that each of them automatically (if perhaps tacitly, though just barely) sees the other as filling that spouse-role. So if Archie were a woman of course they would be married; if Archie got married to a woman of course that would mean he'd be abandoning Wolfe
Yeah, and-- it's kind of weird for that to be *the only thing* Archie ever mentions as something that would take him away from Wolfe. (Well, besides the "someday I'll just get pissed off and quit and MAYBE one day it will really be for real!" which I don't think even Archie takes seriously; I'm pretty sure he says a couple different times that it's just to blow off steam/release tension that they do that.) He just has no interest in leaving at all, ever, for any other reason, besides maybe the fact that you couldn't really expect a married woman to live in two spare rooms in her husband's boss's house. And yet even in Christmas Party *Wolfe finds it plausible* that Archie would (1) *want* to do this, and (2) actually be able to convince a woman to do this! Wolfe *totally believes* that Archie would rather live with his wife under Wolfe's roof than get his own place! I mean, *wow*. Even Watson moved out when he got married!
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that each of them automatically (if perhaps tacitly, though just barely) sees the other as filling that spouse-role. So if Archie were a woman of course they would be married; if Archie got married to a woman of course that would mean he'd be abandoning Wolfe
Yeah, and-- it's kind of weird for that to be *the only thing* Archie ever mentions as something that would take him away from Wolfe. (Well, besides the "someday I'll just get pissed off and quit and MAYBE one day it will really be for real!" which I don't think even Archie takes seriously; I'm pretty sure he says a couple different times that it's just to blow off steam/release tension that they do that.) He just has no interest in leaving at all, ever, for any other reason, besides maybe the fact that you couldn't really expect a married woman to live in two spare rooms in her husband's boss's house. And yet even in Christmas Party *Wolfe finds it plausible* that Archie would (1) *want* to do this, and (2) actually be able to convince a woman to do this! Wolfe *totally believes* that Archie would rather live with his wife under Wolfe's roof than get his own place! I mean, *wow*. Even Watson moved out when he got married!