I want to be fair to Brandt. I want to entertain the possibility that his bad service had nothing to do with us. He was, maybe, having a bad night. Maybe he got into a fight with his wife. Maybe he was new. Maybe he was understaffed, even if it did not look that way. I thought about all of that. I also thought about the eye roll. When we ordered our entrées at 9:22 — I asked for the branzino, Terrence asked for the duck — Brandt, unmistakably, visible to both of us, rolled his eyes. He rolled them not at me. Not at Terrence. At our joint order. The way you roll your eyes when two people ordering food at a restaurant are an

imposition. I looked at Terrence. Terrence looked at me. And I saw, for the first time that night, the thing change in Terrence's face. The trust peeled back. The realization settled in. We did not say anything. We ordered a bottle of wine. Brandt walked away. And then, when our entrées arrived at 9:58 — thirty-six minutes after we ordered them — Brandt brought the wrong duck. He had brought, instead of the honey-lacquered duck breast Terrence had ordered, a duck confit. He set it down. He said, "Here you go." He was about to walk away. Terrence said, "Excuse me. I ordered the duck breast." Brandt said, "No, you didn't. You ordered the confit."