ZeroStation
Sadly, not continued at all from last week. I know, I know, I can already hear the cries of desperation, "Please, oh please! Continue with last week's! For the sake of... Pete! For Pete's sake, for the sake of, of... continuity, please let us hear the next installment of last week's issue. Please?"
I've gotta say no, I'm afraid. Just no. Not because the installment wasn't ready (all right, well, it wasn't, but that wasn't the reason, we're more than happy to squeeze blood out of stones if need be to get a writer to hit a deadline, or, at the very least, slightly to the left of center on a deadline). Not because it's being discontinued as a storyline. But just because we're going in a new direction this week. It's the way it goes. Publishing is a funny business, let me tell you.
"That is not the way to make a zucchini casserole."
"Sure it is."
She watched the way he dipped his head back into his work, bent low over the pan and the various implements he was using to build his casserole. Their casserole. He was making dinner for her. First time and all that. He didn't seem nervous, but, then he didn't seem nervous the first time he'd talked to her, either, and he later admitted he was an electric train on a not particularly well-put-together model train track that first night they met. Oblivious! Well, both him and her. Her to how nervous he felt that night, and him to how completely wrong he had his zucchini casserole at the moment. And she didn't think he was going to be able to rescue it with a couple quick flicks of the spatula he was wielding idly in his left hand, either.
"Don't you have anything else to be doing?" He looked up, briefly, sort of over the top of his reading glasses, which he'd left on, as he would occasionally refer back to the well-worn The Joy of Cooking, which apparently his mother had bequeathed to him upon his departure from his childhood home. And then he looked back down at the thing in the baking dish in front of him.
"No. Not really. There's nothing on television." The first thing he was doing wrong was using cucumbers. Bless.
"I haven't got a television."
"Exactly." Also, he seemed to be using an awful lot of ketchup for a casserole. And by an awful lot she meant 'any.' "I've, umm, never seen anyone use ketchup in a casserole before."
"It's in the book."
While she was sure ketchup was mentioned somewhere in the book (probably in the meatloaf section), she was pretty sure it wasn't in the same section as the casserole section. But that was his pat phrase that answered any question she might have. Even if she didn't phrase it as a question, necessarily, and had delivered it, cloak and dagger-like, in the form of a statement that expressed mild surprise at the innovative and different (but in an exciting way) to her own experience of the same dish. He'd uttered "it's in the book" a total of three times, at least, by her count, which probably started after a few early ones that had only registered in her subconscious in a "oh dear, I'm going to wind up starving later on, aren't I?" kind of way. Now that he'd gotten up to three times, consciously counted, she feared for his eyesight. Perhaps he really did think they were in the zucchini casserole section. She made a mental note to look up laser eye surgery sites when she got home, whenever that might be. It still wasn't a given, at this stage, whether or not she'd be staying.
"Dinner, milady, is going in the oven."
"Good, smells good so far." She kicked the bottom rung of her barstool. And kicked again. And again.
He popped a bottle of red wine and they moved to the dinner table. He took off his reading glasses and plinked his and her glass down, poured a generous glass of wine in each.
Later, after the fire trucks had arrived and put out the blaze, she took him back to hers, and completely forgot about looking up laser eye surgery.
Summary
disclaimer:
This week's issue is brought to you by lasagna, via zucchini.
Aside from that, I've not really got a lot else for you. We hope to have the serial, started last week, back next week, but there's no guaranteeing anything like that will happen, of course.
We'll just keep on truckin' on until we've had enough. Or you've had enough. One of the two. Or perhaps both. Who knows? Not me, that's who. Or not who. Anyway.
So there you have it. All tied up nicely in a naff pink bow.
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