Stanley Park (33 page)

So ran the course of Jeremy’s reflection these days.

Benny was hugging her knees now, thinking. Finally she said: “Dante suggested the three of us go to Seasons of Local Splendour together.”

Jeremy didn’t bother recounting the ancient Seasons of Local Splendour Snub. He was thinking instead about how fast this happy togetherness had evolved.

The meeting he might have chosen to avoid happened several weeks before. A random Saturday night street encounter downtown. Benny was dragging Jeremy out to meet some of her friends at a dance club. This was her regular weekend scene, but his attendance had been a new idea born of a suddenly wide-open weekly schedule. He was only glad that Benny’s recreational tab of ecstasy had not yet been consumed when she spotted Dante approaching and elbowed him. Slowed her pace.

Jeremy called out a greeting and Dante looked up sharply.

He was wearing a black suit, accompanied by two men in tuxedos whom he did not introduce, but who skated away on patent black loafers to wait under the shelter of an awning in front of a display window full of Fendi bags. They were on the way to the opera, and Dante said only, “Me and my cousins here.” Which left it unclear whether they were blood cousins, bodyguards, part of the corporate coffee Cosa Nostra or what exactly.

Jeremy introduced Benny, and they bantered about working for the same outfit. Dante was gracious, even threw out some obligatory polite questions about the Inferno Pender and showed signs of being impressed when Benny said she was location manager.

Jeremy watched the two react to one another. If he were a jealous type, he would have thought Benny were trying for Dante’s attention a little more than necessary. On the other
hand, Dante wasn’t giving Benny very much back, listening but not focusing.

“You must certainly be doing many things well,” Dante said at one point. “I hope you’ll stay with us for many years to come.”

It was Benny who skilfully opened a crack in this smooth conversation.

“I graduated from design school this summer,” she said suddenly. “I’m very interested in restaurant design.”

Dante had been rocking gently on the toes and heels of his black Crocketts, and Jeremy had just begun thinking about how he could extract Benny and leave Dante to his evening’s plans, to his cousins, who were now smoking and looking wordlessly over from the display of expensive handbags.

Now the rocking stopped.

Dante said: “Oh yes?” Voice changing from flat and impenetrable to pliable, enveloping. He canted forward slightly, his hands crossed quietly in front of himself, princely and statuesque in his dark cashmere topcoat and gun-black, double-breasted suit. His eyes were on Benny’s face, and they found something of new interest there.

“I actually worked on an Inferno at one point,” Benny said. “During a co-op semester with Beekman Schiller. Martin Schiller mostly.”

“Marty,” Dante said. “We play squash.”

“We did the Pender Street Inferno, where I now work,” Benny said.

“You’ve built one of my operations from the ground up,” Dante said, shaking his head in frank amazement. “Besides me, I don’t know that there’s anyone else who can say that, and it’s been over fifteen years for me. Too long, in fact, which is why I am so looking forward to starting on our new project.”

She handled it well, Jeremy had to acknowledge. It occurred to him, on the other hand, where things might lead. And it
occurred to him further that he hadn’t uttered a word in this conversation and his impact on where it would end was negligible. His final thought—as the chisel-faced, black-suited coffee magnate took still further minutes out of his evening and swivelled in still more tightly to target Benny—was that Dante already
knew
who Benny was. Knew her human resources record, knew her paycheque deductions. Knew where she lived, her function in future plans, her taste in things from lounge music to piercings to girlish white underwear.

“You know …,” Jeremy started, and since he didn’t in fact know what he was going to say, it was just as well Dante cut him off anyway.

“Tell me,” Dante said to Benny, “what do you think of ‘French Bistro’ as a leitmotif?”

She had done it and knew it. She answered with confidence. “I think of French bistros as belonging in France,” she said.

“You do,” Dante said.

“And old. Not the hippest option.”

Dante smiled and leaned back, looking straight up into the night sky, then back down to his discovery opposite.

A block later, as they waited for a light, Benny finally asked him: “All right, how did I do?”

“That depends on what you were trying to accomplish.”

The light changed and Benny didn’t move. “You don’t want me involved.”

“It isn’t that at all, but French Bistro was my suggestion.”

Benny was first surprised and then irritated to learn this detail. “Why?” she asked him.

“It just happens to be what I want.”

They went out dancing as planned. The following day Benny’s area supervisor phoned her and told her to go to Canada Place for a meeting with IIC Human Resources. She called Jeremy in a panic, thinking she’d been fired for making insolent suggestions.

Jeremy said: “I doubt this is how the Inferno fires people.”

She phoned him four hours later. “Design assistant.,” she said, breathless. “I’ll be working with this fabulous New York designer. Albertini Banks.”

“Well,” Jeremy said. “Nicely done. Where exactly?”

“Surprise!” Benny shrieked. “They’re bringing in Banks to do
your restaurant
. Isn’t it totally exciting?”

It certainly was. All happily in it together now, they were.

Benny shifted in the sheets opposite, waiting for his response.

“Seasons of Local Splendour,” Jeremy said. “Have you been before?”

“No, but it sounds cool. Besides, I think that since you’re his partner, you might make an effort to show Dante your commitment to the project.”

“Partner is a strong word for it,” Jeremy said. “Five percent is more like servitude.”

“Make partner the right word. Get in there. Dante is the kind of person who respects assertion.”

Jeremy did not doubt that she would know by now, Dante having taken a very personal interest in the project. Back from Chicago and New York, those deals complete, Dante was devoting most of his time to this start-up.

“Power is important to him,” Benny said. “Winning.”

“Great,” Jeremy said. “What does that make me, the person who went bankrupt and whose restaurant Dante was essentially given for free?”

“Dante didn’t get your restaurant,” Benny said in a kindly voice. “There is no more Monkey’s Paw, as good as it was at doing whatever it was you were trying to do. He got a lease, a location. The rest of the future has to be created together.”

“A lease?”

“Not even that. He owns the building.”

“Dante owns that building?” Jeremy said, sitting up. “I thought Blaze Properties owned it.”

“Blaze. Inferno.” Benny said. “It’s a sister company. Inferno owns them, duh.”

“I did not know that,” Jeremy said. “He didn’t get a lease. He got out of a lease.”

“Don’t go all paranoid on me,” Benny said. “He saved you and is giving you a new place to work. A place that will be simply awesome, the best everything. Do you have any idea what the Inferno budget will be? Try, like, a million.”

“Jumpin’ Jaysus,” Jeremy said.

“He’s serious. So realize: Dante will help others win too, as long as he still wins in the process. That’s you, get it? The person he’s helping.”

Jeremy flopped back onto the bed and started at the ceiling. “What about art?” he asked.

Benny made a face like
Whut?

“Art, as in, for the walls. There were three sculptures in The Paw that I never got back.”

Benny sighed and went on, her voice softening: “Can’t you also see this opportunity as a way you and I could, you know … build something together?”

He looked across the bed to where she sat on her knees, wrapped in the white sheet. Her perfect small face. The swell of her behind the white cotton.

“So what kind of chairs?” he asked, pulling the sheet away from her breasts.

“Oh, Jeremy,” Benny said, rocking forward onto her hands and knees and hovering warmly over him. “They are simply gorgeous.”

He agreed they should go together, curious about Dante’s interest if nothing else. Dante was a man by whose efforts a uniform commodity was distributed through identical shops to consumers all over North America. There was no difference in
process, design or product between any two locations making the Inferno a brutally efficient, market-researched repudiation of the local. Why would this gathering—situated at the intersection of anti-globalization, organic, hemp and allpurpose foodie enthusiasm—interest Dante?

He had a second reason too. In the unlikely event that anyone did remember The Snub, who better to be strutting around with than a new-paradigm heavy such as the founder of Inferno International Coffee?

Dante drove the Jaguar XK8 himself, without confidence. He had learned to need a driver, and Philip was nowhere to be seen. Even at Jeremy’s apartment, he was adjusting the electric controls on the tan seats minutely, still figuring them out. An ear-splitting grind of the gears and they were off. It was a forty-five-minute drive, during which Dante drove slowly and held the floor on the topic of “their joint future.”

“Now, you don’t know it yet,” Dante said, addressing Jeremy without taking his eyes off the road, “but we are envisioning something magnificent down there, aren’t we Benster?”

“Oh yes,” Benny said from the back.

Dante shoulder-checked several times before swerving sharply into an empty lane, then continued: “Our research is just now coming together.”

It would be, Jeremy thought and nodded mutely.

“The name,” Benny said from the back seat, reminding Dante of something they’d already discussed.

“Right. The name absolutely does not play.”

“What name was that?” Jeremy asked.

“Jerry’s,” said Dante.

Jeremy was blank. “Who’s Jerry?” he asked finally.

“You’re Jerry,” Benny said from behind him.

“Jerry? No one’s ever called me Jerry in my life.”

“Hardly material,” Dante said. “It tubed at survey. Jerry with a J, and people get Seinfeld. Comedy, yada yada yada, aging, single, frustrated, apartment dwellers. Very low food
and fashion awareness, which translates as ‘bad demos.’ Now Gerry with a G, on the other hand, is sweet. People get Garcia, who, dead or not, is iconic. Very broad appeal. Garcia is Christ without Revelations. You can really ride a non-brand like Garcia.”

“Jerry Garcia spelled his name with a J,” Jeremy said.

“Crazy, isn’t it? People still respond to the
G
and think of him. The customer first, right or wrong. They want a
G
, give them a
G.”

“Fascinating,” Jeremy said.

“And I have to tell you,” Dante said, “French Bistro also did very poorly. All people think of is French fries, and then they go on to tell you that the best fries they ever had in their life were from McDonald’s.”

“All right, all right,” Jeremy said. Jesus.

But Dante continued. “French simply doesn’t cut it any longer as the culinary reference point. Our power-alley demographics, the twenty-five to forty-five-year-old, new economy, urban, food enthusiasts—what we’re calling
the fooderati
—they want something wired, post-national, with vibrant flavours. They want unlimited new ingredients, they want grooviness and sophistication, and both purple and gold score very well.”

“Fooderati?” Jeremy said. He’d never heard that one before. “The
fooderati
like purple and gold food?”

Dante sighed. “I offer these merely as examples of what we know. Stay with me here. Focus on market-response themes. Think: sophisticated and groovy and new ingredients.”

“And purple,” Jeremy said.

“And Italy,” Benny added.

“Right,” Dante said again. “Age clusters right up to sixty-plus take Italy over France every time. Over sixty we’re not much worried about—they don’t like France or Italy or dishes that are too crunchy.”

“Who does like French?” Jeremy asked.

“Put in those terms, nobody really. Anything Italian scores higher. In a nutshell, Jeremy, Bistro is out. Benny was right. We need Ristorante or Cucina or Trattoria or something.”

“Trattoria,” Jeremy said. “Would someone please remind me again why we are going to Seasons of Local Splendour? These people are fanatically local, more obsessive than I ever was.”

“Well,” Dante said, smiling to have his point introduced for him, “maybe we can learn something. I personally couldn’t tell an organic local carrot from one made by DuPont in a lab orbiting Earth. But I’m under the impression that some people care about what’s happening out here today, and that means we should consider it.”

Jeremy turned to look at Dante. He had to make sure this wasn’t a joke.

“Within reason,” Benny said. “I mean, mangoes, right?”

“What about mangoes?” Jeremy said.

“Well, you can’t get them here, but we need them.”