Old Friends

"It's like a knife in the back."

"It's not. Ask the man who knows, it's nothing like." Methos shifted his pickle off the fat, meat-leaking Reuben, and licked his lips. Joe was legless, and maudlin with it, over some rupture or complication with...someone. He wasn't really listening. He bit, he chewed. He savored.

"You think you know someone."

"Sure, Buddy." The corned beef was thick, the dressing was Russian, the bread was rightly rye. The right sandwich, correctly constructed, was immortal; created and eaten and created to be eaten anew, and perfect, both old and new in one and rather like good old sex. Or maybe architecture. "Either one," said Methos.

"What?"

"What?"

"I said, isn't that what friends are for?"

"And I said, give me architecture, or give me sex." The second bite was better than the first, improved only by...only... Ah. Crisp and dripless pickle, come to Poppa.

"Oh, look who I'm talking to. Do you even have old friends, any more?"

"No," said Methos.

"What about me?" asked Amanda, back from the boggy dark at the back of the bar. She hipped Methos aside and reclaimed her stool. "I'm not an old friend?"

"You're architecture," said Methos. "Raised white from mud, a marble bloom, under the celestial canopy." He gathered in a drop of dressing from the corner of his mouth, and smacked. "Built and rebuilt and every time back like a brick brickhouse."

"That's shit."

Amanda tutted and stroked Joe's hand. "Language, Joseph. So, I like that. I'm architecture. I'm frozen music?"

"Friends are like music. Friends are like good wine." Joe waved his glass. "And like them, like, they go sour on you."

"Like a pickle," offered Methos. "Like this perfect Reuben's pickle, perfectly sour."

"New friends are good friends, too," said Amanda. She smiled into the mirror behind the bar, at herself. The man to her left was deep in his sandwich, the man to her right sunk in gloom. But elbow to elbow to elbow to elbow, they filled the mirror pane, from edge to edge. "Cheer up, Joe. You've still got us."

"For now," Methos said.

Joe shook his head. "I'm a homesick old sailor, who longs for the sound of his own front door."

"Knock, knock?"

"Shut up," said Amanda. "Joe, I think it's last call for you."

"My place," said Methos. "You can talk, I can eat, he can crash on the couch." He rapped on the bar. "Three Reubens and a bottle of your best cabernet, to go. On Dawson's tab."

"Who's there?" asked Joe.

"Old wine, new friends; same old same old. Wrap up, it's cold outside."

-End-