The Sol Majestic

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  Kenna’s legs ache; he imagines them throbbing in time with Paulius’s reconstructed hip. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to imply…”

  “No, it’s fine, it’s fine.” Paulius guzzles his wine, refills the glass. “That’s … I almost forgot you knew about it. I’m on better medications for it, ones that don’t quite destroy my palate. But the older I get, well … the worse my aim gets. I’m still able to hit planets if I concentrate, but one day…”

  His gaze drifts out toward the deep space window. Then he shakes his head, smacking his lips in distaste.

  “Doesn’t matter. Without Scrimshaw, I’m all but forgotten anyway.” Kenna is halfway out of his chair to comfort his old friend, but Paulius clamps him to the table with a warm touch. “It’s all right, Kenna—I had a good run.”

  “How did…” He hasn’t wanted to say it out loud; vocalizing it would make it too real. “How did Scrimshaw pass on?”

  “She went doing what she loved,” Paulius sighs. “Died at her desk. Officially, it was a heart attack, but realistically? Well, she was pushing a hundred and fifty. We’d gotten her the best gene rejuvenations, but something was bound to fail. Poor bird.”

  “And you … shuttered the doors?”

  “I didn’t want to.” Paulius’s voice rises peevishly, a little too exhausted for irritation. “But that first wave of bills came in, and I realized there was too much for a man like me to follow. She was a good investor—a fine investor—and, uh, a…”

  His beetled brows knot inward, ticking his manicured fingernails against his glass.

  “A fine friend,” he finally acknowledges, tripping quickly through the words before draining the glass and refilling it. “But no. The Sol Majestic was a—it was a family business, Kenna. I could bring someone else in to run the finances, I suppose, but she’s dead and I’ll be dead soon, so … let it go out on a high note.”

  Kenna lifts his gaze to the tattered curtains overhead. “This is a high note?”

  “This,” Paulius says solemnly, “is the echo of a high note. But no matter. You know how distasteful I find money, and—well, I’d like to finish up the evening without fussing about cash. So since Benzo will be a while making the peanut stew, would you mind going to Scrimshaw’s office to transfer whatever data you need?”

  Kenna was hoping to forestall that, but Paulius is right—Scrimshaw had managed Kenna’s charitable funds, doing a herculean job for free, and even if Paulius would let his affairs collapse, Kenna should find someone else to manage his funds.

  His parents still burned to take over. They’d been traveling the galaxy ever since Kenna disowned them, bringing shabby cases to insignificant courts, claiming they had rights to Kenna’s charity.

  Scrimshaw used to cut them checks, secretly gifting them enough dinari to book futile flights to toothless courts. Mother and Father thanked their anonymous benefactor in the few news interviews they could scrape up, never knowing how Scrimshaw delighted in watching them waste their remaining years away on slow-cargo ships.

  “I’ll be a few moments,” Kenna says, heading for Scrimshaw’s office.

  “I’ll be in my cups,” Paulius says, lifting a glass.

  * * *

  Kenna kisses Benzo on the neck as he pads through the kitchen, wondering when the prep space had shrunk so small. Yet Scrimshaw’s red door looms as large as ever.

  Nobody ever went in there unless they were going out permanently, Kenna remembers.

  As Kenna opens the creaking door, he half expects to hear the old dragon admonishing him that this is her space. Yet for all her secrecy, Scrimshaw’s office is an ordinary office cubicle: a single monitor, a stack of smartpaper, no wall decorations. He was told death took her by surprise—but the office is perfectly filed, and Kenna suspects it had been perfectly filed for the last twenty years.

  There is one envelope taped to the wall: “For Kenna.”

  Confused, he examines the envelope: the tape is yellowed, as if this envelope had been stuck up long time ago.

  He looks around, expecting to see other envelopes—one for Paulius, perhaps—but this is all there is.

  He blows into the envelope and takes out a note, written in spidery handwriting:

  Kenna.

  If you are reading this, I am dead.

  If I have—

  He tears up, because until now he’d pretended she might shuffle through the door to greet him—but of course cold-eyed Scrimshaw would push him past pointless reverie.

  If I have done my job correctly, everything is in order, and control of the Inevitable Philanthropy Association has passed to you. I have made copious notes about what political movements I have chosen to fund and why, about which people are not to be trusted, and about the best tax shelters to protect the funding we have gathered. I have also maintained a file of potential successors who could take over for me, updated every six months.

  You ignore me at your own risk, of course.

  He can almost see her draconian lips curling into a smile.

  But I have also willed my personal fortune to you.

  The paper trembles in his hands. He didn’t want money. She knows he doesn’t care about money. Of all the people in the universe, Kenna would rather have Scrimshaw alive than have her money. Perhaps that is why she gave it to him.

  You’re wondering why I gave it to you.

  He laughs. “Gods damn you, Scrimshaw.”

  It’s because only you can keep The Sol Majestic alive.

  Kenna reads the words again. Has she gone mad? He’s the Inevitable Prince, not some financier—

  You will object that you are ignorant. You will object that you are devoted to tending to the poor. I also know you are a quick study, and I know the Inevitable Philosophy is so entrenched in most congresses and courts that your presence is barely necessary.

  And if you wish to sell the idea to your movement, you have always told them there is dignity in service. Serving great artists is still a service. Yes, you will tend to the rich and powerful, but I suspect your presence here will be a powerful reminder to them not to get too comfortable.

  Also, remember that The Sol Majestic left one table reserved each night, free of charge, for those with the love to see it. You were only the most notable of hundreds of lives we improved in the course of our service. I only wish it had been my idea.

  Were I there, you would tell me that this is mad, that money has never been your skill—but you were the one who marketed the robes. You were the one who got Montgomery to lead the kitchen. You’re cleverer than you know, Kenna. You and only you could lead Paulius back to greatness, and become greater yourself.

  I know you dreamed of being Paulius.

  I’d like to ask you to become me.

  Sincerely,

  B. Scrimshaw

  * * *

  Kenna clutches the letter to his chest as he emerges. Paulius stands hip-to-hip with Benzo, a dollop of peanut butter on his index finger. He makes approving noises as he tastes Benzo’s first pass at the peanut stew and suggests a hint of chiles de arbol.

  Benzo carries the same serenity he did in the Escargone—that certainty that he would, one day, outcook Paulius, but relishing the pleasure once it has arrived.

  Then they see Kenna’s pallid face and rush to grab him.

  “Are you okay?” Benzo asks. “Is it your knees again? Should I fetch your pain suppressants?”

  “No.” He doesn’t have to tell them; he could stay quiet, and none would be the wiser.

  But he’d never been content committing his life to steady courses.

  “She left me her money,” he tells them. “I’ve sorted through her funds. It’s … a quite considerable amount.”

  Paulius claps him on the back. “That’s wonderful, Kenna! After all you’d endured from that slave-addled maniac, how delightful must it be to have a rich bastard give you something for once?”

  “She’s … suggested I should take over as the Majestic’s business manager.” />
  Benzo drops his spoon, splattering peanut sauce across the tile floor. He holds his breath; Kenna knows how many times Benzo had longed to come work for The Sol Majestic, yet had never asked Kenna because he knew the Inevitable Prince’s duties.

  Paulius’s mood, however, goes dark. “You don’t have to, Kenna. I’ll be all right.”

  You won’t, Kenna thinks, noticing how the old man’s shirt is already a little too rumpled, his belly a little too full. Paulius cooks small meals because he needs to make the world amazing for someone, even in the ass-end of a rusted station—

  But Paulius would give that up if it made Kenna happy.

  Just as he’d always done.

  “You need someone to manage the bills,” Kenna says. “And we need a home. Even three months is too long for a place this blazing to fall dark. I’ll look into how to—how to manage the credit lines we’ll need to reopen the doors. I presume there must be regulations, so I’ll have to ascertain which merchants are worth dealing with—”

  And because Paulius had been so somber a moment ago, Kenna is unprepared when the old man whirls him into a gleeful dance, high-stepping up and down the kitchen aisles, looking years younger than when he met them at the docks.

  “You and me, Kenna! And Benzo! We three will fashion new dreams! We can’t call it The Sol Majestic, of course—it won’t be that, not without Scrimshaw. But we’ll refit it. We can call it—” He sweeps his hand across the air, outlining an imaginary sign: “Inevitable.”

  “It kind of is,” Benzo chuckles.

  “Certainly.” Kenna bobs his head, wrapping his head around creating a new restaurant. “That … actually sounds wonderful.”

  “We’ll take the opportunity to refit the old girl!” Paulius says. “We’ve got windows into space—but everybody’s got those now. We need to go next level. We’ll get Rakesh to put twenty hatches into those walls, we’ll catapult our guests out into the void so they come face-to-face with their own mortality, and then when they return even the simplest soups will seem so sweet—”

  “What about the expense?”

  Paulius blinks.

  “Seriously,” Kenna says, pressing forward. “Our funds aren’t limitless. The construction costs alone risk bankrupting us. And the safety concerns of such an endeavor, I can’t imagine what insurance contracts I’d need to procure … I’ll have to look into it.”

  Paulius tosses his cane aside. “What is there to look into?”

  Kenna watches the anger blossom on Paulius’s cheeks as he bumps chests with Kenna, peacocking in absurd rage …

  You and only you could lead Paulius back to greatness.

  As Paulius’s furor rises, happiness floods through Kenna: he understands why Scrimshaw left this to him.

  “The budget,” Kenna says loftily. “I’ll have to investigate the budget.”

  “What? An Idea waits to be born, glorious and formless and infinite, and you’d weigh down art with tawdry remuneration?!” Paulius splutters.

  “I wouldn’t argue with him.” Benzo stifles a chuckle behind a spatula. “After all, he is Inevitable.”

  “You … malicious manacle!” Paulius fumes. “You genitortuous jailer! You’d strangle art in the womb?”

  Kenna smiles.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wrote the first page of this novel on the day I decided to give up writing.

  Let’s set the stage for you: it was 2014, I’d written seven novels, and not a one of them had sold.

  If you’re a writer, you know what it’s like to inch along that painfully slow process toward “getting published”—and after many years, I’d gotten to the stage where agents now gave me personalized feedback before rejecting me. Getting gentle punches on the shoulder that said “Try again, kiddo” was admittedly better than the cold anonymous rejections—but seriously.

  Seven books.

  Twenty years of my life as a writer, and not a damn thing to show for it.

  But I had great hope for that seventh book. Because as I was writing it, an agent was asking me, “So how’s that book coming?” He liked the pitch I’d given him, and liked the novels I’d submitted before (though not enough to take me on as a client).

  So when I finished that novel, a story about magical drug dealers, I sent it off to him in the grand hopes that I’d finally at least get an agent.

  I sent it to him exclusively, but four months passed and he still hadn’t read it yet. Which was fine; he was busy with his stable of New York Times bestselling authors, I knew I was on the back burner.

  But after five months, I said, “Maybe I should send this novel out to other agents.” So I sent Novel #7 out, widely.

  At seven months, and a plateful of agent rejections, I was realizing that Novel #7 was not, shall we say, an easy sell.

  At nine months, all the other agents I’d sent it out to had rejected me. Every single one. I was down to just the original agent, the one who’d liked my elevator pitch, the one who’d loved my short fiction, so I waited by my inbox hoping, and …

  At ten months, my agent got back to me. And he said, “I’m sorry, I’ve spent the last few months pondering how to revise your book #7 so as to make it something I’d feel comfortable pitching, and I can’t think of a way to do that without destroying your whole plot. So…”

  Reader, I felt my entire writing career implode in that moment.

  I’d worked hard to be an author. So hard. And this Novel #7, my best novel, the novel I was so proud of, wasn’t good enough.

  I had to quit.

  And I’m gonna tell you: I crept down into the basement so my wife wouldn’t hear me, and I wept.

  Because if I ever wanted to be a writer, I’d have to spend another year finishing a new novel, then another few months revising it, and then another year shopping it around to agents, and then—if one accepted me—they’d spend a year shopping it to publishers and I would not have a novel published for four years minimum if I was good enough.

  Or I could quit.

  And in that basement, I wanted to quit. I was so fucking tired of writing. I was so tired of pretending I had talent. I should just abandon it and find something else to do with my life.

  I knew: If I did not start a new novel that night, I would never write again.

  So I sat down. I had no plans for a novel, so I set it in the setting of Sauerkraut Station—my novella that had been nominated for a Nebula, which is an alliterative appeal to be sure. I didn’t know what I wanted to write about, so I took my favorite restaurant and set it in space, and I.

  Just.

  Wrote.

  If you feel Kenna’s desperation in the opening chapters, my friends, that desperation is very real.

  And to quote Lin-Manuel Miranda, “I wrote my way out.” I needed a tale of hope, so I wrote a boy who found a place that was home to him. And that resonated with me, so I wrote more and more about food and love until it became my refuge …

  And literally two weeks after I started writing that novel, I sold Novel #7 to Angry Robot, which became my debut novel Flex, which was successful enough to turn into a three-book series. (Go check it out, if you liked this; if this book is about soup, that series is about donuts. No, seriously.)

  So I’m gonna acknowledge people in a bit, but first lemme just tell you what this novel taught me:

  Don’t quit.

  You have something to say.

  Write until you unlock that potential.

  Anyway, let’s talk about restaurants that inspired this book:

  The Velvet Tango Room in Cleveland is routinely ranked one of the best bars in the world, and its owner is Paulius Nasvytis—yes, that is an homage. They make the best drinks I’ve tasted there, including a bourbon daisy with a twenty-second aftertaste that mutates on the tongue, and much of the philosophy of The Sol Majestic is taken straight from the VTR’s devotion to the craft. It will be worth your while to make a pilgrimage to the VTR, but be on your best behavior—they expect you to respect th
e drinks, and so do I.

  Joe Bastianich’s Babbo, in New York City, was the first Michelin-starred restaurant I ever ate at, and it was a revelation in terms of service and attention to detail. I cribbed a lot of the atmosphere for The Sol Majestic from Babbo, which makes some damn fine gnocchi.

  Eleven Madison Park is routinely ranked among the top five restaurants in the world, and they showcased that glory when they asked me, “Are you celebrating anything special at this dinner?” and I said, “I’m writing a science-fiction book on fine dining.” And during my meal, they took me in back, made me and my wife frozen maple treats, and took us on a tour and answered all my questions. A lot of The Sol Majestic’s kitchen look is taken from Eleven Madison Park, and man are they good.

  Also critical to the world view of The Sol Majestic was the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art’s showcase on Ferran Adrià’s seminal restaurant El Bulli, which provided a lot of fodder for how Paulius thought.

  And, of course, thanks to my mother and my sainted Uncle Tommy, who took a sullen kid out to restaurants when he was twelve because they liked fine food, and so gifted me with a great love that ignited this whole damn book.

  (Note: all the restaurants listed here are expensive because The Sol Majestic is expensive. But you’re not really a foodie unless you can appreciate the value of a well-made two-dollar hot dog. In fact, if you go to the VTR, one suggests stopping by Cleveland’s stalwart Old-Fashion Hot Dog afterwards to get you some chili cheese dogs and a glass of cold milk.)

  Thanks to Billy Martin, who, back when I was just a nobody blogging away on LiveJournal, told me I had a gift for writing about food. Considering Billy was a Published Author back then, that meant the world to me. If you liked this book and haven’t read Billy Martin’s Liquor series (written under his old name Poppy Z. Brite), then do so posthaste: your world will be expanded.

  Thanks to all the people who helped me revise this book: Matthew Duhan and his amazing introduction to sous vide cooking, Amy Aldrich, Geri Bressler, Darren Lester, Daniel Starr (who is still responsible for destroying Boston), Ingvild Husvik, Ian Griffith (whose Mage campaign is still responsible for kickstarting my book Flex), Raven Black, John Perich, Barbara Webb, Christina Russell, my old Clarion classmate Sarah Miller, and Ashley Thompson.