My next customer was the... «The Rosie Project»
karelklod27 июля 2021My next customer was the only remaining unidentified man, the one who had laughed at Brian's order. He had previously failed to respond to the name-extraction trick. I decided not to repeat it.
'What would you like?' I asked.
'I'll have a double-coddled Kurdistani sailmaker with a reverse twist,' he said. 'Shaken, not stirred.'
I was unfamiliar with this drink, but assumed the professionals behind the bar would know it.
'Your name, please?'
'Sorry?'
'I require your name. To avoid errors.'
There was a silence. Dr Jenny Broadhurst, beside him, said, 'His name's Rod.'
'Dr Roderick Broadhurst, correct?' I said by way of confirmation. The rule against partners did not apply, of course, to people who were in a relationship with someone from the same class. There were seven such couples and Jenny was predictably sitting beside her husband.
'What -' started Rod, but Jenny interrupted.
'Quite correct. I'm Jenny and I'll have a sage and pineapple margarita too, please.' She turned to Rod. 'Are you being a jerk? About the sailmaker? Pick on someone with your own complement of synapses.'
Rod looked at her, then at me. 'Sorry, mate, just taking the piss. I'll have a martini. Standard.'
I collected the remainder of the names and orders without difficulty. I understood that Jenny had been trying to tell Rod discreetly that I was unintelligent, presumably because of my waiter role. She had used a neat social trick, which I noted for future use, but had made a factual error which Rod had not corrected. Perhaps one day he or she would make a clinical or research mistake as a result of this misunderstanding.
Before I returned to the bar, I spoke to them again.
'There is no experimental evidence of a correlation between synapse numbers and intelligence level within primate populations. I recommend reading Williams and Herrup, Annual Review of Neuroscience.' I hoped this would be helpful.
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