You meet his eyes. “So I answered in German.”
For one beat, his expression is unreadable. Then a smile breaks across his face, sudden and fierce, the smile of a man who has watched too many elegant bullies mistake silence for inferiority.
“Tell me you cut him cleanly.”
You allow yourself the faintest grin. “I suggested a better wine for his arrogance.”
The chef barks one dry laugh and slaps the counter once with his towel. “Good girl.”
Cléa, the manager, appears at exactly the wrong moment, because managers of luxury establishments possess an almost spiritual instinct for walking into the room only after courage has become inconvenient. Her eyes flash from Baptiste to you, then to table twelve.
“What happened?” she hisses.
“Nothing that affected service,” you say.
That answer does not reassure her. Managers like Cléa do not measure peace by dignity preserved, but by complaints avoided. She is one of those women who learned to survive in polished rooms by becoming fluent in anticipatory surrender. It is a skill, and perhaps once it saved her. Now it has hardened into worship.
“You did not provoke them, I hope.”
