An Assignation at Louders – Chapter Three
Laura noted that the filigreed corners served a second purpose; the inside of the cover had a flat diagonal bar of brass that ran from corner-to-corner across the hypotenuse of the brass piece and was riveted in place. On the other side of the menu, there were similar bars riveted to what she had thought were ornamental pieces on the binding side of the covers. The two pages of parchment which constituted the menu had been carefully tucked beneath the brass bars and had a separate sheet of stiff, thin acrylic placed over each piece of parchment and slide under the restraining bars. The result was a menu that was incredibly rich in appearance and immanently practical. Laura was impressed. She had been to many Five-Star restaurants that didn’t take the time or expend the money to use the opportunity of using their menu to influence their patrons to impress with the first glimpse of what the restaurant offered. Obviously, her friend who had recommended this small restaurant had been right; this establishment was a cut above any of the other restaurants in town.
When Laura opened the menu, she discovered that quality and tastefulness of the meals listed on the menu mirrored the binding and ornamentation of the menu itself; the dishes were elegant and of gourmet quality, without being outrageously expensive. Certainly, the Beef Wellington surrounded by Baby New Potatoes and tiny Baking Onions, the Veal Oscar with Dilled Baby Carrots and the Prime Rib with Garliced Mashed Russet potatoes and Asparagus with Hollandaise sauce was expensive, but that was to be expected. The Dilled Salmon steak looked good, as did the New York Strip with mushrooms marinated in Port served with a baked Russet potato with all the trimmings and a small house salad. Strangely, there wasn’t a single entrée that included either pork or bacon on the menu. Baked potatoes could have sour cream, green onions or shallots, aged cheddar cheese, butter, and duxelles as a topping, but the popular topping of bacon was conspicuous by its absence.
A relatively inexpensive Caesar Salad was on the menu, which according to the menu’s description, was prepared in the traditional fashion with soft-boiled eggs and freshly grated parmesan cheese at the diner’s table. The Chicken in Brochette was reasonably priced as well. Fresh baked french bread or a rounded whole wheat loaf was available as a side accompanied by sweet cream butter and Aged Cheddar cheese. Laura debated about whether to change the entree she had ordered for herself when she made the reservations to the butterflied Giant Gulf shrimp dinner accompanied by seafood sides of Blue Shell Crap, Scallops, Fried Oysters and Clams with an okra and corn medley and potato puffs, but she decided against it. She had business to conduct and it would take her an hour to eat the massive plate. She didn’t want to be tied down to a large dinner when she was discussing her husband’s waywardness with him. The entrée that she had ordered over the phone was sufficient for her tastes and needs. In any case, her nipples had become sensitive and sore when her breasts had begun swelling a week before. She wanted the meeting to be over with as soon as possible. In short, she wanted to have the meeting she had planned to take place with her husband and take him home with her as soon as humanly possible.
She was more than a little pleased to see that this restaurant at least had not bent to lawyer’s demands and changed their recipe for Hollandaise sauce; it was made from scratch with scallions, egg yolks, butter, and lemon juice the way it should be. Laura adored Hollandaise sauce on asparagus and could even tolerate Brussels sprouts or broccoli if they were doused in the heavenly mixture. Her friends joked that she’d eat rocks if only they were drenched in real Hollandaise sauce. Laura abhorred the powdered pre-prepared faux bastardization of Hollandaise sauce that restaurants foisted on the unknowing public as the actual article to please lawyers in an attempt to mitigate lawsuits caused by food poisoning from bad eggs. She knew that life was an adventure and that nothing in life was safe. Eating the Japanese dish called Sashimi could be dangerous because it was made from raw fish , but she loved the clean “unfishy” flavor of the fresh fish flesh.
Laura sighed to herself thinking that rare hamburgers, soft-boiled or coddled eggs and faithful husbands had become things of the past because of the legal profession. She wondered how the restaurant’s lawyers had allowed them to serve the things that prudent and “utterly safe” dining prohibited. There on the menu under sandwiches was a glorious “Louder’s Half-Pound Cheeseburger served on a toasted white or whole wheat bun with all the trimmings, cooked Blood Rare, Rare, Medium Rare, Medium, Medium Well or Well-Done according to the Diner’s Wishes”. Laura enjoyed raw fish, rare Hamburgers and rare steak as well as her beloved Hollandaise sauce. She was more than a trifle miffed that the lawyers of the United States, the MEN who had deigned to make themselves the arbiters of everyday life by their power to disrupt and bankrupt anyone whose activities were not in accordance with their wishes, had chosen to attack her food choices. Had it been within her power, she’d have turned everyone of the unmitigated bounders into permanent infants so they could learn how helpless a person feels when overwhelmed by the laws that the lawyers and the bureaucracy they’ve created to assuage their underfed-egos.
Maybe the Chef had convinced the lawyers by letting them sample the blessed savor of Hollandaise sauce, but she doubted it. In her experience, the lawyers she had met in life had no souls that could truly experience the wonders of life. In her estimation, lawyers were zombies, androids or animated bodies without ethics or spiritual value. They would do anything for a price because they had surrendered their souls to a prior thinking and a dependence on the material and moral philosophies that had gone before them. Legislative lawyers tried to make laws within the United States that they could inflict on the entire world, willy-nilly, without regard to enforceability. Lawyers did not understand the concept of sovereignty of a particular state or of the international agreements for law that limited a nation’s laws to its boundaries. Neither did they understand the sovereignty of an individual. They were merely fellow-travelers in the climb to civilization with the human race. At their very best, they appeared to be very human creatures, albeit those who were lazy without let, completely vindictive of temperament, and had no taste for the greater achievements of humanity except for an overwhelming desire for sex, power or both. Of course, that was to be expected of the semi-humans to thought themselves wise enough to rule all mankind without an inkling of Science, History or Human Knowledge. They were universally hated and they therefore sought solace in the back streets of the cities where they could find women who were desperate enough to lay with their kind for the money that the dregs of humanity needed for survival.
Maurice had given her the table in the rear of the dinning area that was normally scorned by diners, i.e., the table closest to the kitchen door, but her location was perfect for her purposes. The high walls of the planter with it’s leafy greenery that hid the movements of the waiters and busboys into and out of the kitchen from the patrons would completely isolate her and her husband from any auditory or visual observation from the rest of the restaurant. His chair faced the rear of the restaurant completely concealing it, while position allowed her to push her chair away from the table and catch a glimpse of the front of the Café. She knew that the planters and their thriving plants made an excellent sound damping material that reduced the voices of the diners to muted whispers. The effect of the plants, coupled with acoustical absorptive qualities of the muted green indoor-outdoor carpeting beneath her feet made the Café an excellent place for either a private rendezvous or a tête-à-tête supper with one’s spouse.
The plants had an emotional effect as well; Laura knew instinctively that the restaurant was somehow magickally devoted to foster life and growth in favor of death and stagnation. She had the strangest feeling that the restaurant was a sort of Temple to Karmic Justice, wherein the forces of Life and Death battled, but where the Judge of Life always prevailed.
“The Chef will begin the dishes that you ordered when you made the reservation as soon as your dinner companion arrives, Madam. Would Madam like an aperitif or appetizer while you wait for him?”, the distinguished looking Maitre-de asked attentively as he came over to check on his solitary diner after allowing her to peruse the menu for a decent period. Even though Laura had pre-ordered, it was the policy of the restaurant to allow a diner to change his or her order at the last minute if the patron so desired. Of course, there would be a service charge levied for non-menued dishes that a patron had ordered in advance and then declined, but that was only reasonable. In any event, Louder’s menu was its best advertisement and restaurant policy required that a patron be given a menu unless “special circumstances” prevailed. Those circumstances would be effected by the patron’s stated wishes.
“Yes, please. I’d like a glass of Rosé, thank you! My husband will be along directly, he’s probably caught up in traffic..,” answered Laura patiently with a pleasant tone, knowing that her husband’s daily dalliance with his mistress was over for the day and he was merely fighting traffic. Maurice smiled and bowed slightly, then called over a waiter and whispered in his ear before he returned to his station at the entrance to the restaurant. Within minutes, the waiter appeared at Laura’s table with a glass of Rosé and carefully set it before her on the table.
Laura sat patiently, sipping her glass of Rosé as she looked over her surroundings while awaiting her husband’s arrival. The area in which she had been seated was evidently used as a storage area for the dinning area; next to the wall behind her table was a line of four expensive, heavily-built, oaken high chairs for patrons who brought their babies in to eat with them. The high chairs were matched by the strong oak wide-backed comfortable dining chairs that graced each linen bedecked table in the restaurant. The dining chairs were exceedingly well constructed with forest green cathedral velvet coverings over the thick foam cushions which overlay a solid foundation of steel coil springs and interwoven canvas straps that formed the base of the chair. The combination of the mattress-like construction and the firm but pliant cushions gave solid support for a patron’s weary bones but also allowed the cushion to mould itself to the musculature of the diner. The armrests wrapped around the chairs in gentle curves which gracefully dipped down at the front to allow the diner to pull the chair as close to the table as the diner would like. When not in use while eating, they well extremely comfortable chairs to relax in and sip one’s drink as one imbued the ambiance of the well appointed restaurant.
A tall redwood planter separated her table from the rest of the guests and the thick greenery growing from the planter shielded her table completely from view. With her chair pulled back, she could barely see the front of the restaurant’s foyer by the front door. Laura was satisfied with the table she had gotten; from her vantage point, she could quietly observe the front door to see when Ron arrived. Once she saw that he was there, she could pull her chair back up to the table and resume her hidden position. While she waited, she mulled over what the private detective had told her. Ron spent every afternoon at his mistress’s apartment and had probably been delayed by his erotic encounter. Laura smiled in anticipation of his comeuppance and used her right foot to shove the large blue bag she had purchased that morning further under the table to be hidden by the white tablecloth. She had made a number of purchases over the past two weeks and everything was ready for her husband’s reformation. Since he came home late every evening, he had never noticed how she had redecorated and refurbished the spare bedroom during the mornings and afternoons while he was at “work”.
The End of An Assignation at Louders – Chapter Three.
The story originally came from: https://littleab.com/story.html
If you want to read more stories about ABDL boys you can find a list here: Diaper Boys – Index