You're in Pizza Express.  You've been waiting over ten minutes for a menu.  You don't need one.  You've been coming to this nationwide chain pizzeria every Thursday afternoon for ten years and have always ordered a La Reine.

Here's a staff member at last.  Unfortunately she's an attractive twentysomething Balkan waitress.  You therefore cannot possibly express your customer indignation in case it jeapordises the chance of a future relationship with her, a chance that still exists because she has not yet heard your soporific and monotonous voice.

You watch her approach across the expanse of restaurant like a yacht in a desert, her face nearer, nearer, until it's looking down at you, smiling.

"Ready?"

She's in a good mood. 

"A menu would help."

The smile drops like a recovering heroin addict's first shit.  She spins and recedes from view to collect a menu from the other side of the restaurant.  She chats with the Polish pizza chefs for a minute and checks on a couple of other diners before returning.

"There you go."

She slaps down the menu and turns to walk away but you stop her.

"I'm ready."

You pick up the unopened menu and hold it out.

"La Reine and a coke, please."

She accepts the menu and smiles again, but now it's more like a twitch, a tic, an echo of the tense smile she used to placate her baby brother during the Croatian War, crying in their dead parents' crumbling apartment, as the shells fell on Dubrovnik...