"I suppose," John replied, "but there's just so much distrust of the Soviets, for good reason, that if I was going to talk normally it would just give people more reason to hate me."
"Habit," he explained, putting the glass in the dishwasher. "Dad was military, so being clean and tidy was ingrained in me when I was little."
He couldn't help but smile at her insistence that the Twilight Zone reference was appropriate. "Of course it was," he agreed, "I was only laughing because it reminded me of my brother and his need to scare himself to death before going to bed."
Teasing her just a little bit, he added, "Maybe the staff disappeared into some Twilight Zone style gap in the space-time continuum, switching places with us?"