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It was a dark and stormy night and, as the stigma attached to such nights entails, the two men partaking in the gloom were themselves riled dark and stormy.
Locke Lamora was, as in all his dark and stormy moments that did not involve considering those dead or tortured, contemplating the woes of love lost. Or, rather, of love run away, spitefully and without any of the usual flowery montages. He was depressed, as one might well be, by the thought of said lost love, staring with his own spite into the happily crackling firelight.
His trusted and true companion, Jean Tannen, was too contemplating lost love, his far more permanently lost than Locke's, and with the added benefit of those flowery, nostalgic montages. Montages that, when recollected, were still far too fresh to incite faded pain and fond farewells. Jean, too, was depressed.
When both men realized they had been together staring morosely into happy flames, they exchanged a look and four short words: "Care for a drink?"
Pulling alcohol from more nooks and crannies than most houses -- or even cities -- had, it took Locke and Jean less than an hour to wind up sloshed enough to risk winding up in one another's beds. (Never, of course, together, for that would be unmanly.)
In their inebriated states, the world looked like so much more, and so much less, all at once.
"Why do we fall in love?" Locke asked, swishing his arm in an over-large gesture, voice more than slightly slurred. "I mean, it's 'falling,' right, so doesn't that mean that it's obviously going to be painful? Aren't people smart enough to see that word and think to themselves, 'Oh, pain, I should avoid that!' Aren't they?"
"Alas, no," Jean replied, making an equally melodramatic gesture as he raised his arm straight into the air, turning his second word into an exclamation. "The temptation is too high! We see nice hair and nicer bosoms, and what do we think? We think of falling, certainly, but we skip right over the painful kind."
Locke nodded vigorously, or, rather, as vigorously as his somewhat confused head could manage. "And there's the rub! We don't think, or, well, we do, but not in the right manner! Instead, we think only of the immediate benefits of women, and ignore all the crap."
Jean nodded sagely in response to this, refilling his whiskey glass and forgetting any variety of mixer. Taking a straight swallow, he said, "Yes, that is very true. Very true indeed! Perhaps we should come up with a system of reminding ourselves of these very facts!"
Taking a long swig of something Locke was pretty sure was whiskey and rum mixed together, but wasn't entirely sure, Locke said thoughtfully, or thoughtfully for a drunk man, "That sounds like the best idea you've had in a long time, Jean. And considering the rate of your good ideas, especially in proportion to my own horrible ideas, that's saying something." He inclined his head to Jean respectfully, though it turned out rather crooked, wobbling. "How, precisely, would we do that, though? I suppose we could be dramatic and remove a finger. Every time we saw that missing finger, we'd think not to jump right in with women."
"Unless we were paying them, in which case there is no commitment."
"Good addition, we'd think not to jump right in with women unless we were paying them. I just don't think I want to cut off a finger. I feel as though I would later consider that to be a very horrible idea." Locke pursed his lips, taking another sip as though this would help his thinking.
Following suit, Jean said, "I must say I agree. Cutting off a finger sounds damn painful, and something in me says that we really shouldn't be considering it very seriously. It reminds me of our last major decision made with alcohol at its source." He paused. "I believe that, too, had to do with women. Four of them. And large genital blisters for a month."
"Ah," Locke managed, remembering this. "Yes, I remember." His eyes crossed with the memory, and he cleared his throat. "So, we need to remember we don't like women, and we really shouldn't make decisions based on alcohol's influence. Yes. But we did have this avoiding women idea while drinking, so perhaps not all of alcohol's influences?"
"With that logic," Jean said, hmm-ing, "not all women would be horrible decisions, either. But how would we know? is there a qualifying process? Something like, so long as they don't turn out to have any unfortunate diseases or eventually want us dead or are, you know, susceptible to death themselves, we can still date them? Or at least sleep with them?"
"But how would we determine that?" Locke asked, pouring something off the table into his emptying glass without looking at it. "I mean, some of those take a rather long time to catch on to. Like the death thing. Don't all women die eventually?"
"I believe you have a point, Mr. Lamora. All women do die. So, what, then? We wait around to see if they have a greater susceptibility than normal?" Jean hmm'd again. "Wouldn't that just be watching to see if they really like big guns, or big boats, or sharks, or something?"
"That would be easy enough. We'd just ask them, of course." Lock stopped himself. "But a good deal of women lie, too. So I suppose we can't ask them. And we can't follow them around, because that is somewhat frightening, and even if we find out that they are good to be slept with, they might tell us to go sleep with ourselves, and, really, that is contrary to our goals."
"So we ask their brothers? Brothers know." Jean nodded. "And if they don't think we're right together, they might chase us off with a shovel, but at least we'd know it was a poor choice."
"What about women without brothers?" Locke asked, puzzling.
"Neighbor boys?" Jean supplied, shrugging. "Just as reliable."
"Hmmm," Locke said, seriously, then slapped his hands together, forgetting he was holding liquor in one of them. "I say, Jean, this is probably one of the best ideas we've ever had!"
"That's very true," Jean replied, nodding. "What lead up to it was probably one of my more horrible experiences, but at least something came of it, right?"
"Right," Locke affirmed.
"We should do this more often, then?" Jean asked.
"The drinking?" Locke asked, and then replied before Jean could speak. "Sure. The leading up to it bit? Hell no."