Modern Miseducation (The Seat of Gately, Sequence 1) by Michael R.E. Adams

Author:Michael R.E. Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Enchanted Cipher

episode 4

The Sweet Imposter

Dymion and his father dined quite finely on the roasted pig. They remembered, for a moment, true delight, a feeling only known like all good spirits in that instant when attention melted away and the heart reigned in the complete contentment of joy as a disposition, a happiness not experienced as an ephemeral condition but as a spiritual state, that youthful innocence men rarely felt as they had grown into adults and forgot their early life temperaments, only waxing on them nostalgically, and rather philosophically, in fits of temper when the unfeeling world had once again oppressed and disappointed good sense and true righteousness. Today, his father wouldn’t deliver his sermon on the global conspiracy to undermine the Truth and harmony of even the simplest pleasures. He would sit and witness the world’s latest attack as if the offense were isolated and not one in a system of taps looking to weaken the sculpture until one rap made the mighty golem crumble into ruins. This cannonball against endurance and resilience, peace and order, came in the form of the bill.

The Gately patriarch noticed the envelope near his son’s elbow. He summoned the waiter to hastily retrieve the delivery and properly address it to him. The manner of speed and matter of etiquette was suggested in his stone demeanor, which, given its contrast to the jovially paternal air he had for both his son and their waiter throughout the course, struck his hidden but more truthful meaning on the heart like dark, dissonant chords. The young man who had served so eagerly stationed himself at grim attention and watched the head of house break the wax seal and reveal a folded packet of paper. By the thickness and heft, and experience in letter writing, the Gately son knew three pages, more than two, less than five, and not likely four, made up the parcel.

Dymion didn’t make much of the ordeal. He should’ve been ruthlessly surprised and slightly snubbed that his father had out fussed him. Afterall, what an inertly aggressive infringement: to deliver a bill to the progeny and not the progenitor. And if anyone should’ve turned up his nose at the idea of being expected to attend to an affair of money after such a decadent meal, a nourishment that proved a key truth: that to fulfill the stomach was to nurture the soul—it would’ve, and honestly should’ve, been Dymion. But instead, despite initially criticizing the establishment for egregiously presenting the silverware for a starter dish, when the civility of moderation taught only one precourse, dinner’s hor d’oeuvres, was appropriate, and even then only under the condition of light dining during the morning and afternoon, and despite adding an addendum to his critique due to the presumptuously tacky inclusion of postcourse silver, when surely his father hadn’t reserved a dessert, and now, despite this ultimate breach, a misdirection of an economic principle, he only peripherally registered this scene of a surrogate son proudly awaiting trial and retribution from the huffing old man he had dishonored.

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