Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich Page B

Elliot told me. “All of the great New York candidates launched their runs from this room! Boss Tweed, Handsome Jimmy Walker…”
    He continued to rattle off names until the maître d’ approached. He was a grim-looking Frenchman with a carefully groomed moustache.
    “I’ll have a watercress sandwich,” Elliot told him. “Seymour?”
    I could feel my armpits prickling with perspiration. How could I order when they hadn’t even brought over menus?
    “Just order whatever you want,” Elliot whispered.
    “Anything?”
    Elliot nodded casually.
    “Okay,” I said. “I’ll have a cheeseburger with onion rings.”
    The maître d’ laughed.
    “We don’t serve
cheeseburgers,”
he said. “Or onion…
rings.”
    He pronounced the words like they were bodily secretions.
    “Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
    I could feel the blood rushing to my face. I started to stammer out an order for a watercress sandwich—I knew they had that—but Elliot waved his hand in the air.
    “No,”
he said. “You wanted a cheeseburger.”
    He turned to the maître d’.
    “Are you telling me you won’t serve
my
associate the items he requested?”
    The maître d’ sighed.
    “This isn’t McDonald’s,” he said.
    Elliot’s eyes took on a strange sparkle.
    “So you’re denying him a cheeseburger?” he asked, his voice spookily soft. “And you’re denying him onion rings.”
    “Jesus,” I whispered. “Elliot, it’s okay. I’ll order something else.”
    “You will
not,”
he shouted.
    People at other tables turned to face us; we were the youngest customers in the room, I noticed, by about forty years.
    “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the maître d’ said.
    “Very well,” Elliot said. “We’ll leave your establishment. But first, I’ll take one of your business cards.”
    He walked over to the maître d’s desk and removed a card from a small silver tray.
    “And leave you one of mine,” he said.
    Elliot didn’t hold a position at any of his father’s companies, beyond the informal title of “heir.” But he had a business card all the same, consisting of his name—
Elliot Allagash
—and nothingelse. He took one out of his pocket and laid it faceup on the reservation book. Then he grabbed my elbow and yanked me out into the street, into the back of his waiting limo.
    “What the hell was that about?” I asked.
    But Elliot wasn’t listening. He was cheerfully copying the maître d’s name and number into his little black book.
    “Drive,”
he said.
    And the car roared crazily down the avenue.
    • • •
    Elliot didn’t come to school for a while. The teachers told us he was hospitalized with tropical parasites, but I knew where he really was: at home, plotting his revenge on the Winchester. I didn’t see or hear from him until two weeks later, when his limousine pulled up to my bus stop after school. The other kids watched silently as James rolled down his tinted window and motioned for me to get inside. Elliot was waiting for me in the backseat. He was wearing a silk bathrobe, and he had an unusually serene expression on his face. I asked him how he was feeling, on the off chance that he was actually sick.
    “Go to the Sun,” he told James, ignoring my question. “Let’s see about that late edition.”
    James drove to the Sun Building, ran inside, and emerged seconds later with a crisp new copy of the paper. He handed it to Elliot, who plucked out the Food and Dining section and laid it in my lap. It was still warm from the presses.
    “Page three,” Elliot said.
    WINCHESTER FETES NAZI
    When Dan Lubecki was released from prison on Wednesday, most New Yorkers shuddered. It’s been twenty years since the self-proclaimed “Nazi Crusader” planted a homemade bomb in Temple Ephraim, destroying one of the city’s most celebrated houses of worship. But for most New Yorkers, the wounds have not even started to heal.
    In a printed statement, the mayor expressed “frustration” at