Aristocratic Thieves

  Chapter 38: Drinks at the Bar

  As Gwen and Guignard entered the Charleston Place Hotel, Gwen recalled a passage from a short story Roger once had written as a birthday present to her. The story was about some Junes that lived 150 years ago. The passage went like this:

  “Roger and Elspeth weren’t married when they decided they wanted to have fun together, though they ended up hitched for twenty-six years. So before they got married, they had to find places where they could have the types of fun they wanted. When the owner of the Charleston Hotel objected to them firing their shotguns at pigeons while standing in the hotel garden, they had to give up that fun. Sometimes they raced their horses down Broad Street past the hotel, him on his gelding quarterhorse and her on her Arabian mare, but that ended when the City of Charleston decided Broad Street deserved more than hardpacked dirt as its surface, and installed cobblestones taken from the holds of ships. The stone was loaded into the ships in England as ballast, and unloaded in the ports of Charleston and Savannah and Wilmington. Anyway, the horses couldn’t run on the cobblestones, so that eliminated that fun.

  It should be pretty obvious what was left for Roger and Elspeth to do. They would ride to the hotel on their horses, look wistfully at the flying pigeons as they crossed through the garden, and enter the hotel bar. There they would start with the wine, and after a couple of glasses, they would graduate to gin. Roger sometimes wished he had trained Elspeth to like port, as he thought it was a more civilized drink than gin, but he knew what Elspy liked, and he wasn’t about to mess with a formula that worked so well.

  After a gin or two, and after much conversation with the other bar tenants, and after lots of laughing and maybe a dance step or two, and after giving Henry the hotel owner a lot of shit for not letting them shoot out in the garden, well, Elspeth would look at Roger, and Roger would look at Elspeth, and that was that. Up the stairs they would go.”

  Gwen loved the entire short story, and read it every year on her birthday. She wasn’t going to have such good fun today at the hotel, but she thought she would do what she could to get the ball rolling with the two very wealthy Russian couples. When they entered the Thoroughbred Bar, Constantine, Henric, Helstof, and Slevov were waiting. Gwen ran directly to Slevov, gave her the European double kiss, and looked into her eyes. She took hold of Constantine’s hand in both of hers, looked him in the eyes, and said, “Welcome to Charleston.” She put her hand on Henric’s shoulder and squeezed it while looking him in the eyes, and said, “Welcome to Charleston,” and then put an arm around Helstof’s waist while giving her the kiss on each cheek, saying, “Helstof, my dear, we are going to have good times together here.”

  After this typical southern welcome they all sat down, and Gwen was pleased to see they had not yet ordered anything other than water. Slevov said they were feeling better, that the jetlag was wearing off, but they thought they would stay in at the hotel that night and take it easy. Gwen replied, “Here in Charleston we know there are times for ease and there are times for action, and we have that down to a science. Tonight we’ll take it easy and have a drink or two together, and tomorrow the games will begin.”

  She went to the bar, opened her purse, and took out two $100 bills, which she flipped to the bartender. She smiled at him and said, “I want two bottles of 2004 Larmandier-Bernier champagne, one regular, one rose. I want you to bring them to the table in wine buckets, and I want you to mix champagne cocktails at the table, the white wine first, and the rose to follow. I want you bring us a very large platter of your miniature breaded, seasoned, and sautéed crabcakes. Nothing else, no sauces or dips, just the crab.”

  No one ever had asked him (told him, really) to mix champagne cocktails at the table, and no one had asked him (told him, really) for a large platter of crabcakes without any sauces either, because they weren’t on the bar menu. He knew crabcakes were on the dinner menu, and he guessed this woman knew that. Still, this request (demand, really) was a new one on him. And he knew very clearly he would fulfill this request because, well, just because.

  The bartender ignored his other customers, went into the kitchen, and told the chef of the request. The chef told him to get out, miniature crabcakes weren’t on the fucking bar menu. The bartender, expecting this, asked the chef to come out to the bar, which he did, and the bartender took him to Gwen’s table. Gwen saw the problem, got up, put her hand on the chef’s arm, and led him away from the table. She did a Deneuvian on him, and he went back into the kitchen, where he told the sous chef to stop what she was doing and make forty miniature seasoned crabcakes, sauté them perfectly, and tell him when she was done because he was going to serve them, personally, to the lady in the bar.

  Five minutes later, they were sipping the Larmandier cocktails, and relaxing. Fifteen minutes after that the chef appeared with the platter of hot, mildly seasoned crab, sautéed in butter, shallots, salt, and pepper. The bartender mixed the second round of cocktails at the table from the bottle of delicious rose champagne. Gwen put two cakes on a napkin and handed them to Constantine. She did the same with Henric. Then she took a cake in each hand and fed one to Slevov and one to Helstof, and motioned to all that the cake should be followed with a swallow of the champagne. Henric uttered a Russian word Guignard translated as ambrosia, and Gwen thought that was a very good word. The forty cakes and the second bottle of bubbly were gone in no time, and Gwen noticed there was not much talking. This simple food and wine experience was a winner. When the table was cleared, Gwen sensed she didn’t have to perform anymore. It was a low key situation, and her friends were happy with a simple pleasure. She left the conversation up to Guignard.

  An hour later the party broke up. Gwen thanked the bartender with another bill, and led the way into the kitchen. The five Russians followed. The troupe found the chef and the sous chef and thanked them, following Gwen’s lead. Helstof gave the chef the double cheek kiss, which was a new and pleasant experience for him, while Slevov gave the sous chef a hug, which was a pleasant experience for her. The party broke up at the hotel staircase, and soon Gwen and Guignard were home.

  Gale and the boys were in the kitchen eating sandwiches. Gwen made the boys stand up, and she gave them a once-over. New haircuts, new clothes, even a hint of cologne. Gwen gave Gale a big thumbs-up, and then asked about the damages. Gale shrugged and said, “About $2,700.” Gwen asked her if she was up for a couple of days of fun and games starting tomorrow, and Gale said, absolutely. They kissed goodnight and Gale left.

  Gwen noticed the two Russian blue cats sitting motionless on the counter at the far side of the kitchen, near the pantry. Umm, pets on the kitchen counter, I don’t think so. She looked at Pater and asked him if he let pets sit on his kitchen counters, and he replied, “Yes, it keeps the rats away.” Gwen walked over, picked up first one cat and then the other, set them on the floor, and walked back to sit down at the counter. When she looked up, the cats were back on the counter, sitting motionless in the exact spots from which Gwen had removed them, starring at her. Gwen looked at Guignard, who shrugged. Peter and Pater looked at their sandwiches. Gwen was too tired to fight this fight right now.

  Roger and Jinny entered the kitchen through the pantry. They looked beat, so Gwen got up and gave them both a hug and a smile. Guignard gave Jinny two hugs and two smiles. Jinny looked at Peter and Pater, and asked the name of the cologne. They said, “Ocean Breeze.” Roger looked over at the two cats staring at him, because he too never had seen cats sitting on his kitchen counters. He didn’t bother asking Gwen about this because he too was too tired to fight such a fight. It had been a long day for him and Jinny at the warehouse. Gwen didn’t ask Roger how things had gone. She knew all of them were tired. Peter looked at Gwen with a question mark, and she vibed him an answer. He went to the fridge and took out six cold Pilsner Urquell beers and set them on the table. Pater got six tall beer glasses out of the cabinet and set them
on the counter. Jinny wondered how Peter and Gwen were communicating like this already, and he wondered how Pater had learned the strict house rule about never, ever, drinking beer out of the bottle. But then he remembered about his first meetings with Gwen, and he also knew she had learned magical things from The Deneuve, and he figured this was all part of that stuff.

  Everybody relaxed and sipped the cold beer. Jinny went over and scratched both cats on the top of the head, and asked Gwen if she wanted him to get rid of them. She said no, that two more Russians were welcome in her house. She asked where her dog and cat were, and someone said, out back. When Roger was finished with his beer he asked Gwen, “How are the others?” meaning the Gromstovs and Rodstras.

  Gwen said, “Remember that Larmandier rose we drank a few months ago at the picnic? We drank a couple of bottles of that stuff, and ate forty miniature crabcakes that Bridgett at the hotel made for us, and after that, they were fine.” Roger replied that anybody who wasn’t fine after drinking Larmandier rose champagne deserved to be not fine. That was the extent of the discussion about the days events. Everyone sensed things would heat up tomorrow, and the demands would continue over the next few weeks. The team meeting, such as it was, broke up and everyone headed to bed. Gwen told Guignard they would start with her list in the morning.