When You Ask a Girl for a Light, Sometimes All You Want Is a Light

Setting: Some bar somewhere in London sometime between midday and midnight.

B: May I perhaps trouble you for a light….
[Boy smiles with much practiced coyness/humility]

G: Of course, just give me a sec. [rummages in her bag briefly for a lighter that never existed and then looks up with windowpane veneer of feigned surprise] Shit! I don’t seem to be able to find it – give me a sec…

B: Never mind I’ll just….

G: So what’s your name anyway? [Interrupting before boy can finish]

B: [Sighs, his eyes glaze over as he thinks of a distant Arcadian future of self lighting cigarettes] It’s Belvedere the Second – now look, I’m sorry but I have explosive diarrhea that is about to erupt in my pants so I really have to run – [B turns and makes for the toilets before he has a chance to hear her reply]

G: [In complete befuddlement] Belvedere… the second?