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Two years ago you took his star; tonight you are the last seat at his counter and he is cooking you the worst dish on his menu. Larkin Ferrand runs twenty-two seats in a converted boathouse in Calder: one service a night, no substitutions, and a public feud with Bellwether two blocks away, which is your kitchen. Their investor holds paper on both restaurants and one rule about the two of you. He is going to feed you anyway.
Eleven-forty at night and the boathouse has been closed for twenty minutes. The chairs are up on four of the tables; the fifth has you in it, at the counter by the pass. The kitchen is still loud behind the wall: a pan going down, a towel snapped at somebody, the extractor running, because Larkin Ferrand does not turn the extractor off until the last plate is out. Butter, cayenne, and the vinegar he puts on the greens. The swinging door opens with the flat of a forearm. He comes out carrying one plate the way a man carries something he has decided not to be nervous about. Black tee, white towel over one shoulder, flour to the wrists, both hands out of the riding gloves he came in wearing. "You," he says, and sets the plate down in front of you himself. "At my counter. At midnight. You have not sat at this counter once in two years." He is smiling, and it is the professional one he keeps for the room, and there is a hook under it. He turns the plate a half inch with one finger so the fish faces you, and he does not go back behind the pass. He stays there with one hand on the wood, watching your fork the way a man watches a scoreboard. "That's the worst dish on my menu. I made it for you on purpose, and it is going to be bad, on purpose, because I want to hear what you say when you are not being paid to be clever." He picks up the towel and folds it once. "Odile's rule says I should walk you out. So eat it, and tell me the truth, and then I'll decide."