Kevin & Gabriel | A Working Lunch

[x-velocidad.livejournal.com]

Gabriel's training continues, in an unlikely locale.

Eleven Madison Park was only a short ways from their offices, but it was like entering a different (and much more expensive) world. Kevin had paused near an alley to change his features, and was now an older gentleman that seemed vaguely familiar to the younger man. As they stepped through the doors, the maitre'd greeted him warmly and the two had exchanged a murmured conversation which including a head tilt towards Gabriel.

Lunch had been Kevin's off hand suggestion, but unlike his normal heartstoppingly fatty deli sandwiches, he'd instead told Gabe to grab a suit jacket and to follow him. Their coats were taken by the staff and they were swiftly seated at a quiet table with a view of the park.

"If I know waiters, someone back there is playing 'son or rent boy.'" Gabriel, whose attention was mostly focused on the window, couldn't blame them. For whatever reason, places like this had a way of making him feel a little uncomfortable. Jacket or no jacket, he felt like an impostor. An interloper from one New York, the one that had been swept out to Brooklyn and Queens, trespassing into the other. The one that was more inclined to think he was the help.

Gabriel knew that was all in his head, though, and so he tried to push the thoughts away and just sit and blend, and not worry about how doofy the charcoal jacket looked over the unusually casual attire he'd worn to work. Especially since, knowing Kevin, discomfort had been part of the point. "You come here often," Gabriel said after a few more seconds, turning his head toward Kevin. "And you tip memorably, I take it."

"No, but Alonzo Marin does, as his office at Marin-Carrera Investments is reasonably close. In fact, he held his niece's bridal lunch here a month ago. If you can drop a slight European edge to your voice? He has dozens of nieces and nephews, some of whom are at university in the US." Kevin said in the gap between waitstaff. "Even better, he has an account here that just bills him regularly. Which is a nice advantage for me when I need a fine dining place... or a free meal. And that's what we're going to learn today. If you're going to work in the field, you're going to need to learn to be as comfortably blending in here as you are at a hot dog stand."

"What're you trying to say?" Gabriel took a sip from his water glass. "You know I've eaten at a restaurant before, right?"

"Not like this, I'd wager. Ever been at an embassy dinner? This isn't a restaurant, Gabe. It's fine dining, and you can out yourself by picking up the wrong utensil." Kevin sat back as several servers came up and started to lay the proper setting for lunch. Once they finished, there was a surprising amount of hardware on the table.

"Good Lord," Gabriel said as he scanned the table, because he was fairly sure it was inappropriate to drop f-bombs in reputable houses of dining. "Okay," he finally relented, looking up at Kevin with a resigned expression, "fine. You win. But when do I get to show you how us young people manage to eat street food while texting? Because that's a skill too, man."

"You know that your goal of watching me eat a hotdog is not really all that subtle?" Kevin said and almost instantly switched his bearing as the head waiter came up.

"Mister Marin. Who you like to look at the wine list or would you prefer the chef's pairings?"

"I think we can trust the chef for his tasting menu. We'll start with a glass of the Krug Grand Cuvee. Something from the early 90s?"

"We have a 93 currently chilling."

"Excellent." The waiter disappeared almost immediately. "First rule, learn a collection of wines and keep them updated. I'll send you a list, but wine is one of the easiest ways to show you don't belong. People too often chase a brand name or price. Someone who has enough money that the price doesn't matter will take something good but not necessarily at the top of the range."

"Ah, yes," Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Wine appreciation, the sport of the rich. I have yet to be convinced it's not all bullshit." A beat. "Ugh, god, sorry." He knew he needed to be taking this more seriously, but he was having a hard time of it. In an attempt to show contrition, he sat up straighter in his chair. "Is it important to be able to make conversation about wine? Because I can memorize a list, but tannins?"

"Think of it like another language. Same with food, art, culture... the political elite and wealthy operate in a different world and we need to be able to blend into it." Kevin said, talking softly so his voice didn't carry. "Fortunately, if you get the basics down so you don't stand out, most of the time, they won't dig any deeper."

"Is it really that simple?" Gabriel wasn't being a prick — he was legitimately asking. "I mean, seriously. I can't change my appearance to look more... I dunno," he shrugged, "blue blood. Though maybe that's good, I guess. If I seem like gauche new money, my faux pas won't really stand out."

"Nope. Because many of the places you're going to need to fit it, you will be expected to know all of this in order to be there in the first place. There's no short cut." He sat back as the waiter came back with a bottle, opened it deftly and poured off two perfectly filled flutes. "So, first things first, never hold a chilled glass of wine by anything but the stem. Any other way will warm up the drink artificially."

"Yeah, hi," Gabriel picked up the glass and gave Kevin a look, "bartender, remember? The holding and the drinking of the thing is not the problem. I'm a boor, not a savage." He sniffed it, tentatively. "How did you learn all this? Did you date Emily Post?"

"I spent forty years in the field where making mistakes with this stuff could get me outed and horribly killed. CIA used to have classes on different elements. I was born poor on the wrong side of the tracks in Chicago. Took me years before I could pass in society without being questioned."

"Oh." Gabriel just nodded. He wasn't sure he'd picked up any real personal details about Kevin's life before now, and he was racking his brain to figure out if that were true, while trying not to let it show. "You miss it? I mean, we're not exactly—" He shrugged, unsure exactly how to say what he was trying to say in the middle of a house of fine dining. "It's Little League and the Cubs, so to say." He took a sip from the glass.

Kevin's eyebrow quirked. "Gabe, part of the reason you're being trained like this is that the most dangerous jobs are being done by a few of us. Do I miss it? I miss the fact that I had an agency with tens of billions of dollars in resources, support staff and tech backing me up on every mission. I miss the fact that I had a simple touchstone I could always fall back on; did it help our national security. Not necessarily moral, but at least certain. Yeah I miss that."

He paused and took a measured swallow. "I don't miss that after over forty years of loyal service they put a bullet in the back of my head and dumped me at the bottom of the bay for a decade. It's... complicated."

"Uh, yeah." Gabriel stared incredulously at Kevin. "I would say that's plenty — I mean, Jesus, dude." This was the kind of moment that warranted a cigarette. Instead, he put the champagne flute back down. What a metaphor for life: You tried to make something of yourself, and then someone shot you in the back of the head.

After a few seconds of staring at his hands, he looked back up at Kevin. "Is it stupid if I ask which decade?"

"July 8th, 1994. Ironically, it was only a few months after I'd officially retired with a pension and everything." He took a sip. "I think I came back in 2008 or so. My memories of the first year or so back are really fragmented."

"You might be lucky. Conventional wisdom says that the end of the 90s and most of the 2000s sucked." He wanted to drum his fingers on the table, but he knew that wasn't proper etiquette, so he suppressed the urge. "And you're still doing this," he said, a mixture of awe and disbelief. "Good for you."

"Good?" Kevin shook his head. "Gabe, I don't have a living family member. I never could have kids. All of my friends are dead or think I'm dead. I attend my ex-wife's funeral a few years ago. I literally have nothing else in my life that offers any marks that I exist than this job. Other than Dom, if I disappeared tomorrow, it would be like I never existed. So it isn't bravery or conviction. I'm still doing this out of desperation, because without it, there's nothing left."

"Man, you have to give me some slack if I don't know what to say in situations like these, even though I seem to keep finding myself in them. I think life's fucked up enough, and then I talk to people like you and Wade and what's-his-face. The German dude. And you guys, I mean, Jesus. Talk about perspective."

"We're also your cautionary tale. All three of us have made it this fair by being willing to do what we need to in order to survive. That's what these training sessions are for. I've lived through hundreds of agents being killed by making basic mistakes. I don't want to have to do that with you, Gabe. And I wouldn't think the less of you even for a second if you opt out and do something less dangerous instead, like juggling chainsaws or shark dentistry. But as long as you want to do this, I'm going to train you within an inch of your life so you don't make a mistake."

"You know there's a little more to survival than that," Gabriel pointed out, "but I appreciate the rigor, really. Even if I've got goes-out-in-a-blaze-of-glory written all over me, if we're being honest."

"Not if I can help it. And I swear to god, you try anything like that and I will fuck you up in ways that you don't even know exist to be fucked up in." Kevin said, surprisingly intense. The old spy usually kept his emotions incredibly close to the chest. "We aren't heroes, Gabe. We're boring worker bees doing a stupidly dangerous job, and your main objective is always to come home at the end of the day."

"Yeah, I know," Gabriel's voice was flat. He reached for the glass again. "Heroes die, grand gestures or not." That wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind, anyway. If Clint's death had taught him anything, it was the pointlessness of sacrifice.

"Everyone dies. The hope is to make it as late as possible. Preferably in someone else's bed."

"Yeah? I always heard it was to live fast and die young. Another lesson, I guess."

"A perspective from people who haven't seen many people live fast and die young."

"Maybe so." Gabriel, forgetting he was in the midst of a class on decorum, drained the rest of the glass of champagne. "But breathe easy. Life's still fun, so I'm determined to enjoy it before I become decrepit and boring."

"Stick with me, kid. I'll have you decrepit and boring soon enough. Now, what all of this cutlery is for, volume one."