Eating out

Karin sat in Caffe Nero and waited for her soup. When it came, she heard a laugh behind her. Kind of a snigger, but not a cruel one.

"Your soup matches your dress!"

He was right but it wasn't the greatest pickup line she'd heard. Still, it wasn't the worst either. She decided to out-weird the weirdo and turned round to face him, just then noticing the heavily-annotated and stained Bible open in his lap. She smiled instead and decided against it. She sat down, stirred her soup and focused her attention on the lumps of vegetable in it. So did he.

"I saw a movie yesterday where something exactly like this happened"

Karin smiled weakly and looked at her soup.

---

in another place, at another time

---

Senhali crossed over the Strand from the theatre where she'd just bought a ticket for "The Bodyguard". There was plenty of time for lunch before the show. She went into LEON and felt immediately at home, this was the place she was supposed to be in, so funky and hip in the seventies photos of family holidays on the wall. She didn't mind the music that throbbed in her head and made it extra difficult to make her order understood.

The girl behind the counter was being so unbelievably friendly, no matter that she also didn't seem to know what she was doing. Her incompetence was utterly charming. Senhali thought the girl was very cool and beautiful.

She ordered a garlic aioli chicken box, a cup of green tea and a sticky, nutty, pastry thing that she couldn't see the name of but pointed at with a chubby finger. It all arrived quickly. She carefully carried her tray over to the cutlery cart and, having poured herself a glass of lemon ice water, paid a great deal of attention to safely crossing to a table by the window. She watched all the people passing the theatre over the road and imagined how envious they would be if they knew she was going to see the show in just a few minutes.