“It was sharp.”
“Thank you.”
“I did not say flattering.”
“I didn’t hear flattering.”
Pierre nods, pleased. “Good. You Americans often hear applause where there is only information.”
“We’re an optimistic people.”
“You are a loud people,” Pierre says.
“That too.”
He lifts his glass. “To accuracy.”
I lift mine. “To surviving it.”
Pierre laughs, and after that, dinner relaxes enough to become useful.
The food is precise, restrained, and occasionally too pleased with its own restraint. Pierre agrees with me on the second course and argues with me on the third. He thinks the chef’s use of bitterness is elegant. I think it is hiding indecision. He says Americans have a childish relationship with pleasure. I tell him French critics sometimes mistake displeasure for intelligence. He laughs hard enough that the server looks over from the bar.
By the cheese course, we are no longer being polite.
That is when he says the name.
“Have you arranged Maison Holt yet?” Pierre asks.
I keep my hand steady on the stem of my glass. “I have a reservation.”
“Of course you do.”
“Should I be flattered you assumed competence?”
“I assumed Diana would not send someone incompetent to Europe with her name attached.”
“Less flattering, but still acceptable.”
Pierre cuts into a small wedge of blue cheese and spreads it onto bread with unnecessary precision.
“Holt is the one everyone is watching.”
“I gathered that.”
“You have not looked him up?”
“No.”
Pierre pauses with the bread halfway to his mouth. “No?”
“No,” I say.
“You are either very principled or pretending to be interesting,” Pierre says.
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
He smiles. “Why not look?”
