Good.
By late morning, the room is running at speed. No guests, but the servers move through the dining room with full plates, empty plates, wine glasses, water, bread, questions, corrections. Claire’s handpicked photographer is not present because I threatened to cancel the paragraph, which apparently remains the only hostage with value. The dining room sounds different now. Not alive yet, but close. Cutlery touching porcelain. Shoes across stone. Low voices. Kitchen calls. The door between performance and reality begins to open.
A server named Luc hesitates on the turn from the kitchen to the dining room with two plates in his hands.
I catch it from the pass.
“Luc,” I call.
He stops immediately. “Yes, Chef.”
“You looked down.”
Luc straightens. “Yes, Chef.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to make sure the plate was steady, Chef.”
“If the plate isn’t steady in your hand, your eyes won’t rescue it.”
“No, Chef.”
“Again.”
Luc returns to the kitchen entrance and repeats the walk with his eyes forward.
Better.
Not good enough yet, but better.
Julien clocks it too and marks something on his sheet.
By the third run, Luc no longer looks down.
By the fourth, he looks like he never had.
That is why we do the work.
Near noon, my phone vibrates on the shelf beside the pass.
Claire.
I ignore it because the fifth course is coming up wrong at table eight.
The phone vibrates again.
Julien glances at it. “Claire.”
“I know.”
“She said she was sending the revised press briefing.”
“Then she has sent it.”
“She will want you to read it.”
“She wants many things she has no reasonable expectation of receiving.”
