Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up outside the restaurant, screeching to a dramatic halt and causing most of the people waiting behind the velvet queue ropes to turn and stare. Brendan hopped out and grinned, and tossed the Bugatti's keys to a waiting valet, who was gawking at the vehicle with a slack jaw.
“Park her nicely, kid,” Brendan said to the young man, who couldn't have been older than 20 or 21. “Or I'm gonna have to kill ya. Because if you put a single scratch on my baby, it's gonna take you the next 30 years to pay for it on your salary.”
The remark was uncalled for, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I preferred to enjoy the finer things in life without rubbing it in the faces of those who were less fortunate.
The kid seemed to brush it off, and instead wore an ear-to-ear grin as Brendan handed him the keys to the supercar.
“Don't worry, sir,” he said to Brendan, “I'll put her in the safest spot in the lot.”
He then turned to me and smiled, and I wondered if the kid meant it or if he was going to park it on a side street somewhere just for spite.
He drove off exceedingly carefully, and Brendan watched him with a scowl as he did.
“Kids,” he said, shaking his head.
“Come on, you're not even that much older than him.”
“I'm 34. That's a lifetime away from that little, wet-behind-the-ears punk.”
I rolled my eyes, irritated at his attitude. “If you say so. Why don't we go inside?”
He smiled, baring bright-white teeth. “Sounds perfect. Shall we?” He cocked his elbow out for me to take and we strolled arm in arm toward the front door as cameras flashed. It seemed the VIP grand opening was a bigger social deal than I had imagined it would be.
“I'm looking forward to this,” he chimed as we entered the lobby of the restaurant. “I'm a connoisseur of fine food, you know. Always have been. In fact, I dreamed of being a chef when I was a kid. My parents, of course, wouldn't hear of it. They'd planned for me to go to an Ivy League school and enter the business world since before I could walk. I didn't really have much say in the matter.
“Still, I don't regret it. I mess around in the kitchen in my spare time while I make piles of green doing what I do. Which means I can afford to eat meals prepared by the most skilled, artisanal chefs on the planet, whenever the hell I want. I think that's a successful compromise for giving up a dream, don't you?”
“I guess it is, depending on your point of view.”
We made our way inside where a waiter showed us to our table. The décor was ultra modern and tech-minimalist. I liked the place immediately.
“Check out the tabletops,” he said. “There are no menus because the surface itself is a menu.”
It was true; the tables were touchscreen menus. With eager eyes, I began scrolling through menu items, all of which looked absolutely decadent. While I was looking at the food, Brendan perused the wine menu. He pressed a button on the touchscreen, and within seconds a waiter arrived at our table.
“Good evening, Mr. Savage and Ms. Maxwell,” the waiter greeted us. “May I interest you in some wine?”
“Absolutely, kid,” replied Brendan. “This dry red from Argentina here, it comes highly recommended, does it?”
“Recommended by the chef himself,” the waiter replied with a smile, “even though he is French, and the wine is Argentinian. It does, of course, depend heavily on which dishes you're planning on ordering. The wines have all been selected in order to complement—”
“Yadda, yadda, yadda, okay, I get it. Look, this one is really expensive, it's highly recommended, so that'll do,” Brendan demanded with a roll of his eyes. “Just bring it out, all right?”
“Certainly, sir.”
Brendan shook his head as the waiter left.
“Jeez, that kid could just yak on and on, couldn't he? All I wanted was some wine.”
“Well, he was trying to explain that different wines—”
“Complement different foods, I get it! Jesus, I told you, I wanted to be a chef. You think I don't know about this kind of stuff? Of course, I do. And, that's exactly why I don't need to hear it from some bottom-feeder waiter who only just got out of high school. The dumb-ass probably only barely scraped through, anyway.”
“You don't know that.”
“Why else would he be working a crap job like this?”
“Maybe to pay his way through college. Not all of us had parents who could afford to pay for us to go to Ivy League schools, Brendan.”