour. The signature won tons smelled a hint of sesame and ginger. Joey heated them four at a time in a few tablespoons of vermouth and sherry, then floated them into the Chinese bowls Jeremy had filled. The
surface of the soup was laced with chives and finished with a single edible Malaysian marigold. It made a pretty dish.