Free The Favor by Nicholas Guild Page A

of butter, was a
hard roll of the kind you simply couldn’t seem to find in the
States. There was even a little yellow flower in a weighted holder
in the center of the table—the Europeans knew how to do these
things right.
    The first course was a cream of asparagus
soup, served with about half a dozen croutons bobbing around in it,
obviously there just for the aesthetic effect. The waiter brought
it and then retired to the other end of the car, where he could
watch Guinness’s progress with the discriminating eye of a
connoisseur. He didn’t try to hurry him; there was all the time in
the world. He seemed to take a vicarious satisfaction in the whole
process, and maybe he did.
    And the main course—well, what more could you
have asked for? A veal steak in clarified butter and lemon sauce, a
little rice, a little creamed spinach, and a grilled tomato topped
with toasted breadcrumbs. There was even a salad, with an oil and
vinegar dressing and sprinkled over with finely chopped egg, the
sort of thing that made you think you wouldn’t mind if you never
saw another head of iceberg lettuce again.
    Guinness cracked open his roll and made his
slow, gratified way through it all, helped along by a bottle of
delicious topaz colored wine.
    The train stopped in Frankfurt for about six
minutes, and Guinness noticed that the Swiss couple got off. They
went past his window before they were met at the end of the
platform by a stout, fortyish, unhappy looking woman whom their
manner betrayed as the prodigal daughter. She was wearing a heavy
raincoat, and her drab, dark yellow hair hung in thin little
strands down to the collar. The reunion didn’t seem very cordial,
and parents and child disappeared beyond Guinness’s field of
vision. In a few moments, the platform was all but empty again.
    When they were once more underway, the waiter
brought out a cup and a silver teapot clutched awkwardly in one
hand and a bowl of vanilla ice cream, with two peach halves sliding
slowly away from each other toward the sides, under a covering of
raspberry syrup, in the other.
    “Peach Melba,” he announced, grinning like a
gargoyle. Guinness had nearly finished it, and was sipping on a
second cup of very strong tea, when a man who looked to be in his
very early thirties, wearing a short camel hair coat that was
belted around the waist and a brown hat with a brush sticking out
of the band, came in and sat down three tables in front of him,
with his back turned. The waiter approached to inform him that
dinner was no longer being served, but he shook his head and asked
for a cup of coffee—“ Etwas Kaffee, bitte ”—and the waiter
shrugged and brought it to him. He barely touched it. Guinness
called for his bill, paid it, counted out the tip, and got up to
leave. The other man was very scrupulous about not turning around,
but even through the back of his heavy coat he seemed tense, as if
he would jump if someone happened to touch him on the shoulder.
    Etwas Kaffee, bitte. The clothes were
German, but the accent wasn’t. Guinness wondered whom he could have
been working for, and why these guys never learned to relax and act
like the rest of the human race. He had just boarded—hell, he
hadn’t even thought to take off his hat yet—and who got on a train
and immediately went to the dining car for coffee? Probably he
could have ordered it in the station and paid a third of the price.
They never seemed to learn.
    What to do. What to do, what to do. What did
the stupid son of a bitch want? Well, the only way to find out was
to ask him.
    Of course, trains had certain obvious
disadvantages in that respect; they tended to be a little public,
and there weren’t very many corners you could jump out from behind.
Trains—let’s face it—were distressingly straightforward. One would
simply have to make the best of it.
    What did the guy want? Guinness checked his
watch—it was a few minutes after ten. The next stop was Mainz, but
not for at least