New European businesses probably. Yeah.
Two weeks before, on a Thursday night like this one, although lacking the rain, Mr Dine had come in and sat down at his usual table. When she’d brought him the menu, he’d looked up at her, and smiled, and asked her, if she didn’t mind, what her name was.
‘I’ve been coming in here for such a long time, and I don’t know what you’re called,’ he had said.
‘Shiznay,’ she replied, blushing.
‘Shiznay,’ he repeated, turning the word over and over.
This Thursday, she produced the bottle of lager he hadn’t asked for yet, and set it down next to the upturned glass.
Mr Dine smiled. ‘Thank you. You read my mind, Shiznay.’
‘My pleasure. Have you decided yet, sir?’
‘A moment.’
Shiznay retreated to the kitchen door and waited. As ever, the restaurant was nothing like busy.
‘What are you doing?’ her father asked, bustling out of the kitchen. ‘Are you loitering?’
‘I am waiting for Mr Dine, Father,’ Shiznay replied.
Her father looked out across the empty restaurant and spotted Mr Dine at the distant table.
‘You favour him,’ he observed.
‘He’s a customer, Father, and a regular. What do you want me to do?’
‘Not get any ideas,’ her father said.
Shiznay had plenty of ideas. Mr Dine knew her name. Mr Dine had smiled at her. He had wanted to know what her name was. He liked her.
She caught sight of herself in the floor-length mirrors beside the restaurant door. Her father insisted they all wore authentic clothing at work — even though neither of her parents had ever been out of South Wales in their lives. Authentic clothing revealed her midriff, and also revealed what the local white boys called a ‘muffin top’. But authentic clothing also accentuated her bosom.
Shiznay was proud of her bosom, but she was also fairly sure she had a pretty face.
‘He’s a breast man,’ her mother had told her.
‘Mother, what?’
‘That Mr Dine. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He’s a breast man.’
‘What is a “breast man”?’ she had wondered.
‘There are four kinds of men… the breast men, the backside men, the leg men, and the others.’
‘The others?’
‘The ones who’ll go for anything. Mr Dine-’
‘Mr Dine is a very nice man, and a regular customer.’
‘Mr Dine is a breast man, Shiznay, you mark my words.’
Shiznay turned way from her reflection and looked across the Mughal Dynasty at Mr Dine. Are you a breast man? she wondered. What exactly does that entail, being a breast man?
Mr Dine had put his menu down.
She crossed the floor to him, breathing in to minimise her muffin top and push out her bosom. Maybe, maybe, he’d ask her out on a date. What would that be like? A walk down to the Pay-and-Display, him holding the door of his nice car open so she could get in. A trip to-But, no. Revise that fantasy. He’d have eaten, of course, he’d already have eaten. No fancy restaurant on the Bay for the two of them. Unless, of course, he asked her out on an evening that wasn’t a Monday or a Thursday…
She wondered what French food was like. What Welsh food was like. How would it taste if Mr Dine was sitting opposite her?
Shiznay didn’t really care if he was a breast man. He was a nice man, and he’d smiled at her, and he knew her name, and-‘Are you ready to order?’ she asked.
He looked up at her and smiled. ‘Yes, I am, Shiznay. Shaslik, and a-’
‘-lamb pasanda?’ she finished.
He frowned. ‘Am I so predictable?’
‘You know what you like.’
‘I study the menu,’ he confessed, picking the tri-fold card up again, ‘and I look, but always the same things seem agreeable. Meat, spiced, then meat and carbohydrates. The alcohol is a treat for me.’
She smiled, not quite knowing what to say. ‘And chocolate ice cream?’
A broad smile etched itself across his lean face. ‘There’s nothing like it where I come from.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Well, thank goodness we’ve got some.’
‘Would you… can you… sit down?’ he asked, indicating the chair opposite.
Shiznay sat down. This was it. The moment. Her breathing had become rather rapid, but she didn’t mind. It did splendid things to her bosom.
‘Shiznay, I’ve been coming here for a while now. I want to ask…’
‘Yes?’
‘What is chocolate ice cream?’
She paused. ‘I… uh… that’s not what I was expecting you to ask. Chocolate ice cream? Well, that’s animal fats and flavouring, pretty much.’
‘Oh,’ he said. He sighed. ‘No wonder I love it so.’
‘Is that… will that be all?’ she asked, rising.
‘Yes. Thank you, Shiznay.’
She got up and hurried back to the kitchen.
‘Jack!’ Gwen yelled. ‘Jack! Come on!’
She and Toshiko were trying to hold Jack’s convulsing body still. The shambling, mumbling figures were closing in all around them.
‘What do we do?’ James asked Owen. ‘Start throwing punches?’
Owen took a shiny, black, custom side-arm from his coat and racked the slide. ‘We do whatever we have to do to get out of here alive,’ he replied.
‘You brought a gun?’ James asked.
‘You didn’t?’
‘No-’
‘I thought this was the End of the World?’
‘Look-’
‘Shut it, the pair of you,’ said Gwen. ‘The SUV’s got a weapons locker.’
‘Well, that kind of requires us to be where the SUV is,’ James told her, ‘rather than being, you know, up a certain creek without a particular implement.’
‘Just get behind me,’ said Owen.
‘They’re coming from all sides!’ James objected.
‘Just get behind me
They could all smell the ketosis on the breaths of the advancing figures. A girl of eleven in a
‘You’re cheerfully going to shoot them?’ James asked.
‘Not cheerfully, exactly,’ Owen admitted.
Jack made a sudden, deep exhalation, as if surfacing from a deep dive. He sat up, panting.
‘Not something I’d recommend,’ he said, blinking. He looked up at Gwen and Toshiko, and then back down at the object clenched in his hand.
‘Hard to fight it. Really hard. We have to get this contained. I don’t know how much longer I can keep it busy.’
‘There’s a containment box,’ Gwen began, ‘but it’s-’
