All That He Requires(10)

The maître-d’ sat us down at a tiny table along the wall. The room was relatively small, with room for perhaps 20 people total. I looked around at the other diners, all in expensive suits and fancy dresses – and all sitting at long, black tables.

We were the only ones next to the wall. In fact, our table was conspicuously out of place – both its placement and the way it disrupted the flow of the room. As though it wasn’t ordinarily there.

I could just picture a couple of waiters hastily arranging everything moments before we arrived.

“How many strings do you think Sebastian pulled to get us in here?” I whispered across the table to Connor.

“Don’t worry, he enjoyed pulling every one of them.”

“There must be a months-long waiting list to eat in a place like this,” I marveled.

“It’s a Monday.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that has nothing to do with it.”

“What can I say? Sebastian’s the best.”

“We should record that and send it to him so he can fall asleep listening to it.”

Connor grinned and settled back in his chair.

I looked around. “Where are the menus?”

“Sebastian already ordered for us.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I would have liked to have seen the choices.”

Connor smiled. “Setting boundaries, are you?”

“Glad you noticed.”

“Like I said, you’ve never had a problem doing that with me. But this time is different. The chef here is an artist. I mean that sincerely – he’s world-class. And there’s a sixteen-course meal that changes every – ”

“Sixteen courses?”

“Don’t worry, they’re fairly small. But the menu he selects is only around for a couple of weeks or so, and then it changes and never repeats. A fleeting moment that’s here, then gone. You might not like some of it, but the overall effect is pretty incredible. It’s kind of like participating in some kind of theater performance… you just have to give yourself over to it and experience it.”

Give yourself over to it.

That was a pretty apt description of some other things, too.

“You’re getting a glassy-eyed look,” Connor commented.

“Just thinking about some other things I’ve ‘experienced’ this past weekend.”

“Ah, yes. Now that was a hell of a performance.”

“By you or me?” I asked coquettishly.

“Now you’re just fishing for compliments.”

“Or you were congratulating yourself.”

He grinned. “I prefer to think of it as a dance, and you need two highly skilled performers for it to be the best it can be.”

“And how was it for you?”

He leaned over and took my hands on the table. “The best. The very, very best.”

My heart fluttered to hear him say it.





14





The dinner eased by in a sumptuous parade of dishes, things I’d never tasted – or even seen – before. I’m more of an onion rings kind of a girl than an haute cuisine chick, but I was so dazzled by the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that I completely surrendered.

If that sounds naughty… it kind of was. In a culinary way, anyhow.

There was a strawberry soup to start, both spicy and sweet. Foie gras, which is definitely not my favorite food in the world – but the shavings of truffle scattered across the top quickly became my favorite (at least for the next fifteen minutes). A carpaccio of a delicate fish, followed by scallops served on half a scallop shell. A truffle tart with smoked bacon. A cheese soufflé. Abalone and leeks in a ginger broth. Roasted lobster with lemongrass. Grilled seabass with spinach. A tiny veal chop flavored with pesto. Three or four desserts, including a chocolate mousse with a Fuji apple compote. (I was in heaven with the chocolate.)

Not only was the food astoundingly good, but the presentation was… how should I put this?… whimsical. There were tiny bits of gold foil over some of the food, like on a dish of wild grains prepared like risotto. (Now I know what money tastes like. And it’s not Goldschlager.) One course came with a little bale of hay, about an inch square and tied with strands of cloth, on the edge of the plate. Because, hey, what should you put next to a fancy plate of food topped with gold foil? Why, a miniature bale of hay, of course.

I stopped trying to wrap my head around it after awhile, and just experienced it, like Connor suggested.

Oh – don’t forget the wine. My God, the wine. There were different glasses, just an ounce or two, paired with each dish. I’m no connoisseur, but wow. My tongue was having orgasms.

And yet, despite the culinary fireworks, what I’ll remember most about that evening was the conversation.

“So, tell me…” I began somewhere around the third course.

“What?”

“What’s this mysterious business you’re here for?”

Connor sighed. “Let’s not talk business right now.”

“What do you want to talk about, then?”

He took a sip of his wine and considered. “Something personal.”

“We talked about personal stuff last time we ate out.”

“I’m pretty sure we haven’t exhausted the subject.”

“Okay, smart guy… but we talked about me last time. I think it’s about time we talk about you.”

“Hm,” he said, noncommittal.

I thought about his ex-fiancée – the woman who had broken his heart – but decided against bringing that up. The topic had gotten a slightly chilly reception last time.

Instead, I went with a variation on something he’d said to me.

“So… what did five-year-old Connor want to be when he grew up?”

“A futures trader,” he said, entirely seriously, as he took a bite of scallops.

I laughed and almost snorted wine up my nose. “What five-year-old wants to be a futures trader?!”

“I did.”

“Um… what’s a futures trader?”

“It’s somebody who buys and sells commodities, like gold or soybeans or cotton, and tries to anticipate future changes in prices, either up or down, to maximize profit.”

“You wanted to buy soybeans?” I asked, confused.

“Not really – I wanted to bet on whether the price of soybeans would go up or down. It’s kind of like day-trading stocks, where you’re trying to buy low and sell high in a relatively short period of time.”

“Oh. Well. Every five-year-old wants to do that.”

Connor smiled. “My father had an employee who was especially good at it. Rajesh Sengupta. He was really nice to me. I think that’s why I wanted to trade futures – I wanted to be like him.”

“Oh, that’s cute.”

“Yeah. Mr. Raj… I haven’t thought about him in years…”

“What about your dad?”

“What about him?”

“Wasn’t he nice to you?”

“Haha,” Connor laughed. “Not particularly, no.”

I stared at him. “Not at all?”

“He didn’t have much use for children. Or for anybody who couldn’t make him money.”

“But you saved his life in Mexico!”

I was referring to a few years ago, when Connor had walked into a den of kidnappers and paid his father’s ransom, at great personal risk of being captured and killed himself.

“I wasn’t five years old at the time,” Connor pointed out.

“But… what did you do as a family?”

“You mean, when I wasn’t in boarding school? Went to Fiji a couple of times. And France and Italy. Skied in Switzerland every Christmas break.”

“That sounds like fun.”

“Well, it was, but not for the reasons you’re thinking. My parents usually left us with a nanny and took off for the black diamond runs. By the time I got good enough to go with them, I was a teenager, and there was no way I was going to hang out with them then.”

“But… you spent time with them after skiing, right?”

“No, they usually went out dining and drinking with friends. I’d see them in the mornings before we left for the ski lifts, and that was about it.”

“What about on Christmas?”

“Eh… I guess I saw them a little longer on Christmas morning, but then it was off to the slopes.”

I sat there openmouthed. I knew that situations like this existed – where parents did little more than make guest appearances in the movies of their children’s lives – but I’d never actually met anybody like that.

I had tons of friends whose parents had divorced, and a couple of them had rarely seen their fathers growing up. But that was different; they usually lived in different states. I’d never met anybody who had grown up like Connor, with married parents they never saw.

I tried again.

“But… what about as a kid?”

“What about it?”

“Didn’t you ever… I don’t know… play games?”

Connor thought for a second. “My father and I played Monopoly a few times.”

Finally.

“That’s nice,” I smiled.

“He would make deals with me and then renege.”

“…he’d what?”

“I sold him Park Place once to get money to buy hotels for another property, but with the promise that I could land on Park Place or Boardwalk twice and not have to pay. He agreed, then when I landed on Boardwalk the first time, he demanded payment. I told him he’d promised, and he asked if I had it in writing.