Utopia (Fine Dining)

There's a place where rich people go. If you have to ask, you can't afford it, dear. The sun always shines on the Island. A few have pondered if there's a Top Secret high-tech reason for that. There could be. There could very well be.

Yes.

That's how rich they are. The sunlight is different there. It has a certain quality, as if the light itself drips money. It gleams off the brilliant blue of the ocean, fractured into a thousand diamond tips. One for each little micro wave. It glints off the metal and glass of the Restaurant. The Restaurant sits right on the coast. Its elegant contours call to mind a seashell. The front of the building is made from pristine glass panels, and the whole is punctuated by vertical accents of copper that lend a red-gold shine in the early evening. Gardens embrace it, brimming with cascades of rare and decadent flowers. The scent is indescribable.

This is where the rich people go.

The marble entrance has a mermaid depicted in gold outline over the door to welcome you in. Inside, it's all reclaimed wood and ultra-modern furnishings. The name Utopia is spoken in whispers only, at only the most elite events, by the very wealthiest people. More often, it is referred to as just the Restaurant.

It's not advertised anywhere, and it does nothing so tawdry as take bookings. You can't apply to work there, either. If you are a chef of a certain calibre, men in serious suits will pull up outside your home, or your place of work, and ask you (very politely) to get in the car. There are two of them, of course, and they are most certainly men, not women. They have earpieces, and dark glasses, and they don't explain anything. They gesture to the large and shiny black vehicle, and then they wait, expectant authority radiating off them. Human beings can, once in a while, tell the future. That is, all humans, not just a blessed few. Mind you, humans can only do this if the conditions are right. This is one of those times. Nobody refuses these gentlemen. Obey? Most likely. Flee? Maybe. Get subdued, and stowed deftly in the car anyway? Definitely. Should these folks knock at your door, the thought will occur that they're most certainly not thugs, but they will break your legs to get you in that automobile if that's what it takes. What's more, they will do it without even breaking a sweat. In broad daylight, with nary a glance this way or that.

When this much money is involved, it doesn't matter who sees.

The other staff who work at the Restaurant have no passports, and in some cases, no tongues.

Are you with me?

It's that sort of place.

Oh, no, not that sort of place! They don't eat the tongues! No, they cut them out because it's a secret, you see?

But, yes, it is that sort of place. If you ask for "breast", you will get... Well. You get the picture.

Breast is extraordinarily expensive, because so many people ask for it.

Well. I say people. I mean men.

There are no menus. There would only be one thing on it. You have it the way the chef prepares it, and with whatever drink the team of in-house experts recommend. You pay a fixed fee (no, much more than that) for the table for the entire evening. You pay for expertise. For ambience. For the experience. With all this in mind, a menu would be rather a waste of ivory (not the colour) card, inlaid with gold.

Yes, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking of those places with lobster tanks, where you choose your dinner. And yes, it's also that sort of place.

A guest murmurs something quietly to the wait staff, and is invited to follow her. He stands, not awkward at all (ok, maybe a bit) and exchanges looks with one of his companions. His colour is high in his Botoxed face. He is led away to the back of the room, through a shiny black wooden door and down a corridor. To the, shall we say, the lobster tank.

Shall we go with him, and see what kind of place this is?

The corridor leads down, down, down... Deep into the belly of the Island. Finally, it flares out in a dead end. He faces a flat, blank wall. A panel is slid aside, codes are punched in, and the electronic blinds begin to whir. The wall is not a wall at all. It's a window. More accurate: It's a two-way mirror, such as you might find inside an interrogation room at a police station.

You're a quick one, I can see. Already thinking it: if this is an interrogation room, who are the prisoners?

He steps closer to the viewing area, a-bristle with anticipation and wetting his lips for his appetiser: voyeurism. They do say the first bite is with the eye, and his eyes guzzle on their breasts, greedy as a newborn infant.

There are four in the Tank, which is not really a tank at all. It's an enclosed underground lagoon. Strategic lamps give the creatures a little light, but after all, they don't need much. Mostly, the light is to illuminate the space for those at the viewing window. What would be the point in clear water, or soft white sands, if nobody can see it?

The light is also to showcase our movie star's dinner. (He certainly looks hungry, doesn't he?) He watches them, drinking in every detail with his cold eyes: their flawless skin, pale and pearly, like fish-belly. Their vibrant tails, magnificent muscle robed in iridescent hues that become a kaleidoscope every time a siren flicks her tail. Their waist-long hair, thick and wild. He almost groans at how beautiful they are.

There are details he misses: their expressions. Mournful, if you disregard the identical, small, fixed-looking smiles. Their eyes: haunted and hollow. Do they know?

These otherworldly creatures in such a beautiful place, their features awash with naked melancholy... Perhaps, for a "normal" person this would be at first enchanting, and then, quite unsettling. Here is a wonder of the natural world, something we have dreamed of and been fascinated by since childhood... and we have caged her, like a golden goose.

One by one, three sirens slip off the rocks and glide, ghostlike, under the surface of the water. Not a splash, not a ripple, betrays their passing. Their hair becomes silk, they undulate, and then... they are gone.

The fourth stays where she is, cradling her baby to her breast, its fish-tail flapping from side to side.

"Can they see us?" the nameless-for-legal-reasons film star wants to know. (Let's call him Tom.)

The staff member shakes her head.

"Hear us?"

Another shake.

Then why did they go? Did they know we are here? How?

Tom is led to another viewing window, which shows them swimming deep in the lake.

He glances back at the suckling pup, and the huge milky breasts of its mother... The question trembles on his wet lips, how much? but he gives himself a shake. If you have to ask...

He looks back at the other three, and points, making his selection.

They call it Utopia, but this is the shiny, grimy underbelly of the elite. All designer dresses and Hollywood smiles. Botox, and gossip columns, and watches that cost more than your house. Hungry, like sharks, and perverse like... well, like men.

I would love to tell you children never come to the Island, and certainly never, here, to Utopia. Unfortunately, sometimes, they do. Just last year, a billionnaire brought his daughter here for her third birthday. She squealed with delight to see real mermaids. Then she sat in a small function room with the children of equally rich families to eat chicken nuggets, and be shepherded out before they could find out the truth.

I'm afraid there's also an even bigger fish, in even murkier waters, with an even darker belly still.

Below and behind the Tank is an even more restricted area, where the mermaids are farmed. The cells are tiny and filthy. Rotten fish stink permeates the slimy black rock walls. The sirens' hair and skin is lank and patchy. It seems to fall out in handfuls, and their scales the same. Perhaps their tails are bald from thrashing about in a space so small, or maybe they just fell out when Hope did. Their bodies are scarred, and their lips sewn shut so they cannot sing.

Pups are pulled squalling from their mothers, who tear their stitches to scream.

There's always another fish, a muckier secret; a mariana trench of human nature to be plumbed.

There's a third Tank, this one full of women. And girls. The bald fact is, mermaids just don't breed quick enough to keep up with demand.

Another evening, when another star is led to the viewing area, there are still four healthy sirens lounging on the rocks and swimming in the lagoon. One with a fat little baby at her leaking breasts. This man is richer, and, if possible, more disgusting than the last one we followed down here. He has designs on something a little different for his first course, and the sad truth is, as long as he can pay, he can have whatever (and whoever) he wants. Someone will serve it to him so they can take his money.

When confronted with a legitimate wonder of the natural world, Man's reaction is, Can I eat it? Can I fuck it? Can I sell it?

And this, dear reader, is why we can't have nice things.

Oh, that one thing on the menu? It's always Surf N Turf.