I’ve thought about this longer than I’d like to admit, and I’ve landed on Hercule Poirot, mostly because I want to watch a man have a complete personality crisis over the placement of my cutlery. He’d arrive ten minutes early, disapprove of the restaurant’s lighting, and by dessert he’d have deduced my entire week from the way I was holding my fork. I don’t need a therapist. I need a small Belgian man to look at my hands and tell me what’s wrong with my life.
I did consider Elizabeth Bennet, but I suspect we’d spend the whole dinner agreeing that everyone around us was insufferable, which is fun for twenty minutes and then just becomes two women being mean at a table. I also briefly considered Gandalf, before remembering that man shows up three hours late, refuses to explain why, and then makes you feel small for asking. No thank you. I have enough of that already, from adulthood in general.
The real appeal of Poirot is that he wouldn’t let me get away with anything. I’d order the salad “as a starter” and fully intend to steal fries off someone else’s plate, and he’d catch it immediately and announce it to the table like he’d solved a murder. Which, in a sense, he would have.
This is also where the lawsuit comes in. Poirot does not simply accuse. He requires a formal confession, a written statement, and ideally a small gathered audience so he can walk everyone through his reasoning one more time. By the time the check arrives, the restaurant has called their lawyer, my friend has hired her own lawyer out of solidarity, and I am being deposed over three fries I am not even sure I took. They were resting near my hand. That is not the same thing.
Runner-up: Miranda Priestly, purely so I could watch her fire the sommelier on sight, refuse to acknowledge it happened, and leave the rest of us to explain why we are named in a wrongful termination suit for a dinner we did not even choose the wine at.
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