She sips the cold pale fluid and wonders how much her little swallow cost. “What interests you about Mitterand?” she says, who is, for her, one dead French president among many.
“The manner of his death,” he says, his poise snapping back. “When he knew his life was ending he went to Egypt to visit the tombs of the pharaohs, with whom he identified. His last meal was ortolans, a royal meal, a songbird one eats with a napkin draped over head and plate, lest God see. He lived for another three days but ate nothing more.”
“What’s so great about that?”
“It suggests a composed resistance to the brute facts of mortality.”
“I thought this was a restaurant, when I came here,” she says, her anger cooling. “But I looked it up and it didn’t exist.”
“Ah. Of course. I’m so sorry—I should have clarified. The Dernière is actually more like a private club with a membership of one. Only a very few people know about it, and none are the kind to put it on a blog. To call it a restaurant is a kind of inside joke. There is a menu, of course, but the chefs will make you whatever you want. I had hoped that you’d be pleased—for what little it’s worth, heads of state have hinted that they wished to dine here, and been shunted off to Chez Panisse.” His urbanity is fully restored now, but his apparent warmth feels like a performance intended to conceal a watchfulness and a deep interior chill. She wonders what drives him, and what, if anything, he loves—she’s seen nothing to suggest a family, and he lacks the hard dullness that marks men who live for money. Maybe Magda is his center, she thinks, remembering how his posture changed when she was near him.
She says, “At first I thought that the name meant ‘latest house,’ like a house that was chic.”
He studies her for a moment, then says, “A natural misreading, but not the worst one. In the wrong context, the name could be read as a cruel joke, the last house as in the last house one would ever see, an invitation into charnel. I’m told there are such places. But, no, it’s not like that at all. The name just means that this is, in some thematic way, the last place in the West the sun touches, or where the Western world ends. In fact, I very much hope you’ll enjoy yourself here, and won’t find it necessary to bring out the big guns, so to speak.”
She realizes she’s staring and that it’s unsettling him. He picks up his glass and puts it down again, then says, “And I don’t know just how to put this, but I meant to say … I recognize that all of this is shit. I mean, it’s nice, and I’m grateful, and so on, but I know it has no real value. Well, except for the Hockneys. It’s just that there are people who take care of this for me, and it’s just as easy to allow it to happen. I don’t want you to think I’m some hedge-fund philistine who preens himself on having just the right wineglasses.”
“So what can I do for you?” she says. “It must be important, as you’re paying quadruple-time. But maybe one of your people will take care of that for you?”
She’s pleased to see him wince. He says, “I’d hoped that we could talk, and perhaps become more than strangers,” and refills her glass though she’d scarcely been aware she’d been drinking.
She considers this, and though she’s fairly sure he’s slept with the beautiful deaf girl it doesn’t feel like he wants that from her. “I don’t mean to be rude,” she says, “but why bother?”
“Because you’re interesting,” he says carefully, “and we might both be around for some time. I’m looking for potential points of continuity.”
“As for longevity, you do realize that, financially speaking, I’m not even remotely in your league? Wouldn’t you be better off bonding with the capitalist elite over, I don’t know, skeet shooting?”
He leans in across the table as the deaf girl returns with little plates of olives and bacon and another bottle of white wine. “Hardly. The capitalist elite are mostly heirs, who are dull, and founders-who-got-lucky, who are even duller. At least the heirs have manners. But they’re not interesting, and, more to the point, none of them will last as long as me.”
“Why not? Money is money.”
“The why is a secret,” he says, smiling. “A great secret. Lately it’s all secrets with me.”
I’m sure it is, she thinks. Your AIs aren’t what you think they are. You have some kind of new computer on your desk but you don’t know how it works. You’re more interested in me than seems warranted, and you’re spending money like it’s the end of the world. Someone is stalking me, and someone stole my friend’s memories, and mine along with them. You’re very old but still speak of the long-long term. There has to be a greater shape here but it’s one she can’t quite see.
“I want to make a deal,” he says, and though he’s trying to hide it she can tell that he’s nervous, even behind three glasses of wine, and her thought is that he’s rushing it, that this is the crux, though he’d planned to wait longer, and she notices at some point the moon set, leaving the balcony lit only by candles and the stray light of the city. “First, I’ll tell you what I’m offering. I’ll pay for the Mayo Clinic.”
“I can pay for the Mayo Clinic.”
“You can barely pay for the Mayo Clinic. There’s also the degeneration around your implant. I’ll pay for that, and for the Mayo, for the next fifty years.”