by Birgit Staebler
With thanks to Petra, who, as most of the times, managed to dump a story on me again.
It was a slow, cold night. Marco Vincent sat on his chair, yawning. Winter was a time where business was slow, since a lot of people decided to get their pizza and burger delivered to their homes instead of getting take-away or drive-thru. Marco took the novel he had brought along out of his knapsack and leafed through the first pages. When he reached the page where he had stopped reading yesterday, he settled back in his chair.
After twenty minutes of reading he heard the chime of the bells announcing a customer. Yawning again he reached for the call-button.
"Your orders?" he asked, without looking at the screen that normally showed the customer.
"Two double cheeseburgers, with large fries and onion rings," a deep, male voice said.
"Anything to drink?"
"Two diet cokes," was the reply.
Marco punched the right buttons and came up with the amount to pay. "That's $8.25," he said laconically, still not looking at the screen. "Proceed to the cashier." He heard the low rumble of an engine as the driver drove on, and turned to this night's server. "Katy, got the order ready?" he asked.
"Coming right up."
Seconds later Marco held a bag with the ordered food. He turned his chair around to give the bag to the waiting customer and froze. On the other side of his little cashier box stood a sleek, black race car. A long car. A futuristic looking car. A car everyone in Gotham City knew. The cockpit's hood slid back, revealing the driver -- and the passenger. The red-and-green dressed passenger grinned brightly at Marco while the driver, dressed all in black, held up a ten-dollar-bill. Marco took it like in trance and then gave the driver the food bag.
"Keep the change," the deep and low voice of the driver said. He gave the food bag to his passenger, who immediately dug into the bag and got out a cheeseburger.
"T .... t .... thank y..... y.....you," Marco stuttered, still staring at the two costumed men.
Then the hood of the car slid back and he was denied further spying. The black car drove on down the lane of the drive thru restaurant. Marco leaned out of the cash-box window, staring after it. When the car had disappeared into the night, he fell back into his chair.
"I don't believe it," he whispered. Then louder: "I don't believe it!"
"What?" Katy wanted to know and came over from the large kitchen.
"Did you see it?"
"What?"
"The car! The Batmobil!"
Katy Malloy frowned. "Batmobil? Did you drink, Marco?"
He shook his head. "No! It was Batman and Robin. They just ordered drive thru!"
"Yeah, yeah." Katy chuckled and then walked back to the kitchen. "Batman. Right."
"But ...." Marco gave up and stared at the now again empty drive thru lane. "Wow," was all he whispered and then picked up his novel again. This was one slow night that had turned out to be something really special.
