Valerie made her way through the arguing ranks of Knighties and NatPackers as gracefully as would be allowed by the crutches GT insisted upon. She had started out trying to state her own view, graduated to trying to play devil's advocate to everyone, and was currently somewhere in the realm of furniture on the scale of any effect she seemed to be having on the torrent of accusations and outraged denials. Earth-toned early 80s furniture, at that. It was just too loud, and short of deploying the Banshee Special she simply wasn't going to be heard. She thought about it for a moment, but couldn't think of anything especially useful to follow up with if she did manage to get everyone's attention.
Having used up all her remaining grace in weaving through the crowd, she plunked unceremoniously in the chair Natalie had vacated when Nick arrived, settling her chin on her hand to watch the verbal tug-of-war rage. She knew almost all of these people. She liked all of these people. All of them made perfect sense under normal circumstances. And at the moment all of them sounded perfectly ridiculous to her ears, as she no doubt did to theirs. If there were valid points being made--and if she listened really hard she could grab them on occasion--they were not connecting to anything but blast-shield walls. Too damn many variables. Not for the first time, Valerie thought she had no business thinking any of the many logical conclusions was more correct than any other. Nobody really knew that. Only Nick and Nat had a prayer of assigning the correct values to those variables to come to any kind of sensible resolution to the whole mess. And while she could see them talking, there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of hearing whether they were getting anywhere either.
Somewhere during that thought process the pandemonium around her had ceased to register as words, and she couldn't help an utterly inappropriate laugh at the absurdity of it all. In a few seconds of complete clarity, she came to the conclusion that they were all living in a Tom Stoppard play, and the answer was something as simple as deciding that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were already dead and all the hullaballoo was sorting out memories of how they got that way. Then she shook her head and came back to very loud reality. "By five votes to one," she muttered, "with one abstention, Proposition No. 929 is rejected. Thank you for your time, Dr. Jekyll."
"What?"
Valerie looked to her left, where the voice had come from, surprised that anyone could possibly have heard the comment. It was Janette, clearly turned to watch Nick and Nat but sparing the glum NatPacker a curious sideways glance. "Never mind," Valerie told her with an attempt at a smile. "Pointless connection."
Nodding acknowledgment of this, Janette turned her full attention back to Nick and Nat.
Valerie picked up her crutches and levered herself out of the chair and toward the bar. Miklos mixed a great Sex-on-the-beach; time to let Janette get a little business out of opening her doors to them once again.