The Restaurant

Forks on china; gentle conversation. Hummingbird waiters darted from table to table, leaning genially while stopped and cursing silently while in flight. Beneath it all a lascivious red carpet was expanding its shaggy empire to every corner of the dining floor.
    ‘Are you quite ready to order, sir?’ A waistcoated man of topiaried facial hair leaned his lean, hands clasped at nipple-height. He had been standing there for approximately thirty-five seconds. ‘Perhaps an aperitif?’
    ‘No, thank you. I’d just come in for some, er,’ Arthur scanned the menu without taking in a single word, ‘food.’
    ‘Excellent choice, sir. Are you aware of today’s specials menu?’ Some teeth joined the waiter’s grin. Arthur shook his head. ‘Ah, well you are very fortunate indeed as tonight we have stocked a carnival of culinary temptations. For starters we have seared cutlets of wild hare, truffle-stuffed partridge gizzards, brazed weasel cheeks, lightly sautéed spleen of stoat and the flambéed feet of five febrile pheasants with a buckshot jus. For mains there are horse shanks doused in wine and betrayed to succulence, forest hogs fed to combustion on the giblets of lesser beasts, flame-licked fox cubs of untimely demise, spatchcock starling with battered owl hoots and lastly the fried mind of the all-seeing cerebellum squid.’ The waiter’s hands rubbed more rabidly with each dish. Noticing, he stopped.
    ‘Is there any dessert?’
    ‘Tiramisu.’
    ‘Right. What would you recommend?’
    ‘Well, it’s not strictly part of the menu but I would highly recommend the grilled mutton kidneys draped with a tangy urea gravy. An inspirational dish.’
    ‘I had no idea animals were so… edible.’
    ‘Indeed. I always say that if your maw is not adrip with cerebrospinal fluid then you have thrown the best bits away.’
    ‘Can I just have some bread?’
    ‘Bread is complementary, sir. How about some deviled hamster hearts on toast?’
    ‘Can I just have some bread on its own and then I’ll think about what I’m going to order?’ The waiter looked agitated. He glanced around the room.
    ‘Of course, sir. I will return with your bread post haste.’ He hummed his way to a set of doors at the back and disappeared.
    It was remarkably busy for that late in the evening, guffaws and chortles rolling on the blanket of cigar fumes. It seemed to be a rather upmarket establishment, and Arthur wondered how he came to be there. He certainly could not afford any of the food. Something to do with seeing all the flesh and making it inhuman again. Making it back into animal. Not even animal… How had it become too human? He felt it was staring him in the face. Staring, staring…
    ‘Mind you, they were just small fry.’ A heaving, expectorating voice carried from the next table. ‘Amittai Inc., they were called. Father and son operation. Tried to negotiate. Pathetic, really. Imagine it, the likes of them thinking they could negotiate with the likes of us. Ha! We’re just bigger fish, they soon saw it. Then there were a few others. Sorry little scuttling doo-dads, snapping away at our heels. Gobbled them all right up – and that’s just this year. You know, we’re not just bigger fish, we’re bloody great whales, aye Greta!’ The speaker and a woman of equal enormity snorted with laughter, he in a dinner jacket with crimson bow tie and she in a dress of the same colour. They also shared identical heads, merely with differing arrangements of hair on each. Around the other side of their large table sat four straight-backed men. A waiting waiter pounced.
    ‘So, that will be the whitebait, the lobster and the whale’s fluke?’
    ‘What?’ The man sneezed a spume of champagne. ‘What in the hell are you – Wait, whale? How’d you wangle that?’ Lips blubbering in anticipation, waiter coy.
    ‘This restaurant is the de facto soil of a lesser known and immensely private nation. A very northerly one. Certain concessions have been made and certain subpolar oil fields tapped that the ambassador may indulge in his favourite childhood snack, here in the sunless nights of this foreign land. He conducts his diplomatic duties from the meat freezer, when not acting as chief poissonier, for which he has received several –’
    ‘Take more than a bit of poison to fell the likes of me, aye!’ A hand slapped the table, causing a seismic shudder of crockery. ‘Aye!’
    ‘Indeed. Very amusing.’  A murmur of sadness flashed across the waiter, having been seemingly on a role with his speech, but he snuffed it like a pro, no doubt redirecting his ire down other, probably urine-based avenues – or whatever bodily run-off that passed for food-tainting in an establishment which actively encouraged urea gravy. The man sank back into his straining chair, perhaps ready to elongate a word with satisfaction.
    ‘Yeeees…’ Now forward again. ‘Alright, you can toddle off and bring all of what you said. With extra whale.’ The waiter nodded and left. It did not appear to have been his first visit to that table, its scattering of dishes and bones a sort of animal graveyard exhumed by flood. The man turned back to the stony four. ‘I find the endangered to have an unparalleled succulence. One’s inevitable end must be a tenderising thing, I can only imagine. Fear-sweetened, even that old giant of the deep… Mind you,’ his feigned gravitas fell away,     ‘not so fluky if he’s on my plate!’ Again he and the woman collapsed into laughter. Their opposites sat as statues. ‘Guess that makes us cannibals, Greta, aye! Aaah-hahaa!’
    ‘You have quite the sense of humour, Mister Sputum,’ said one of the four.
    ‘Oh please, enough of the formality. You can call me Master Sputum!’ The mouth howled; saliva sprayed. ‘Lord Sputum! The Grand Archduke Sputum, Sovereign of all Sputamia!’
    A moment passed and some breath was gulped, composure gained. ‘No, in all seriousness, you can call me Hans. My sister and I started our company all those years ago with an ethos of openness and friendliness. Do you remember, my Grety,’ the dickie-bowed man turned dotingly to his sibling, ‘how we would bake gingerbread for all the other children on the street?’
    ‘Of course, my darling.’
    ‘That is my most cherished memory.’ He placed his hand on hers. ‘And my second most cherished memory is when we realised we could make them pay for it!’ More corpulent mirth, which at that moment seemed certain to continue for the remainder of Arthur’s life. ‘And you know, if you’re a gingerbread seller and you pay some older kids to smash the local bakery up then you can charge whatever you want – assuming of course your customer base can’t go without them, which, thanks to the ground-up contents of mummy’s magic calm-cabinet, they –’ The globular Greta coughed primly. ‘Yes, well, tricks of the trade and all that. Mum’s the word. Skeletons should stay in the closet, Grety’s always saying. Although if I had my way I’d mount them above the fireplace!’ Without waiting to finish his laughter he ripped the leg from a roasted quail and fanged its flesh from the bone. His sister rolled some cured ham into a tube and inserted it into her neck, bypassing teeth and tongue altogether.
    ‘Oh, Hans,’ she said, ‘you’re such a boor.’
    ‘Well I’m just letting these gentlemen know that you and I come from good, philanthropic roots, and that as a result of the proposed deal our two great organisations may move forward in mutual benefit and so on and so forth.’ A sliver of quail skin flapped from the corner of his mouth. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I must pop to the little boys’ room.’
    ‘Ooh, me too,’ Greta added. ‘Except, you know, the little girls’ room.’ With some effort they got to their feet and tottered out of sight.
    ‘I trust everything is in place,’ said the same man as previously – from beneath a pointed and oddly anachronistic moustache, now that Arthur looked.
    ‘You trust well, as ever,’ drawled a second. ‘I say, what are we doing here, anyway? I’ve never seen such repugnant people.’
    ‘Because the boss wanted to know if there would be any advantage to a merger rather than a takeover, or to letting them stay on as shareholders or something to that effect. Whatever she wanted the only reaction this pair of squealers provokes in me is the word No.’
    ‘What, aah, what will happen to them?’ said a third, accent listing silkily.
    ‘They have assets,’ returned the first between stabs of a toothpick, despite appearing to have foregone eating, ‘but their finances are in such a mess that we’ll be able to force everything they have. Every last doubloon. There’ll probably end up on the street. Marooned on some traffic island, perhaps, snuffling at passersby.’ Cutlery clinked endlessly in the background. The second gave a decisive throat-clearance and raised his iced water for a toast.
    ‘Good riddance,’ he said. ‘You know, I wonder if they’d taste better if we told them beforehand…’ The three laughed mechanically, though not without pleasure. The fourth grinned silence into his gazpacho.
Another waiter approached Arthur, attenuate, as they all were, and with a kindly smile. It may have been the one to serve Sputum, but this was difficult to confirm. The way they held their faces was the key to it; they could look completely different yet through that expression conglomerate into some singular cosmic Waiter.
    ‘Are you ready to order, sir?’
    ‘I just asked for some bread, thank you.’ He of the waistcoat looked perplexed.
    ‘Are you quite sure, sir? None of the other waiters has been assigned to your table.’
    ‘Yes, I spoke to someone. He had hair kind of around here and here.’ Arthur sketched lines around his mouth and along his jaw, unsure as to why he had suddenly become so attuned to facial hair.
    ‘Ah. That was Latour. I am afraid he does not work here.’
    ‘Sorry?’ The waiter sighed.
    ‘When a waiter or waitress sees a table that has been served they will often just assume it is being tended by one of their colleagues, but sometimes it is actually being served by Latour. He comes in and takes orders from his own menu, knowing that our dining floor is somewhat palatial in size and therefore hard for myself to watch over with a truly omniscient eye, then he goes and prepares the meals in his van. He always parks in a different place so we can’t catch him. I’ve no idea how he gets in and out.’
‘So he’s running a restaurant inside your restaurant?’
‘Strange, isn’t it. He’s extremely skilled. Mostly serves roadkill. Odds and ends from under his wheel arch.’
‘Yes, the menu was a bit… gamey. Apart from the squid.’
‘The squid is a rather more abstract dish. Very good, though. I would recommend his entire menu, as long as you’ve an open mind and resilient gag reflex. Except the hare. Puns are an acquired taste, after all.’
    ‘You’ve eaten his food?’
    ‘He was for a time under this restaurant’s employment. And besides, how could I not have? The man is a pioneer of alliterative cuisine. You know,’ the waiter bent more acutely at the waist, drawing his mouth to Arthur’s ear, ‘he is famed in certain circles for having developed a technique involving the organs of a single animal being reduced in a mixture of its own blood and effusions at a series of different but extremely precise temperatures whereby it is possible, once all water has evaporated and the resulting substance forced through a fine sieve, to have extracted the very essence of the animal’s sentience. He would mix it with capers and shallots to make a delightful vinaigrette. It was much sought-after, if I remember correctly.’
‘What does sentience taste like?’ The waiter pursed his lips and writhed his jaw slightly, synthesising the taste from memory.
    ‘Rather… Well, I suppose rather ga–’
    ‘Gamey, yeah.’
    ‘Quite. The man is a genius, in all truth. Sadly he was fired when he tried to serve people.’
    ‘They don’t like chefs serving the customers?’
    ‘No, we don’t know where he got them from. He may have had a deal with someone in the hospital morgue.’
    ‘What? Oh. Oh right.’ Arthur had the feeling that Latour’s off-piste mutton kidneys were not from elderly sheep at all.
    ‘Anyway, sir, I am dreadfully sorry about all this. Please feel free to select a course from the menu entirely on the house, by way of apology.’
    ‘Just some bread, thanks.’
    ‘Delectable, sir.’ Giving a slight bow the waiter left to return a few minutes later with a basket of rolls. Arthur dispatched them and left.