Page 18 of Business vs. Pleasure

CHAPTER 6

Guéridon service. Motherfucking guéridon service.

Of all the restaurants in all of Chicago, they ended up at the one which was “reinventing tableside preparation for its finest diners.” That meant an entire trolley equipped with a personal chef, plates upon plates of ingredients waiting to be used, not one but two dedicated waiters, and a manager trying to walk the line between hovering obsequiously and giving them the illusion of privacy by staying out of sight behind a decorative divider.

“I know you said you were craving French cuisine,” Bremmer said over the hiss of the steak medallions as they hit the pan, “but when I saw they had this on offer, I couldn’t resist. When’s the last time you had the chef cook right next to your table, huh?”

“Oh, it’s been an age,” August assured him as his eyes turned once more to the building across the street. Ricardo had evacuated close to fifteen minutes ago. He ought to be positioning himself now to finish the job…but from which direction? And did it even matter, considering that every angle was obstructed by a body now? A body neither of them would feel good turning into a corpse?

He should have shot while I was bungling the drinks, damn it.

That wasn’t fair, really—August knew that Ricardo would have taken the shot if he’d had it. But the fallout from that caution was August sitting here, trading notes on how to be the worst kind of filthy capitalist imaginable in front of people who probably couldn’t afford to live within ten miles of where they worked.

It rankled. And the sting was worse than usual because August was entirely sure that, five years ago, he wouldn’t have given a damn about the situation of the people who were serving him dinner. Ricardo had changed him.

What a jerk. How dare he turn August into a real boy, then leave him alone to suffer through this conversation with Satan’s asshole by himself?

“So like I was saying,” Bremmer went on, forking up an enormous amount of the Caesar salad that had been artfully crafted and deposited in front of him to no acknowledgement whatsoever a few minutes ago, “with a corporation like yours, the easiest places to innovate with Rebel AI are going to be in human capital to start with. Stuff like human resource departments, junior engineering positions—shit, any and all of your translators!” He laughed the careless laugh of someone who’d never tried to think in another language in his life. “Not to mention your customer service reps. It’s not like you want to have to waste money on that kind of shit work in the first place. Our agents can do the job just as well as any of the low-level employees you’ve got handling that.”

August tutted as he twisted his fork around in his hand, admiring the way the warm lighting glinted off the tines. The knife was right there, of course, but the idea of using a knife on Bremmer seemed like too much of a mercy at this point. He deserved to have his eyeballs gouged out in the most painful way possible.

Maybe I can get the staff to bring me a grapefruit spoon.

August stuffed his fantasy down and got to work decimating Bremmer’s ego. “Aren’t agentic customer service reps responsible for billions of dollars in losses since their widespread inception thanks to savvy scammers figuring out ways to get them to offer enormous discounts during conversations?”

“Not a problem for us,” Bremmer boasted around a bite. Flecks of anchovy paste had collected in the corners of his mouth, pasty spots that quivered mockingly with every word. “Our AI is constantly training on new material. We don’t get the hallucination effect that leads to those kinds of vulnerabilities.”

“And where does this new material come from?” August asked.

Bremmer opened his mouth, then paused. “I’ll tell you after you sign a contract with me. Not that it’s anything illegal, I promise! But I can’t prove it’s legal until I have a deal on the books.”

Ah, the old give-me-clemency/write-me-a-blank-check-and-I’ll-tell-you-whatever-you-want-to-hear gambit. Popular with crooked governments and CEOs alike. It was a decent try, but August wasn’t here to make Bremmer feel good about himself. He was here to make him cry into his Steak Diane before Ricardo turned his head into puree.

“I’m so glad to hear that,” August enthused, finally taking a bite of the salad. He grimaced in distaste and set the fork down. There was salty, and then there was that. The chef must be nervous. “Because given the number of open investigations pending against you right now, the last thing we want to do is heap more kindling onto the bonfire, am I right?”

Bremmer frowned. “Rebel AI isn’t currently under investigation, Mr. Mason.”

Excellent, he was back to being Mr. Mason instead of Augustus. Don’t try to cuddle up to me, you bastard; I will happily break your legs and throw you to the dogs. Or pigs. Pigs would be even better. Didn’t that happen in some movie? A billionaire got thrown to pigs and eaten alive? Did that make August the cannibal character in this case?

Whatever. “No,” August agreed. “It’s not. You’ve done an excellent job insulating your company from a lot of the growing pains other AI businesses have suffered.”

Bremmer smirked. “I told you, I’ve got⁠—”

“I am, of course, referring to the cases being brought against you specifically.”

The doughy man froze, then narrowed his eyes. He didn’t look away from August as the waiter skillfully switched out their salad plates for the still-steaming steak with its side of Dauphinois potatoes.

At least something about this meal is what I wanted. August picked up his fork—a new one, not the salad fork that Bremmer was still using because he was a heathen—and took a bite. Mm. Much better.

“I don’t know that I like your tone, Mr. Mason.”

August shrugged. “And I don’t know that I like your assumption I wouldn’t engage in due diligence about the pending legal status of the man who’s asking me to invest billions of dollars in partnership with his company, Mr. Bremmer.” The steak actually smelled pretty good…August picked up his knife and began to carve a bite, slowly and carefully, letting his dining companion stew for a bit as he finally tasted it.

Ugh, overcooked and violently oversalted.

Jesus, had Bremmer set out to get them the least competent chef who worked here? August was tempted to complain, and yet…no. Tonight wasn’t about the meal, it was about the man across from him.

He set down the fork but kept his hand on the knife, just to bask in the solidity of it beneath his palm. If Ricardo didn’t get on with it soon, August was going to take matters into his own fucking hands, witnesses be damned.