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The promise given was a necessity of the past;
the word broken is a necessity of the present. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli
The Art of Setting Priorities
by faust
Chapter 1
Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot
Hank Sullivan couldn't believe they were at it again. Not that this was something entirely new; he just couldn't believe they never got tired of it. Every Sunday for about two months now, they had been meeting at the restaurant in the International House for lunch and disturbance of the peace. Sometimes it was about strange people with even stranger names like 'Hamlet' and if this guy ought to be called a thinker rather than a hesitater (these arguments more often than not led to a discussion about something called the 'true authorship' involving even more strange names, and leaving Hank completely baffled), sometimes they had a go at each other over what exactly Mr. Lincoln had said to whom exactly on which exact occasion and why exactly this meant or did not mean that the president could be considered an abolitionist before 1859 or ever (at this point Hank again bowed out of understanding a single word of it), and sometimes it was about the superiority of an English saddle over a Western one. As much as the duelists seemed to like their quarrels, at times some other diners considered the heated arguments very much a bother, especially when the adversaries' voices grew louder or when the topics were a bit—offensive.
Over time Hank had learned to differentiate two sorts of battles: Type A ended with the exchange "Fine then!" – "Fine!" spoken with menacing glares and followed by a very abrupt retreat of both parties involved; whereas Type B was marked by the dissolving into collective laughter and the order of some more tea. After a Type A fight Hank wouldn't see either of them again until the next Sunday, but a Type B bantering usually meant that Juliet Heatherstone and Adam Cartwright would share a table at the International House at least one more noon during the week. Hank always hoped for a Type B outcome, for once because he found the Heatherstone/Cartwright-encounters quite entertaining and, secondly, but even more important to a waiter, because Type B inevitably led to a much more generous tip.
Today's lunch special seemed to be one of the latter. While he was polishing glasses Hank could hear Miss Heatherstone's ringing laughter.
"Oh, sure, Adam, and where would your precious Bard be if Marlowe had not introduced blank verse?"
Hank instantly turned his mind to things that weren't as dizzying as these words. Honestly, did either of them really understand what they were talking about? Hank wished they'd talk about saddles again. But obviously he was quite alone with his assessment on the recent conversation. Miss Heatherstone's outburst had attracted the attention of a stranger, who had just turned from the check-in counter in the foyer. The stranger, a tall dark-haired man with fashionable long sideburns and clothes that cried "Easterner" so loudly that Hank wondered if the man purposely was looking for trouble, slowly ambled from the hall into the restaurant and stopped three or four paces behind Miss Heatherstone's seat.
"My, my," he said smugly. "If this isn't the lovely Countess of Barnstoke."
Miss Heatherstone froze. She exchanged a quick glance with her table companion, and while Mr. Cartwright narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the newcomer, Miss Heatherstone slowly turned around. Her eyes widened in sudden recognition, and she clapped a hand at her mouth to cover the fact that she was, indeed, gaping. Then her hand slowly made its way from her face to her chest to get covered by her other hand, her head tilted to one side and her face lit up with a big, beaming smile.
"Jarvis! Good gracious, is this really you?"
And as things fell out, Hank Sullivan's tip this day turned out pathetically small.
ooOoo
Sometimes you have to get to know someone really
well to realize you're really strangers. ~ Mary Tyler Moore