The one nice thing about working the lunch line in the cafeteria is that no one pays you any attention other than to point out what they want and move on. In an organization that prides itself on being observant, it's fun to move right beneath its nose and be invisible. It gives me a chance to watch, get to know people without the complications of them getting to know me.
There are different types of people who move through the cafeteria. There are the groupers, the ones who hang together, no matter what. They eat alike, they talk alike, they re like that asinine Patty Duke Show, where she plays identical cousins – scary... You have the isolationists – the ones who hide in the corner and glare at anyone who dares to approach. You have the drama divas, as I call them, moving from one crisis to the next. And you have the non-stop chatterers, the jerks, the brittle flowers, and so on. Then you have the partners, like Solo and Kuryakin. These two, they're something else. Separately they are both a force to be reckoned with, together and it's just frightening.
Solo, he's the thinker, the schemer, the strategist. When they play chess together, Kuryakin can't beat him. Solo is not just seven moves ahead of him, he's into the next game. But whatever Solo cooks up, Kuryakin can deliver. A scrapper, with enough brains to carry out any of Solo's crazy schemes; he's loyal, he's dedicated, he's scary.
I get tired of listening to people dismiss him as being short, being smaller. The truth of the matter is he's just a couple inches shorter than his partner, yet no one discounts Solo like that. Kuryakin doesn't seem to mind; like me, he's learned the benefit of being invisible, of being outright dismissed… except by his partner. Solo always sees him and always has, even from the first.
Solo, he knows how to use everything to his advantage; he holds his friends close, his enemies closer and Kuryakin, he keeps the world at arm's length. Yet these two are practically inside each other's skin. They even seem to share mana, an ancient Hawaiian belief that everyone has a life force that surrounds them. To take someone's mana is to take their soul and yet these two merge theirs, drawing power to strengthen their own weaknesses from the other.
And nobody sees it… it's like Easter morning and you've been giving a sugar egg, but all you see are the jelly beans and the chocolate bunnies, but never the delicate scene being depicted within. That's for a chosen few; those of us who actually pause to watch, and listen and stand amazed that such men as these truly exist in the world.