Though he didn't tone it down or fake it nearly as much as he did in Ladies' Night, Eddie always took things down a few notches whenever he knew that Laurie was in the audience. There was something about having his daughter out there- even though she was twenty-three, even though she didn't know she was his daughter- that made him try to be a little bit more acceptable.

Not that any of that mattered. Nothing he said could get her to so much as crack a smile; she completely despised him, and with good reason. He wondered why she even bothered coming with Dan, considering just how much she hated being there and then he wondered if Dan's affections were not entirely onesided. Once again, he wasn't exactly sure how to feel about observing his daughter's love life like this.

Some nights, they wouldn't leave the club right after his routine- usually on the nights when Walter was with them, which was becoming more frequent- and Eddie would go over to their table and drink with them for a little while. Laurie, of course, hated this and gave him the cold shoulder the whole time while Dan tried to ignore how awkward things always were.

It was during these times that he would watch their personal dramas unfold. If Laurie were drunk enough she wouldn't care that he was there and would talk about her love life and complain about how things were with her boyfriend. Eddie learned that he was a physicist named Jon and that he had been a guest lecturer in one of her classes for a week back when she was in college.

It unsettled him a bit, imagining her being hit on in class by someone like that, but from the way she told the story, she had been flirting with him for the entire week and had gotten his number somehow at the end. To hear her tell the story, you would think that this Jon hadn't been all that interested in her and had just been going along with everything.

Whatever the case, it had been two years and they lived together but Laurie was miserable with him. According to her, he had become more and more distance and was so concerned with work that he barely noticed when she was gone. Most of her friends had moved away after school and she had been lonely and completely bored out of her mind until she had reconnected with Dan.

Things got interesting with that too. Dan was apparently a grad student in some bird thing and had been a TA when Laurie was in school. They had recognized each other in the streets sometime before she had started accompanying Dan to the comedy club and they had caught up and become rather close friends.

Laurie, he found out, had her bachelors in biology and wanted to go to veterinary school, but had been trying and failing to get in for the past two years. The problem, according to Dan, was not her grades, but just the sheer level of competition. Without work or school or friends to keep her busy, and with Jon not paying much attention to her, it was only natural that she and Dan would become close, and maybe that was the only reason she came to the club with him. Maybe she was so grateful for his kindness that she didn't have the heart to tell him how much she hated it.

Either way, Eddie was glad that he got to see her almost every week, and glad that she kept her hostilities to a minimum. He had been denied seeing her for so many years that it was nice to just get to look at her, even if she did hate him. Even if he also had to watch a man make eyes at her while she talked about her older, distant boyfriend. Even if he couldn't give her the advice he wanted to.

Walter and Dan's friendship had formed a little bit differently. When he finally asked about how they had met, he learned that Walter worked more than one job. There had been a time when he had been working three- that had recently been cut down to two, but only because one had offered him more hours and better pay- and Dan had seen him at all of them.

He had worked as a cart collector in a grocery store, a busboy in a diner, and gone around to a few different stores to do general cleaning. After a while, Dan had begun to recognize him and went out of his way to say hello. Eventually, they had become friends, and he had invited him along, deciding that Walter might appreciate some of Eddie's sense of humor.

He was certainly nicer about it than Laurie, at least, but Eddie appreciated seeing every one of the odd group. He even appreciated the humor of their romantic situation, when he looked at it from the perspective of the outsider he was pretending to be. Laurie's continuous griping about her situation, oblivious to the hidden meaning in Dan's support, while he didn't even notice the way Walter looked at him.

All it would take would be a few words to them, and they would all be aware of their situation. There would be no room for clueless and perhaps the stalemate they had trapped themselves in would move forward. But, then, it was never his place and they were young; they had time to figure things out for themselves. Maybe he might start slipping hints into his jokes, but that would be the closest he would get to telling any of them what was really going on.

"Tonight was good," said Walter one night, most likely trying to tune out the rather painfully obvious flirting that Dan was trying on Laurie. "I liked the thing you said about the president."

"I never mentioned the president," replied Eddie with a chuckle.

"Didn't have to. I could tell what you meant."

"You're a clever one, ya know that?" Again, he chuckled. "About as smart as Dan, really. How come you aren't in school?"

"It's expensive," Walter said simply. "And too late, probably."

"Well, I'd say it's never too late to go, but you're not wrong about it bein' expensive. And I'm sure as hell not one to preach about an education. I tried the whole college thing, but I ended up droppin' out and I turned out just fine."

"That's debatable." There was a hint of a smile on Walter's face as he said this, and Eddie wondered if that was his attempt at a joke. This was the longest he had spoken with him one on one and he was surprised to find that, though the younger man was a little bit eccentric and often said little, conversation with him was not unpleasant in the slightest.

And it certainly beat the hell out of watching Dan try to hit on Laurie.