For our anniversary, my husband’s relatives came as guests but started ordering like they owned the place.
“Waiter! Oysters, black caviar, and proper champagne — put it on the shared bill!” My husband’s aunt commanded our anniversary with such confidence, as if the restaurant, the celebration, and my wallet had already passed to her by inheritance.
I did not even have time to blink before my approved, paid-for, and lovingly planned menu was publicly canceled with one wave of her plump hand with acrylic nails.
Before that, Lyudmila Viktorovna had already managed to call our banquet menu “a printout for poor relatives” and demanded that they remove “that basic salad, good only for poisoning pigeons in the square.”
When making the reservation, I had specifically warned the administrator, Ilya: the banquet menu was fixed, and any additional orders were only to be made after confirmation from Artyom and me.
At the time, it seemed like excessive caution. As it turned out, I simply knew my husband’s relatives too well.
Artyom’s family arrived at our celebration not as guests, but like a health inspection team entering a meat-processing plant: with disgustedly pursed lips and a readiness to find violations.
Right at the entrance, Lyudmila looked around the hall and condescendingly said to my husband, “Well, I can see you tried. For your level, it’s even decent.” She said it loudly enough for me to hear and understand: the inspection had begun.
Aunt Lyuda, her husband Uncle Borya, and their twenty-year-old daughter Milana took their seats as if this were a throne room, and Tyoma and I were negligent servants who had dared to serve trout instead of sturgeon to their royal majesties.
Artyom tensed; his jaw twitched. I discreetly placed my hand on his knee and gave it a light squeeze. Too early.
Hysteria is a weapon of the weak, and I prefer to observe other people’s audacity with academic interest. After all, elitism bought with someone else’s money always smells like a cheap pawnshop. Let’s see how far they go.
The first blow was taken by the cheese platter.
“Borya, don’t eat that,” Lyudmila said, disgustedly pushing the brie with grapes away from her husband as if it were a grenade without a pin. “It’s domestic import substitution. My liver only accepts sanctioned imports. Veronika, darling, couldn’t this place find any proper parmesan?”
I smirked inwardly, but aloud I only smiled sweetly.
“Eat whatever your liver allows, Lyudmila Viktorovna.”
Then Milana entered the battle. She moved her phone camera over the table like an anti-aircraft searchlight, looking for shots worthy of filming.
“Mom, there’s not even anything to record here. No aesthetics. The glasses are ordinary glass,” she twisted her lips, pumped up to the point where they looked ready to burst from a change in pressure. “I thought Uncle Tyoma had a normal standard, but this is just… well, just a place to grab a bite.”
“A normal standard, Milanochka, is when you pay for your own dinner,” Artyom calmly countered, cutting a piece of steak.
Uncle Borya only snorted, adjusting the tie that was strangling him like a boa constrictor strangling a rabbit.
But the real performance began a little later, when the guests went out onto the terrace to listen to the musicians. I noticed Lyudmila Viktorovna dart toward the administrator like a predatory kite.
Excusing myself from a friend, I quietly moved closer, hiding behind a tub with a ficus.
“…Yes, young man, you don’t understand. Put all of this on the shared bill. We are the groom’s family!” the aunt proclaimed in the tone of Catherine the Great. The fact that the “groom” had already been married for fifteen years did not bother her.
“Here’s what you’ll do: a dozen oysters, black caviar — take the one served in crystal bowls. And change the champagne. Bring Veuve Clicquot, two bottles. And an exotic fruit platter.”
The administrator, a young man with intelligent eyes, hesitated.
“But the clients have a strictly approved budget and menu…”
“Don’t lecture me!” Lyudmila hissed. “I said put it on the shared bill! They’ll pay. Don’t embarrass yourselves in front of people!”
I quietly returned to the table. Inside me, a cold, crystal-clear calm was spreading.
Generosity at someone else’s expense is the safest investment in one’s own arrogance, but today this pyramid was going to collapse.
When Ilya timidly came to our table to follow my original instruction and clarify the “family’s additional order,” I did not even raise my voice.
“Ilya,” I said, looking the administrator straight in the eye. “Everything this lady just ordered — by all means, bring it. But put it on a separate bill. In her name.”
Having heard the scale of the “additional order,” Artyom slowly put down his fork and, looking at Lyudmila, who had already returned to the table, said sharply:
“This is my anniversary with Veronika, not your vanity fair. Our banquet has been paid for. Any personal whims are paid for by those who decided to play aristocracy.”
Twenty minutes later, a still life from a glossy magazine appeared on the table in front of Lyudmila, Boris, and Milana. Ice, oysters, a sweating bucket with collectible champagne.
Milana immediately began filming a video with the caption: “Finally, a normal standard,” rolling her eyes dramatically.
Lyudmila looked around the table triumphantly, her entire appearance saying, “Look how well we know how to live!” Boris was already reaching for an oyster.
And then Ilya, with the composure of an English butler, placed a black leather folder in front of Lyudmila Viktorovna.
“Your personal bill, ladies and gentlemen. Will you pay by card or cash?”
Boris’s hand froze in the air with the oyster. Milana’s phone twitched and fell face down onto her plate.
Lyudmila slowly opened the folder, as if defusing a bomb. In one second, the color of her face traveled from burgundy to an ashy gray. The amount on the bill equaled two of Uncle Borya’s pensions and Lyudmila’s entire monthly salary.
“What… what kind of joke is this?” she croaked, looking at Artyom and me like a trapped animal. “Veronika! We are guests! You invited us! What kind of humiliation is this in front of people?”
The music died down. All eyes locked onto our end of the table.
I dabbed my lips with a napkin, held the perfect pause, and said clearly:
“Lyudmila Viktorovna, today I am celebrating fifteen years of marriage, not sponsoring your masquerade of ‘poor relatives playing nobility.’”
“You wanted to raise the level of the celebration? You raised it. But in polite society, people raise the level with their own wallet, not by reaching into someone else’s.”
“We wanted to make it better! So the table would look rich!” Uncle Borya tried to intervene, turning deeply crimson from the strain.
“Anyone who came here to turn up their nose at our table and order black caviar at our expense is their own sponsor,” Artyom cut in. “Respect is not paid for, Uncle Borya. Pay the bill. And enjoy your meal.”
Ilya politely held out the payment terminal.
With trembling hands, Lyudmila tapped her card. The terminal beeped: declined. The first card did not go through. She fussily pulled out a second one.
The payment took so long to process that, at the now-silent table, you could clearly hear the ice melting in the champagne bucket. Declined. Insufficient funds.
Boris reached into his inner pocket for his own card with the face of a man who had just realized in horror that aristocracy can come with installment payments.
Meanwhile, Milana’s phone pinged. Under her fresh video about the “normal standard,” one of the guests had already managed to leave a comment: “Did you pay for that standard yourselves, or are the relatives covering it again?”
Milana frantically began deleting the post, crimson with shame and not daring to raise her eyes.
They left half an hour later, saying their goodbyes awkwardly, taking with them their ruined mood and emptied credit cards.
And the oysters on ice remained untouched, turning into the most expensive and humiliating monument to their arrogance.
As for us, we requested our favorite song, raised our glasses, and for the first time that evening, truly laughed.
Because black caviar at someone else’s expense quickly loses its taste when it comes with a separate bill.