The Chosen

“Ah, and you’re disappointed by that.” This was an observation, not a question.

“Well, I’m not jumping up and down with joy. I still think if we’d run some ads…”

Feldspar smiled more broadly this time. He idly stroked his goatee, looking at her. “You expected a deluge of business on opening night? Surely not. What you must understand, Ms. Abbot, is the real function of The Carriage House.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a sideline, a subordination. I don’t expect the restaurant, on its own, to ever operate in the black.”

This frustrated, even astonished, her. Then why the hell are you paying us all this money? she wanted to shout. Why do you have a restaurant at all if you don’t expect it to make a profit?

“Our priority is The Inn,” he stated. “Our business profits come from guest reservations. I thought I’d made that clear.”

“Well, you did,” she admitted, “sort of.” Then she decided to voice her query, even though it countered her best interests. “So why even have the restaurant at all? The food inventories, the payroll, and its construction costs must come to a tremendous sum.”

“The building cost of The Carriage House,” Feldspar finally revealed “totaled out at just under a million, and I’m figuring half a million per year for stock, salaries, and utilities, based on the restaurants from Magwyth Enterprises’ other inns.”

“What are your average gross receipts from the same restaurants?” she now felt obliged to ask.

Feldspar shrugged. “About a hundred thousand, a little more sometimes.”

Four hundred grand in the hole every year? she calculated.

“And you’re thinking it’s an affront to business logic to maintain a quality restaurant that will never show profits.”

“Yes,” Vera said. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

“Quality,” Feldspar replied, “is the key word in the theorem. And long-term overall profit projections. Why does any hotel spend fifteen thousand dollars for a painting that few patrons even look at? Why does a broker spend more on office furniture than the average person earns in several years? La Belle Dame, in southern France, recently purchased a bottle of Medoc to display in their dining room. It cost one hundred twenty thousand dollars. Certainly no one’s going to order it with dinner.”

“So it’s all a show, in other words?” Vera reasoned.

“Yes, or in better words, it’s all a verification of impeccable quality standards. In our business, we amass such standards to a single, focused effect. Our select clientele want proof of such standards. They pay for it.”

The Carriage House is an expensive chair that nobody’s even supposed to sit in, Vera thought. Just a pretty thing for patrons to notice out of the corner of their eye when they’re walking up to their high-priced suites. We’re just scenery.

“That’s why I hired you,” Feldspar continued. “That’s why I pay you a considerable salary. I don’t care if you only serve one dinner per night, Ms. Abbot. As long as you maintain a preeminent standard of quality at The Carriage House, you’re doing your job. And if you do your job, you’ll be rewarded. You can manage

The Carriage House for as long as you like, or you can even transfer to one of our other inns abroad. Thus far, I couldn’t be more pleased with