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…or, Hypothetically, Pleasant Conversation

The meal that Iason had selected turned out to be good. The portions were small but filling. That was good, because I felt I could be pretty confident that when he’d said we’d be going to an inn for the main course he hadn’t actually been talking about food.

“If you want to order wine, go ahead,” I told him when we got our iced teas refilled. “Just don’t expect me to drink it.”

“You don’t like wine?” he asked.

“Well, sure, but not enough to make a fuss in a place we might want to come back to,” I said.

“You want to come here again?”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “I mean, the food is pretty good elven fusion. It actually reminds me of the way my mom cooks. It’s just a bit expensive, though.”

“You do not worry about the expense,” Iason said. “I’ll make us a reservation for next Friday. No, Sunday. We will celebrate the skirmish victory.”

“We don’t have to come here next week,” I said.

“We didn’t have to come here this week. That is the point of a night out.”

“What is?” I asked.

“That it has none,” he said with a grin. “Any reason given is just an excuse. I can’t believe you sought to lecture me on the definition of fun, Iamie, if you didn’t know this.”

“So, how would you have gotten out of paying for the meal, hypothetically?” I asked. “Just out of idle curiosity.”

“Well, I try to maintain flexibility and room to improvise,” he said. “If you go into a situation with one set plan, you are likely to fail when the smallest thing is not as you have pictured it. I would have to scout out the lay of the land before I could come up with a final plan.”

“Okay, unforeseen circumstances aside, what was your basic plan?” I asked.

“Would you like to see?” he asked. “It would require ordering dessert.”

“Uh, no,” I said. “Didn’t we say we’re coming back here next week?”

“If I do it right, maybe I could get us vouchers for that, too.”

“No,” I said. “No grifting from restaurants we like.”

“But if we’re grifting food, it makes less sense to do it from ones that we don’t.”

“Just tell me how you would have done it,” I said.

“Very well,” he said. He picked up his napkin, dabbed some golden wine sauce off his lips, and then reached down with the cloth napkin in his hand and fiddled with something on his belt. He came up with a fork, wrapped in the napkin. “See?”

“It’s a fork,” I said.

“Notice anything about it?” he asked, laying it down beside his dinner fork. They had the same design, but the difference in sheen was really noticeable.

“It’s not silver,” I said. The server had brought us actual silver silverware without being asked, as was normal when there were elves or other fay creatures in the party.

“And they say, ‘Oops, sorry sir, let me get you another one,’” I said.

“No,” Iason said. “That’s what happens if you say, ‘Oh, by the way, you gave me a steel fork.’ Instead, I would say, ‘What is this?’ Then, just as she starts to respond, I say, ‘You gave me a steel fork. Are you trying to poison me?’”

“Okay,” I said. “I could see how that might get you an apology and a new fork, but not a free meal.”

“Why not?”

“Well, even if they really had given you a steel fork, how big a deal is that?” I asked. “Any reasonable person would realize that you’d know what you were handling as soon as you picked it up, if not a moment before, and it’s not like it’s raw iron. There’s no danger you’d actually pick it up and stick it in your mouth. You’ll get a little discomfort and then move on.”

“Any reasonable person, yes,” Iason said. “But there is no motivation for me to be reasonable, and if they try to introduce such reason into the discussion, they sound like they’re making excuses. The key is to not just reject any attempt at recompense or reconciliation, but become offended by it. You have to keep control of the situation from start to finish.”

“Okay, but what if the waitress knows she put a silver fork on the pie plate?” I asked. “It seems like that would be the sort of thing that would stick in her mind.”

“Right, which is the only place such information exists,” he said. “If she thinks to say, ‘I was pretty sure I put a silver fork there.’ or anything similar, you just say, ‘Are you calling me a liar?’, and then you have one more thing to be outraged about. She’s calling you a liar to cover for her mistake.”

“But she knows she isn’t,” I said.

“And nobody else does,” he says. “Well, if the man in charge of the establishment is any good, he will know that she isn’t, but he will also know that if he backs her up, he is also implicitly calling you a liar. The right move, from his point of view, is to remove you from the scene as quickly and quietly as possible, which in a legitimate establishment means apologizing and removing the largest obstacle to your departure, which is the bill.”

“Just like that?” I asked.

“Well, I might have to actually say, ‘This is outrageous, I won’t pay!’, but I consider it the purest victory if the other side mentions it first,” Iason said. “The worst case scenario is where you are asked to leave and not come back, but even that is a victory, albeit a small and imperfect one. It’s also why you do this with dessert instead of at the start of the meal.”

I shook my head. On some level, this bothered me more than his rudeness to women. That realization bothered me as well, but one thing at a time.

“You don’t think it would work?” Iason asked. “I may just have to show you.”

“I believe that it would, but I don’t think it should,” I said. “You’re stealing from people who never did anything to you.”

“We all do what we have to, in order to get by,” Iason said.

“Except you’ve admitted you can afford to pay for the meal,” I said.

“I could,” he said. “And they could charge less for their meals, but they don’t. They’d rather have the money. So would I.”

“That’s not the same thing at all,” I said. “People choose to pay them for their food.”

“See? I agree,” he said. “And if I choose not to, I don’t.”

“What about the waitress?”

“If she has any sense, she will justifiably dismiss me as just being some dick, and go on with her life largely unperturbed. If not?” He shrugged. “I am not going to make you happy by reminding you how little I care about her feelings.”

“So, basically, you’ve got no problem with ripping off the restaurant and making somebody feel like shit,” I said.

“It’s a game, Iamie,” Iason said. “If I win and they lose, that’s as much as their fault as mine. In this case, it is the restaurant that sets the rules. It isn’t my fault their rules make it easy for me to win.”

“It isn’t a game,” I said. “It’s people providing a service and you taking advantage. Back home, I play darts and billiards for money. Those are games. We put money down on the bar, everybody knows what the rules and stakes are going in. I’m not picking their pocket while they’re lining up a shot or tricking them out of money when they’re just there to make a simple transaction.”

“And you make a point to tell every new person who walks in through the door that you have measurable elven blood, do you?” Iason asked.

“No, but having a bit of elven blood doesn’t automatically mean I’m better than a given person,” I said. “There’s still the question of individual skill. I’ve lost before. That’s why they call it gambling.”

“But you usually win,” Iason said. “You have an edge which, if your opponents knew about, would almost certainly change their minds about betting against you. So, you are not without your flaws, either. I am a liar, and you are a hypocrite.”

“I’m not,” I said. “We’re talking about two completely different things. People who make bar bets know what they’re doing.”

“As do people who deal with the public,” he said. “But I am not going to argue with you about this, Iamie.”

“Thank you.”

“Because you know I am right. This is why what I do bothers you so much.”

“No,” I said. “It bothers me that you can be such a dick to people.”

“Right,” he said. “So, when you realize that you have done comparable things, you realize what that says about you.”

I bit my tongue. There was a fundamental difference between a kid hustling passing strangers in a bar, and going into a restaurant with the intention of defrauding the people who worked there. If he couldn’t see that, though, it wouldn’t be worth the effort to argue the point.

“In any event, you shouldn’t condemn me for something I haven’t done,” he said. “You asked me not to, and I didn’t. You asked me how I would have done so, and I’ve told you. I hope you will not be angry with me simply because I did what you asked.”

He took my hand off the table and raised it to his lips. I rolled my eyes, knowing what was coming, and then both melted and stiffened when he actually kissed it.

“I’m not angry, exactly,” I said. “Now that I know that you’re apt to do that kind of thing, I’d rather know that you’re not going to do it anymore. But you’re an adult—in human terms, anyway—and I can’t control you.”

“You can’t,” Iason agreed with a smile. “And I will not promise you anything. But, if it makes you happy for me to not indulge in this little hobby, I have a reason not to.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“To be honest, keeping you happy might be the far more interesting challenge.”

“I don’t need somebody to keep me happy,” I said. “I’m kind of used to being responsible for my own happiness.”

“You’re used to being alone,” he said.

“That, too.”

“They aren’t separate things,” he said.

“That’s a funny attitude for somebody who sees everybody as whores,” I said.

“I don’t see everybody as whores,” he said. “For instance, I’m not. But you have your price.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t care about the gifts or dinner,” I said. “I appreciate them. I mean, this is good food, but I’m not going to do anything because of it that I wouldn’t do anyway.”

“I don’t mean in material goods. But, look at how easily and how often you are willing to compromise to keep from walking away when I’ve offended you.”

“Yeah, I could easily stop doing that, if it bothers you so much,” I said.

He smiled.

“See, little by little, I am learning the limits of what you will and won’t do, what you will and won’t put up with,” he said. “How can I do that if I’m not willing to test them?”

“You could ask.”

“No, this way is more honest,” he said. “Since I am a liar and you are a hypocrite, we could never believe each other if we simply tried to talk these things out.”

“I’m not a hypocrite,” I said. “And I like talking.”

“Would you rather be a hypocrite or a whore?”

“I told you not to call me that,” I said.

“I’m not,” Iason said. “I’m just making conversation. If you want to talk to me, then let’s talk. Where do your values lie? If you had to be a hypocrite or a whore to survive, which would you rather be?”

“A whore, I suppose,” I said. “That way I could at least look myself in the mirror every day.”

“Really?” Iason asked. “I’ve always thought that being able to look oneself in the mirror was one of the primary benefits of hypocrisy.”

I shrugged.

“Well, being that I’m not a whore or a hypocrite, it’s all hypothetical,” I said.

“Naturally,” Iason said.

We’d pretty well finished eating by that point, so Iason settled the bill. I didn’t have to say anything to get him to leave the tip I’d promised Anna Louisa, though that was probably more for my benefit than hers.

I had to stop at the men’s room on the way out. Even though it wasn’t single occupancy, Iason waited outside while I used it and then went in. He helped me down the tiny step at the restaurant entrance, then leaned on me with his arm draped over my shoulder as we headed away.

“You know, I’m really not used to being treated this way,” I said.

“What way?”

“I’d say ‘like a lady’, except I’ve got some idea how you treat ladies,” I said.

“You may have to get used to it,” he said. “Unless you judge it to be my one irredeemably intolerable trait.”

I laughed.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said. “And I don’t know if I can get used to it, or if I’d want to.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I could get to like it,” I said. “But I wouldn’t want to take it for granted. I may be dumb enough to like you a little, Iason, but I’m not dumb enough to rely on you.”

“Iamie, you are the most hurtful person I have ever met,” he said. “I promise you that if I say I will do something, you can rely on me to do it without fail.”

“Unless you’re lying when you say it,” I said.

“Well, that goes without saying,” he said. “But I always know whether I am lying or telling the truth when I say something, and I stick by that.”

“I’m not really fond of liars,” I said. “Outside of gambling. I mean, a bluff’s a bluff. And of course, Marlot says things that aren’t true all the time, but that isn’t the same thing as lying. I get the feeling she’s slightly embarrassed whenever somebody believes her. That probably makes it annoying for her to be around Missy all the time.”

“If I were interested in scoring cheap points, I could say that you are being hypocritical by making a lot of fine distinctions, but the fact is I agree with you,” Iason said. “Those things are not lies. If I told you that my left nipple gives chocolate milk when I am sad, that would not be a lie because I had no intention of deceiving you.”

“Yeah, exactly,” I said. “Something can be ridiculously untrue without being deceitful.”

“It’s this way,” Iason said, tugging me down a different path when I started to drift towards the way we had come from.

“What?”

He reached into his pants pocket and pulled a pair of tickets.

“The show, remember?” he said.

“Oh, I actually forgot,” I said. “What is it?”

“The last of the Crystal Park open air concert series,” he said. “This show is called ‘Strings and Wings and Things’.”

“What’s that mean, exactly?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” he said.

“You bought the tickets not even knowing what it was?”

“I knew it was five minutes’ walking from our dinner,” he said. “And that it’s a legitimate event in a legitimate venue.”

“And you weren’t curious?”

“Of course I was,” he said. “That’s why I bought tickets.”

“You didn’t think to look it up and find out what it’s all about first?” I asked.

“Iamie, Iamie, Iamie,” he said, shaking his head. “How does ‘looking something up’ tell you what a concert is all about? We are talking about a musical experience, and that is something that, by definition, must be experienced.”

“What if it turns out to be an awful experience?”

“Then we’ll have more time to spend at the inn,” he said.

I couldn’t argue with that.

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