Armand leans back in his chair, satisfied with himself.
“See?” he says in French to Éloi, though his eyes remain fixed on you. “I told you. Blank as a curtain.”
He wants the moment to stretch. He wants your confusion, or your embarrassment, or better still, the tiny helpless smile of a worker who understood she was being mocked but lacked the means to answer. The rich are often greedy in strangely small ways. They do not merely want service. They want confirmation that service belongs below them.
You lower your eyes just enough to be polite.
Then, in flawless German, calm and clear enough that the candlelight itself seems to sharpen, you say, “A bottle of the most expensive wine in the cellar can certainly be arranged, monsieur. Though I would respectfully suggest the 2009 Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese instead. It is rarer, subtler, and would pair better with arrogance than with beef.”
Silence falls like a dropped pane of glass.
Éloi’s grin collapses first. Not fully, not all at once, but in pieces, as if his face has forgotten the order in which it was assembled. Armand blinks once. Then again. His hand remains resting on the card, but the lazy rhythm of his fingers stills.
At the far end of the room, someone laughs at another table, unaware that table twelve has just shifted under the weight of a sentence.
