"Hello... Earth To Jim." A voice said. "What the matter, honey - you're, like, a million miles away."
Startled, Jim looked up - to find that he was seated on a stool in Don's Diner. The small diner - who's 50's-ish Art Deco interior wasn't a 'theme', but the aging relics of the days when the diner was new - was the place Jim went for breakfast almost every morning. While lost in thought, he'd arrived her on 'auto-pilot'
"You want the usual, honey?" DeeDee asked, cocking her head.
"Uh.. yeah." Jim agreed, his mind trying to catch up with reality.
DeeDee turned away. From the pictures on the walls, she'd once been a real looker, when she was younger. Now, dressed in a pink dress with a white apron, DeeDee Packalot looked... cheap. Her huge mass of curly, artificially platinum-blonde hair, her just-slightly-too-heavy figure, and her over-made-up face all added up to that look - no matter if she was a nice - if cynical - woman.
Shouting into the kitchen, DeeDee struggled to make Julio, the skinny you Puerto Rican cook, understand that it was Jim's Blue-Plate special she wanted made up - the scambled eggs were to be REAL eggs, not 'them other ones...'"
As DeeDee argued with Julio, Jim glanced around. As usual, the diner was pretty dead - the only other customer was a young girl sitting in a booth.
Slender, the girl was dressed in a black turtle-neck sweater, a black pleated skirt that extended to just below her knees, and black, leather, knee-high boots with square, three inch heels. Covering her short mass of dark brown hair was a black beret, and she was reading a magazine of some-sort.
"Well, well, well - what have we here?" A voice piped up. Although it was fairly loud and resonant - and it made Jim's head whip around - none of the others in the diner reacted - as if they hadn't heard it at all.
"Looks like an 'fiend-bait convention' to me..." Linger chuckled.
"Wait...!" jim protest - uselessly. It it did was cause three sets of eyes to glance in his direction as Linger made a grand wave of his hand and pointed at...
Wed Oct 6 01:43:13 1999