All You Can Eat

I admit that I enjoy fine dining.
I want my table set with silver silverware, linen napkins, and long-stemmed roses. I like to eat off china and drink from crystal. I like champagne, caviar, lobster, shrimp, and filet mignon. I demand prompt, attentive service. After all, as far as anyone knows, we go around only once in life; we may as well live for the moment. We may as well enjoy the best, including expensive meals in superb restaurants.
What’s wrong with that?

Nothing, unless you happen, as I did, to forget your purse.
Of course, I was more than a little embarrassed, when it came time to pay the check, to discover that I had neither cash nor a credit card on me. I had left my purse on the table in the entrance hall to my forty-room mansion. Since Malcolm, my chauffeur, drives me everywhere I go, whether to a restaurant, the set, the plastic surgeon’s office, or a business appointment, I have no need of keys to the limousine. Consequently, it was only after Malcolm had dropped me off at La Petite Mademoiselle and I had finished my excellent repast that I realized that I’d forgotten my purse. I would have called Malcolm at once, of course, had my cellular telephone not been in my purse, along with the several thousand dollars that I always carry in cash and my platinum American Express card that, alas, I had left home without.

Others might have asked to use the house telephone, but, of course, others do not suffer my predicament. It is quite inconvenient, at times, to be rich and famous. One such nuisance is that everyone watches me and hangs upon my every word. To make a telephone call on the house telephone would have drawn attention, and busybodies would have eavesdropped, even if doing so meant that they had to leave their tables and pretend to visit the powder room or to attend to some other immediate and pressing business. With my cell, I could have found a private spot, but the house telephone is hopelessly public.
Fortunately, I hit upon an idea, during dessert-a superb chocolate mousse.