archives

 horoscopes

 accessories

 contacts

 theatre

 fables



 home

Add Sane Magazine to your My Netscape.

He sat down across from her, she was already sitting down across from where he was in the process of sitting.
Sparks leapt from their eyes like little tiny pieces of magnesium being thrown from just about the area where their eyes were. Which would have disturbed the waitstaff terribly, had the sparks not been largely metaphorical.
She sat quietly, letting the silence do the talking, which wasn't a terribly good idea, as the silence didn't have a terrible amount to say, nor was he a very good listener. Which is perhaps why she allowed the quiet to bear the brunt of his ill-listening skills, not that she knew him well enough to know that he wasn't a very good listener, she just figured the odds were against him being one, himself being largely male and between the age of twelve and not dead yet.
She did some movements with her eyes and mouth, smiling out of both, conspiratorially, in the midst of the silence, at him, though she made sure to dart her eyes around in what she intended to be a coy manner. The result was that he noticed her eyebrows, by proximity and rather heavy reliance on her eyes and surrounding structure, wiggling about quite a bit, which distracted him from ordering, and when the waiter came by again, breaking the silence, he wasn't quite ready, and dropped the piece of magnesium he hadn't set alight in his earlier display (which was non-metaphorical and the waitstaff didn't enjoy as much as you might think, and which he'd been reduced to simply holding, rather than touching any sort of inflammatory device to it) on to the table, which all three of them stared at for a moment pregnant with thoughts of "magnesium," "shiney," and "Oh god please don't let him light it on fire again."
Once the pause was over, she realised she hadn't thought of what she wanted to order, a realisation prompted by the waiter asking her what she'd like to have, after the polite deference the man had shown in letting her order first. Sadly, her eye and mouth smiling combo took up a good deal of her concentration, the remainder of which was applied towards keeping her left foot from tapping incessantly, which it had a tendency to do, she noticed, when attempting the eye and mouth smiling combo. She blurted out, as a result of thinking about her foot and the adjacent leg, "Leg of lamb," and was politely told, in a voice that reminded her of a teacher reading off scores from school exams, that, while that was an excellent selection, it was not one they had on the menu at Joey's Little House of Mexico Aieee! (Saying the 'Aieee' part in the most chipper tone possible was a contractual obligation for any of the waitstaff of Joey's Little House of Mexico Aieee! Some added their own flair at the end, plugging on syllables like they were train cars (Train cars that sounded like Ee-ee-eee-ee-ieeeee, of course, which they might, if they were carrying quite a lot of monkeys.). This, however, was frowned upon.)
In a fit of blind panic, she ordered water.
He, too, ordered water, as he'd spent the intervening time not deciding what to have to eat but watching and listening to herself order, and if someone were to tell him, "Quick, say the first thing that comes to your mind," or, indeed, ask him, "Okaaaay, and sir, what will you have?" he would have said, "A glass of water."

And later in the evening, when they both realised they were quite hungry, and he realised he'd left his little piece of magnesium at the restaurant, and she was too busy walking and being hungry to smile with her eyes and mouth, that was when she accidentally pushed him into the water.

disclaimer:
With little fanfare, Sane Magazine moved offices Saturday, in the early morning, when the people who normally camp out at our door were either sleeping or had gone home to get out of the rain.
Hence, there was a slight disruption in our normally polished issue production this week, as neither our network, 'phones, chairs, nor our teapot were/are entirely operational in the shiney new location. An intern's finger, upon further examination (and a whole load of whinging) appears to have been broken (or at least slightly, erm, bent) in the course of shifting boxes and computers around.
Past that, we're quite happy, settled, and sorted.
Writing our issues on serviettes and shoving them into the floppy disk drive of the server when we're ready for publication.