He looked Catalina dead in the eyes, a cruel smirk playing on his lips, and began to speak. He wanted the roast lamb, but not overdone. Fries, but fried in duck fat, not oil. And a red wine from Rioja, but not too old. He spoke rapidly, intentionally slurring a few syllables to make it even more difficult to parse. When he finished, he leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. Richard stared at him in blatant confusion. Penelope looked mildly amused, clearly recognizing that Alvinson was speaking a foreign tongue, though almost certainly unaware of which one. Alvinson waited for the inevitable reaction. He waited for the deer-in-the-headlights stare. He waited for Catalina’s cheeks to flush crimson with embarrassment. He waited for the stuttered apology, the panicked retreat to fetch the manager, the sweet victory of proving his intellectual superiority to a girl in an apron.
Catalina stood perfectly still. For a fraction of a second, the bustling noise of the restaurant, the clinking of crystal, the low murmur of wealthy patrons, the soft jazz playing through the hidden speakers, faded away. Euskara. Of all the languages in the world, Alvinson Carmichael had chosen Euskara. What Alvinson did not know, what no one at Le Cirque knew, was that Catalina’s maternal grandmother, Amalur, was born in a tiny, wind-battered fishing village near San Sebastián. Catalina had spent every summer of her childhood sitting in Amalur’s sun-drenched kitchen in New Jersey, forbidden to speak English. Amalur had believed that to lose the language was to lose the soul of their ancestors. Furthermore, Catalina’s incomplete doctoral dissertation at Columbia was titled Syntactic Ergativity in the Euskalkiak Dialects of the Basque Country. Alvinson had not just stepped into her territory. He had unknowingly walked into the very center of her fortress.
Catalina did not blush. She did not stutter. Instead, a slow, genuine, and faintly terrifying smile spread across her face. It was the smile of a predator who had just been handed a loaded gun by its prey. She took a short step closer to the table, looking directly down at Alvinson. She did not pull out her notepad. She did not break eye contact. She answered in Basque, her voice ringing out clear and melodic, her pronunciation razor-sharp, bearing the exact guttural rolling R’s and soft T’s of the Gipuzkoan dialect. Excuse me, sir. How exactly would you like the lamb? Our chef prepares it with fine herbs, and we will fry the potatoes in duck fat, of course. Regarding the Rioja, I recommend a 2015. Young, but with great character.
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic for Alvinson’s ego. The smug smirk vanished from his face as if he had been slapped with a wet towel. His jaw actually dropped. He blinked once, twice, the cogs in his brain violently grinding together as he tried to process what was happening. His brain refused to accept the data. This waitress, this nobody in a white shirt, was not just speaking Euskara back to him. She was speaking it with a fluency and a native cadence that dwarfed his clumsy, tourist-level vocabulary. “I— what?” Alvinson stammered, the English slipping out before he could stop it.
Penelope Hayes let out a sharp, sudden laugh. It cut through the tension at the table like a knife. “Oh, Alvinson,” she purred, her eyes dancing with wicked delight as she looked at Catalina. “It seems your little parlor trick has backfired. What language is that, my dear?” “Basque, ma’am,” Catalina replied, switching seamlessly back to perfect, unaccented English. “An ancient language isolate spoken in the Basque Country, the region between Spain and France. Mr. Carmichael was just requesting an off-menu lamb dish with duck-fat potatoes and a specific vintage of Rioja. It’s a very rustic choice, but our kitchen can certainly elevate it.”