Lurker for years; first post ever.
Harry Salmon has never set a foot inside a One-Percenter eatery before. Harry is just a lowly attorney in the headquarters of Mr. Eckridge’s pharmaceutical corporation, but the boss has taken a liking to Harry, and so here he is inside a renowned Ruling Class establishment, known far beyond the city limits—predominantly for its exotic cuisine, but also for being the birthplace of the original Bring-Back-The-Gilded-Age movement, way back after Democrats gave up the fight and became a thriving part of the new populism themselves, preaching trickle-down voodoo and privatization and hermetically closed borders.
Harry feels safe and self-assured; he guesses that’s what happens when you’re in the company of one of the founding Barons of the Ruling Class, a new arrival upon the scene, not quite as well-healed but working on it.
Mr. Eckridge has even gone so far as to bring his wife along. He proudly dangles Harry’s business accomplishments in front of her, his tone of voice expressing the sincere hope that she will understand the monetary significance of a guy like Harry, or, if she doesn't (there's a good chance of that), at least stay sociable. Harry knows Mrs. Eckridge is like a nonpolar molecule, incapable of blending in, a burr under a horse's saddle, her megalomania fueled by massive wealth and delusions of grandeur.
Harry is amazed at the number of people in the dining room. There have to be hundreds of diners. White, well-fed, tuxedo-clad alpha males—business tycoons one and all—accompanied by their stunningly good-looking mates, equally well nourished, wearing precious stones-studded earrings and pale blue and orange cocktail dresses and gold brooches that flicker when caught by the light, like a blinking warning signal at a busy railroad crossing, the gowns revealing cleavages Harry could very well fall into and never climb out of again. Every male patron is huge—Harry thinks of them as saturated lipid magnets—and wonders if it is some sort of plot to physically impose their importance by occupying at least as much space—and inhaling oxygen—as three less fortunate mortals.
The room is a miracle: a dozen or so glittering chandeliers cast a warm glow around the restaurant. It's all so breathtaking, so opulent, it mesmerizes Harry to the point where he feels hypnotized: plants and flowers everywhere, café au lait-colored damask tablecloths and napkins decorated with small NRA logos along the edges; beautiful, gleaming cherry paneling on the walls; small Tiffany table lamps with richly decorated shades add to the festive atmosphere. In the Presidential Section, paintings of men like Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and Jeff Davis and Donald Trump adorn the wall; those seated in the Movie & Radio & Media Star area are being watched over by the likes of Clint Eastwood and Rush Limbaugh and Robert Welch, Jr. and John Wayne and Wayne LaPierre; Heroes & Veterans claim the largest dining area: Bob Lee, Nathan Bedford Forrest, John Birch, and a host of other, not-quite-mainstream, cringe-worthy warriors take up the walls there. Several screens are available to monitor the President’s Twitter feed; acting upon such messages without delay has proven to be extremely profitable.
Five musicians on ancient-looking period instruments treat Schubert’s Trout Quintet with extraordinary care; the keyboard player works the 88s like a nurse handles a patient in an ICC unit. In the background, champagne bottles seemingly pop open to the beat of the tune; great balls of flambé fire shoot into the air accompanied by loud ooooohs and aaaaaahs; espresso machines hiss.
Anxious waiters carry large trays loaded with steaming dishes and glasses and bottles—a platoon of Rudolph Nureyevs dancing their Swan Lakes: quick, passionate, elegant pirouettes, acrobats carrying fodder-laden trays for the hungry clientele. The sound of laughter forms an eerie soundtrack to their powerful but unappreciated performances.
This is Christmas, Harry thinks. It’s Christmas every day in here!
And yet. Harry detects a whiff of dread, a sword of Damocles suspended from the ceiling, ready to drop; to Harry, probably the only guest here who bothers to look a little closer, the waiters' faces betray high anxiety, mortal fear of the ruthless predators that spend more in one night than they make in a year. If only they could organize some sort of union, like in the old days when workers banned together to try and take the edge of their boss's plantation mentality. All banned now.
***
A smooth maître d’ with oily, slicked back hair, who seems to know Mr. Eckridge intimately, seats the trio; on their way to the table, Mrs. Eckridge exorbitant, white satin dress (a long, silk train follows her around the tables and chairs the way a slippery albino anaconda weaves through an Amazonian swamp), combined with a huge, mainly orange, ostrich feather hat, makes it look like she is a float in Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.
He hands them their menus, but Harry’s regular diet probably doesn’t include any of the items listed. Harry prefers healthy food—polyunsaturated fats, easy on the carbs and hydrogenated oils—not this rich RC fare, which, to make matters even more embarrassing, is printed in French on the menu.
Nevertheless, Harry puts on quite a show, ignores the little voice in his head telling him he doesn’t belong, shouldn’t mingle with these robber barons and their baronesses, that this whole scene is about to descent into an out-of-control Jan Steen pandemonium, and the masks come off and eyes bulge and teeth turn fangs and forked tongues slither in and out of stinking beaks, leaving slimy trails on rouged cheeks and powdered necks, the restaurant the only refuge from a much worse, macabre Hieronymus Bosch-style hellscape outside, the horizon dotted with gallows, ropes gently swaying in the hot breeze, patiently waiting for a neck, the sky alight with a fireworks display of supernovae and rapidly pinwheeling galaxies.
But he nonchalantly studies the menu, steadying his slightly trembling hands, hoping the other guests will think he is an out-of-town connoisseur, after all he's wearing his one and only suit, pinstriped, three-piece, and he thinks he looks pretty prosperous. He tries to look like he knows damned well what he is doing—an important man (albeit a little skinny) making an important and possibly trend-setting choice.
A tall waiter with a tired pale face, half-closed eyes, and nervously dancing eyebrows slithers up to their table.
“If I may be so bold, Madame,” he says with a distinct French accent. “Ze Boeuf Bourguignon is delectable today. Ze zauce…”
Mr. Eckridge interrupts the litany that is sure to follow.
“Well, I’ll tell you what, waiter. My wife will have the Tournedos au Poivre, this gentleman here likes the tenderloin with the blackberry gastrique, and I’ll settle for a nice slab of ribs with the bordelaise sauce, provided the bone marrow in it is fresh.”
The waiter gets the message immediately: the niceties are over, decisions have been made, no need for further recommendations. No salad, no appetizers—these folks are out for red meat. He nods to confirm the bordelaise is cooked with extremely fresh ingredients, picks up the menus, expertly slaps them under his left arm, and hastily turns away, ready to put the order in.
“What's the matter, Harry?” Mr. Eckridge says. “You look a little, er... peevish.”
Harry shakes his head adamantly. “No, no, no. It's just that... well, er, you'll think I'm nuts... I'm vegan.”
Mr. Eckridge chuckles. “Waiter,” he says, “how about covering all that fine meat under a load of vegetables? What do you guys serve tonight?”
“Ze famous zelection of our fresh legumes, haricots verts, salsify, grilled white asparagus, and our famous choucroute garnie, monsieur. I can ask chef to leave out ze meats and ze charcuterie, peut-être, er… how you say? … perhaps, er … utiliser ... tofu, monsieur.”
“What d'ya say, Harry? Sounds good to me.”
Before the waiter can run off, Mr. Eckridge grabs his coattails, and pulls him back. The Frenchman’s facial expression has changed. The droopy eyelids have shuttered wide open, and he presses his hands against his cheeks, as if he has to hold on to his head to prevent it from falling off—the man’s face wears the same uninhibited panic Edward Munch so masterfully captured in his painting The Scream. The menus fall to the floor. Several diners turn around, perhaps hoping for a public dressing down of one of these arrogant garçons, hopefully involving a cattle prod or a nightstick. Or both.
“Waiter,” Mr. Eckridge says, “take it easy. Just make sure the meat’s fresh, never frozen—nice and firm, you know, the way you guys always, ah... Oh, well, you know. Got it?”
The waiter nods, looking relieved like a little schoolboy who knows his tables of multiplication inside out and was just asked the product of three times nine.
“Also, my man, what the hell is chou, er... croute?”
The servant smiles politely. “Choucroute is sauerkraut, monsieur. Our dish is based upon an Alsatian recipe for preparing it with sausages and other salted meats and charcuterie.” There’s not a trace of an accent.
Mr. Eckridge turns to Harry, who smiles and nods. “Well, there you have it, waiter. Go to it.”
Mr. Eckridge orders a fine, red wine, a glorious Chateauneuf Du Pape ‘47, quips the color goes very well with the food (“You should let it drool, Harry! Makes for a nice practical joke!”), and dismisses the wine waiter, too.
***
The conversation before, during and after dinner is rudderless, if not a little awkward, perhaps insane. Throughout, Harry has started to feel complicit in the One Percent racket. Just by being here he's an enabler, and it most definitely does not feel good. This isn't how his parents raised him. What to do? He needs money, to live, to eat, to keep the lights on, and with unemployment stubbornly parked around twenty-one percent—Depression? What depression?—the thought of quitting brings cold sweat to his armpits. He has his mother to care for; company-provided medical insurance—if even offered—isn't what it used to be. In fact, he reminds himself, regular people more often than not find themselves mired in a contemporary version of Upton Sinclair's sordid Packingtown mess as told in his 1906 novel The Jungle. As long as nobody here seems to give a shit whether their fellow Americans live or die, perhaps Harry, too, should be a muckraker, a modern-day Jacob Riis—How the Other Half Lives, Revisited.
Should he just get up and leave? Go home. Or.... Bring in the artillery; wipe 'em off the face of the scorched earth they leave behind where ever they go?
Before he can give this scary yet strangely appetizing concept another thought, really picture himself going in (and, eventually, as sure as the sun rises in the east tomorrow morning, out in a body bag) with his two automatics a-blazing and his pockets loaded down with additional ammo, the walls and ceiling and floor and chandeliers covered in Technicolor, mind-blowing variations of Hermann Rorschach's blots, Mr. Eckridge starts to praise Harry’s shrewd analysis of some loopholes in the product liabilities laws, and how to make those work best for Eckridge Enterprises, and so his attention is needed elsewhere.
“In addition,” Mr. Eckridge says to his wife, “Harry really threw those FDA bastards for a loop. They were giving us all sorts of hell about adverse reactions to our new juvenile ADD drug we allegedly never reported? Adverse reactions! Schmadverse reactions! The kids shut up, so what’s wrong with that? What more do these parents want, for Chrissakes! Temporary Rigor Mortis—until these damned kids are twenty-one?
“Look at this!” Rivulets of wine drip from the corners of his mouth, and he winks and says that Christopher Lee would've been damned jealous of his Dracula impression.
Mrs. Eckridge plays her part to the best of her abilities, but she fully lives up to what Harry's British colleagues call her: 'an empty-headed tart.' She used to be quite obese, lost all that tonnage, but she's not aging gracefully. Perhaps a little make-up would've helped, but there's no trace of it.
An oversized Roman nose dominates a face with eyes too close, lips too thin, cheeks to hollow, skin too wrinkled, too flabby, hanging from her upper arms, flapping like a Roman senator's toga whenever she gestures (which she does often), voice too shrill, neck—behung with a diamond-studded choker—too long and thin (something for Christopher Lee to bite into, Harry muses); breasts MIA. Her short-cropped, spiky hair streaked with gray and purples and yellows and blues—a hair-do that undoubtedly cost a small fortune—tries to articulate a liberal, feminist, flapper image, as if there’s revolution in the air, but, after she starts talking (arguing might be a better word, Harry thinks), soon reveals what her scarecrow appearance dressed up in silk and red fuck-me pumps merely is: a decoy to draw out liberals and commies (members of the forty-seven percent), so the unlucky specimens can be denounced to Homeland Security agents and NSA bureaucrats. Her revolution is the Inquisition. How old is she? Harry marvels. Fifty? Eighty? There's no way to tell. Maybe she should take some of her husband's drugs; they turn most of its users into zombies, so why wouldn't it work on her?
She sits right across from Harry, holding forth in a deep, cold, throaty voice that seems to come from another galaxy, snatched from space by the dish of one of 27 radio telescopes of the Very Large Array near Albuquerque, New Mexico. After politely inquiring about a multitude of situations that proves she is from a different planet and cares not one iota for the well-being of Harry and the rest of humanity: Don’t you agree that work liberates; did you like the voting coupon for the next presidential election (Imagine that: Harry can vote without having to pay up and recite some of John's series of prophetic visions as recorded in Revelations, including his musings as to the Whore of Babylon and the Beast) and a week of free web surfing my husband gave you?, she embarks on a word salad of epic proportions, reciting hackneyed ivory tower One Percent bait-and-switch hopes and dreams and half-truths and unfortunate whole truths—no more debilitating budget shortfalls caused by unnecessary Federal agencies!, and how about that beefing up of Our Armed Forces—That oughtta tell 'em down there in those damned sandboxes!—and how utterly amazing it is our country surpasses many other fossil-fuel producing nations and thank god for fracking and we should vote for men like Joseph McCarthy and Dick Cheney and missile launchers are surely fire arms covered by the second amendment and Jesus was a Republican and who cares about an earthquake-ravaged state like Oklahoma and friggin' polar bears and goddamned Monarch butterflies and so-called 'mass' shootings?—and all this crap about global warming is just that: bullshit, horseshit, polar bear shit (Ha ha ha!)—take your pick.
An uncomfortable volley of Sorrys (Harry) and That’s all rights (Mrs. Eckridge) occasionally fly across the crumb-laden, gravy-stained tablecloth like rusty cannonballs two opposing seventeenth century fleets lobby at each other. (Harry's inner voice warns him to be careful about answering her questions, as some of the answers may well carry a whiff of sedition.)
“We are living the end of days, Mr. Harry,” she ends her tirade, wagging a finger, her voice climbing an octave and several decibels. “Men claiming to be women and women men!”
Mr. Eckridge is quiet, probably bored, maybe annoyed he brought his wife, chain-smoking $ 200 Cuban cigars, watching her and his accountant as if following a tennis match, occasionally patting her hand, tut-tutting, winking at Harry.
Dinner is served. Pigs at the trough.
***
Upon leaving the restaurant, Harry can’t help but marvel at the privileges the RC’s have taken. How there is always more for the Ruling Class: their greedy computers suck up bandwidth like a wino on Thunderbird; they laugh at the ten grand required to vote in a Federal election, and they laugh even harder when the remainder of the social security funds is used to finally build a serious (but still not functioning) missile defense shield. These people have greenbacks in the bank; most others, mere mortals like Harry, use the scrip the Federal Reserve issues.
And Harry wonders why the management hasn’t soundproofed the kitchen better. He sat at least ten tables away from the swinging doors, and even over the hum of polite conversation, mixed with occasional joyful laughter or the incidental burp followed by modest applause, the tinkling of champagne glasses and the harsh clatter of gold-plated cutlery on fragile porcelain dishes, he clearly heard the muffled screaming and hacking and thumping and cleaving as yet another illegal alien who failed the Annual Citizenship Examination was slaughtered, and parts of the unlucky bastard were quickly—before the meat goes bad—offered as The Special Du Jour, to further boost tonight’s cannibalistic feeding frenzy of the elegant One Percenter sharks.
It isn’t really cold outside, but Harry still shivers a bit while they wait for Mr. Eckridge's limo, glad he skipped dessert and the palate cleanser, advertised as a daring concept: small glasses filled to the brim with a bright scarlet liquid slightly foamed on the surface. It sure as hell didn't look like a strawberry margarita.
End
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