We’ve come the full circle now with the Harvey-Samantha saga. Most of us understood from the get-go that they shouldn’t even have met, let alone moved in together.
I mean, no one’s perfect. But Harvey is one of those people whose worst imperfection is in the nature of an art form. A performance art form. He hones his art and displays it wherever the opportunity arises.
To give an example, our gang often meet up on a Friday night for a couple of drinks. For Harvey, this is an opportunity for artistic self-promotion. He challenges people to out-drink him whilst remaining standing. He calls for combinations of alcohol to prove his talent for holding his drink. Boring stuff, and excruciatingly embarrassing for Samantha.
Truth to tell, Harvey has rather a narrow range. Apart from his booze-bragging, his other party piece is eating fiery curries. Whilst most of us tend to stick to the menu at our occasional meals out at the local Indian restaurant, Harvey always insists on the hottest dish with an extra helping of chilli on the side. He sweats and boasts his way through the meal implying that the rest of the gang are wimps for wanting to taste our food.
Harvey isn’t all bad and can be kind if one of us has a problem to share. But his bragging really is a deal breaker, and it wasn’t hard to tell that for Samantha it was becoming an end of days scenario. She was never explicitly disloyal to Harvey but you could tell she was planning her next move.
Out of the blue, Samantha invited us all round for a meal. She does a fabulously fragrant biryani, so there were no refusals. When we arrived, the table was beautifully set and Harvey was performing a modified version of his drinking schtik, which was mainly ignored by each newcomer to the house.
We were served from an open rice platter steaming with delicious flavours. For Harvey alone, there was an extra dish. As Sam explained, this was an extra hot dish, not one for mere mortals like the rest of us. Addressing Harvey exclusively, she ran through the ingredients. These included 3 habaneros and six birds eye chillis, both with seeds left in, plus a ‘secret extra ingredient’. Harvey was mid-way between puffing with pride and being daunted by the challenge.
We ate well. Harvey less so, needing to cope with the peppery discomfort. Towards the end of the meal Harvey made a dash for the bathroom and wasn’t seen again during the evening.
As we were leaving someone asked about the ‘secret ingredient’. Sam brought out a bag of ground senna pods from the kitchen. She also had a couple of suitcases packed which she stashed in the car.
Setting aside the old Klingon proverb, (with all due respect to the Klingons, no offense intended) ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’, it seems that serving it hot can be very effective too.
