Chương 198: Dave's Last Appearance

The ripples from that message stayed with Chris for days. Nothing else came. The gate, half-glimpsed, went quiet again. Life more or less resumed. What broke it this time was Dave, and a phone call he would not give up on.

"Chris, we have to talk. Once. I promise this is the last time I harass you like this." Dave sounded frantic, and also defeated. Chris thought about it and decided it was time to settle things between them. He agreed. They met at a café in Greenwich Village that Chris went to often. Dave arrived on time in a full suit with a black folder under his arm the thickness of a brick, and looked entirely wrong against the room's easy scruffiness.

"You finally agreed to see me, champ." He let out a long breath as he sat down, like a man completing a difficult mission, and dropped the enormous folder on the table with a slap and pushed it across.

"What's this?" Chris asked, knowing.

"This is your future. The blueprint of the Chris White commercial empire." The fire of a top-tier agent came back into Dave's eyes. He opened the folder, pointed at it, and launched the speech he'd been preparing for weeks.

"Look — these are the detailed versions of every proposal, exactly as you asked for. Section one, the Chris's Choice premium cookware line. We have preliminary agreement with a top German manufacturer. All you do is license your name and likeness—""Section two, Champion's Taste, a ready-meal line. Health and convenience. We're not making junk.

We're making meal kits that let ordinary people taste a world champion's cooking at home—""And this one, which is the one I love: King of the Kitchen, a global fast-casual chain. We use your name as the brand and standardized process to guarantee output. Five hundred locations worldwide inside three years." Dave talked faster and faster, apparently already able to see money waving at him.

What he was describing was an enormous closed commercial loop with the name Chris White at the center of it, spanning products and restaurants and media. Chris didn't interrupt. He drank his coffee and turned through thirty-odd pages of it. Dave was, in fairness, an excellent agent. The document was thoroughly professional; every project came with market analysis, financial projection and an execution path, and it was tight and genuinely attractive.

Most reasonable people would have found that future impossible to refuse. By the time Dave ran out of saliva and stopped for water, Chris had reached the last page. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. He picked up a pen. He didn't linger anywhere near the returns projections. He went straight to the back of the document.

That final section was headed Brand Foundation and Long-Term Value, and in a very short paragraph it suggested one thing: opening a small chef-driven restaurant in New York with a strong personal signature, as the spiritual totem and the source of inspiration for the brand. Chris drew a circle around that paragraph. Then he closed the folder and pushed it back. The expression froze on Dave's face. He looked at the one circle, and then at Chris, with total disbelief.

"…What? Chris, what does that mean?"

"It means I'm interested in that one." Chris pointed at the circle.

"The rest we'll leave."" Leave?" Dave's voice went up an octave, and other customers turned to look.

"Chris, do you understand what you're saying? That circle is the least profitable and least significant part of the entire plan. It isn't even a commercial project. It's a concept."

"For me it's the whole thing." Chris didn't say it loudly, and it was completely immovable." Why? Give me one reason." Dave genuinely didn't understand.

"Any single one of these makes you more money in a year than you'd make cooking for a lifetime. Why don't you want that?" Chris looked at his nearly-broken agent and smiled. He picked up a sugar cube, dropped it into his coffee, and stirred it slowly.

"Dave, let me ask you something. What do you sell?"

"What do I sell? Your commercial value, obviously."

"No." Chris shook his head.

"I'll tell you. I don't want to sell my name. I want to sell my food."

"What's the difference?"

"The difference is enormous." Chris put the spoon down and looked at him seriously.

"A name can be printed on any number of pans, any number of packages, any number of restaurant signs. My food can only come out of my kitchen, one plate at a time, to the person sitting in front of me."

"The first one is a business. The second one is a craft. I don't want to run a business. I want to be a cook." Dave had nothing left. He stared at Chris and his mouth opened and no words came out of it. He understood, finally, that this young man was not like any of the stars and performers and athletes he had ever handled. Money, fame, a commercial empire — this man honestly rated all of it below one plate of food made properly.

After a while Dave collapsed back into his chair like a punctured ball and let out an extremely complicated sigh.

"You are insane," he said, shaking his head, and there was a rueful smile on his face.

"Twenty years in this business and I have never met anybody as insane as you. I've wasted the whole run."

"Not entirely wasted." Chris was smiling.

"You did find me a reason to open a restaurant." Dave looked at the clear, untroubled smile on Chris's face, and started laughing too. At himself, and at a world that made no sense.

"All right, all right. You win." He put both hands up in surrender.

"One small restaurant. And I'll tell you now — just finding a suitable space in New York and dealing with the damn licences and permits is going to be a nightmare. Are you certain?"

"I'm certain." Chris nodded.

"Fine." Dave straightened up as though he'd decided something, and a little of the shrewdness came back into his eyes.

"Then I'm handling it too. Lease negotiation, legal, contractor bids — none of that touches you. All you have to tell me is what kind of restaurant you want." This time the tone wasn't the commercial predator trying to control everything. It was closer to a reliable friend who'd take a knife for you. Chris looked at him and smiled, and meant it.

"Thank you, Dave."

"Don't thank me. I just don't want my only world champion going bankrupt before opening because he couldn't find the right drain." Dave's mouth was as merciless as ever. His eyes had warmed considerably. Something between them changed in that moment. From a tense negotiation into a strange, oblique kind of peace, and a partnership.