It was five in the afternoon.

Atlas ordered an omelette.

"No onions, please," said he. "And light on the tomatoes, if you would be so good."

"Sir," said the girl across the counter, "it's five in the afternoon."

Atlas smiled.

The girl smiled back.

Atlas continued to smile. He leaned against the countered, cheerfully looking her in the eyes, happily resting his chin on the palm of his hand. She smiled back, but was starting to look faintly nervous. She took a step back. Close proximities bothered her, and the joyful man was in her bubble.

"Er, I'll see what we can do." She darted away.

Atlas pushed away from the counter and wandered to the largest table. There was only one of him. There were six seats.

He didn't bother to see if anyone was sitting there already. He also kept his face an open invitation—come sit with me!

There was (in fact) only one person already sitting at the table. Now there are two of them; there's still six seats.

Two is a start, though. Or rather, perhaps, one is a start and the other's the end of it.

She glances up slowly from her coffee (black, no sugar) at this table-usurper, and blinks. He doesn't look like the typical table-usurper, really. And he's smiling. In fact he's smiling like few people she's ever seen smile, he's smiling like he's just learned how and is absolutely delighted and absolutely must show off his new talent.

She rests her chin in one thin white hand to examine him in silence- up close there's something a little unnerving about her, as well, something a little off-kilter in her grey eyes and the pasive set of her mouth (gold glinting from the ring in her lower lip). They must make an odd picture- neutral madness and madly grinning, and Moira wonders, taking a sip of coffee, what it would take to make him stop.

"You seem to have invited yourself to my table," she observes thoughtfully, voice low and bemused and grating on the ears, honey poured over a gravel driveway.

"Oh, was the invitation for someone else, then?"

He smiled. Not much could make him stop smiling. He even smiled in his sleep, a gentle, upturned quirk of his lips that would make some people coo and send the rest running in an unnameable fear.

He pulled his ankle up to his knee and turned to look at her. Fingers tucked a strand of hair behind his ear (he hoped she didn't notice the anomaly—he'd spent hours observing them earlier in the day, before finally convincing himself that the right one was slightly larger than the left. In reality, the left was a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of an inch larger than the right, but the mortal eye was blind to such things. In any account, that was why he was so late for breakfast.) and he reached over to straighten the salt shakers.

"I'm sorry." He wasn't. He didn't move, either. Instead, he turned the napkin so that one point was facing him, then turned it so the flat edge replaced it, then back to a pointy edge, different from the first.

He smiled.

"Quite alright," she murmurs, watching the napkin-manipulation with a faintly mesmerized expression. She hadn't noticed him counting his steps, but then again, she hadn't noticed his approach in the first place. Might be it. Might not matter.

"It's Atlas, right? I'm Moira," she adds, perhaps before he can register the slip- the slip, that is, of knowing his name. Deja-vu much? "No, I hadn't been aware there was an invitation, but no matter."

He looked up from the napkin at her knowing his name.

He smiled.

He was unnerved, but he was also unnerving. It balanced out.

"Correct. I guess I did get the right invitation, then." Did he have a spy? Did his name precede himself? Was he really that popular? It must be his stunning good looks.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, my dear." A lilting voice, rather musical, faintly accented. Greek? Yes, please.

He adjusted the flowers. One had two more petals than the other—he plucked them out so that they balanced, too.

"Goodness, I'm terribly sorry," she apologizes, not at all apologetic. "It's this memory of mine, no telling what it'll throw up next." She smiles faintly (fangy little creature, she), and reflects momentarily on the nature of Truth- that is, stranger than fiction, etcetera. At any rate, truth can certainly be more irritating than fiction. Imagine walking up to someone on the street and saying, Hey, Freddy, old chap! Nice to see you, when the fact is you don't know Freddy, or at least not yet.

Mentally she scrounges for a suitable topic- it's always been a problem, knowing people's names can be such a conversation-stopper. And instead takes a sip of coffee and turns back to her book.

Sorry for what?

Hm, she was already disinterested. Usually people lasted past the pleasantries, a couple of moments, at least, before they became too freaked out by his smile to continue.

He didn't stop smiling. Instead, he picked up his water glass, wiped away the water ring with the napkin, and sipped the drink.

Then he obsessed over his napkin for a couple of seconds, unhappy with the way the water crinkled the material. Still smiling, though.

"Is that an interesting book?"

"Do you have to make an even or odd number of steps to cross a street?" she answers innocently. Well? Worth asking. She really would like to know- honest. "Yes, actually. 'Midnight's Children' by Salman Rushdie. Are you familiar?"

Well, of course he's familiar, everybody's familiar. She obviously means 'with the author'. Gulp of coffee (she can feel the caffeine rattling through her sluggish veins as they speak), but she could really use a cigarette or some alcohol or something. She's beginning to itch beneath her fingernails (sharp little claws she has, uneven lengths, polish chipping off the surface and paint stuck beneath), never a good sign.

"It depends on if it's an even or an odd day of the week."

What the what?

He leaned against the table—perfectly. Elbows exactly symmetrical to each other, et cetera, et cetera. If he could, he would push his heart just slightly to the right. It leaned a little too far to the left for his comfort.

"And unfortunately, no." He only read self-help books. Not the kind that improved his personality, heavens no, but the kind that improved his looks.

Et cetera, et cetera.

"I'll be sure to look it up, eventually." Probably not. If it wasn't titled '101 Ways to...', he didn't want it.

And then he spotted her nails.

His smile froze.

He looked back at the napkin. That was safer.

He really wanted to take a file to those claws.

A slow smile spreads over her face- at his discomfort, or at his lack of literary adventuresomeness, it's hard to tell, fingers rattling out a rat-a-tat-tat on the surface of the table.

Quite a lot about her is uneven, actually- glyph tattooed beneath one eye, the piercings in her ears an uneven number. Her hair, which is a rather striking color (sort of the color of dried blood) is long and, while it suits her, it can't be denied that the curls are an absolute mess, tangled and knotty and pulled back carelessly in a ponytail. Her jeans are shreds and tatters along the hem, her flipflops have seen better days- at least her teeshirt is pristine- hasn't had a chance to get paint all over it yet, actually.

"It's quite a good book. Do you read much?"

The realization that her appearence was less than perfect caused Atlas to freeze again.

It should be noted, here, also, that the only thing constant about Atlas was his smile. He had a tendancy to be a perfectionist one day and a tornado the next. His apartment was proof of this—on any given day of the week, it would be a total mess. Clothes would be strewn everywhere, tea mugs stacked atop tea mugs, and so much more. Twenty-four, everything would be perfect again. Symmetrical. Spotless.

Unfortunately, today Atlas was a perfectionist.

He dropped his eyes again. Napkin. Was there more fiber on this side than the other? His fingers twitched. He picked up the glass, wiped away the water ring, sipped, placed it back in the same exact spot.

"Oh, sure. I read plenty."

Fidgety eyes. He wondered if she would stop tapping her fingers. He smiled. Was he sweating? A quick glance—under arms were dry. He wondered if he could get Bob (the greatest plastic surgeon in the world, if you were ask Atlas) to remove his sweat glands there.

"Classics? You seem," she chatters, without a trace of malign in her voice and expression, "like the sort." If the aforementioned '101 Ways to..' could be called a classic. She doesn't stop tapping her nails, either, sip of coffee with her free hand and that itch again (making her fingers move), except it's spreading up her arm now and she can feel it in the back of her throat, behind her eyes

She really ought to do something about that soon, but it wouldn't do to lose it in public.

In any account, if she lost it, he would probably lose it in response and attempt to make her over right then and there.

'He seemed nice,' one witness would say. 'Smiled a lot, at least.'

The omlette came—startled him. The waitress put it on top of his napkin, how dare she! He picked up the plate, snagged the napkin, spent the next five minutes perfectly placing it on his lap, took the plate off his lap, replaced it with the napkin, put the plate back on the table, adjusted the omlette so that it lay directly in the center, fret over the fact that there was no way he could fix all the ingrediants so that they were perfectly symmetrical (he was awfully bad today, it must be a Thursday), and began eating it. Worked around it, spiraled so that the last bite would be the one in the center.

"I've been reading the same page on Much Ado About Nothing for two years."

He smiled.

"You've got me by a whole page, then," she concedes, watching this omelette ritual (the faintly glazed look to her eyes back now), and caffeine coating her tongue and she can feel the itch, that nagging what-not, crawl up the back of her neck larynx knees takes a sip of coffee.

It feels rather like fur growing on the inside of your skin- didn't they cut some poor sap up in the middle ages because he thought fur was growing on the wrong side of his skin?- but Moira knows, of course, that all the bugs under the backs of your hands and people behind your eyes are not really real.

They are awfully convincing, though. And she smiles faintly as one of them clambers up the side of his face- it's not, really, but it's awfully convincing.

He chewed each bite exactly twenty times, and took a sip from his water (must not forget to wipe the water ring) after every three bites. His eyes travelled back to Moira—why was she staring at him? He put down his fork (at a ninety degree angle from his plate) and checked his face with a graceful hand. Did he have food on his cheek? A bogey hanging from his nose?

Nothing.

Perfectly smooth skin (thanks to laser surgery, it got rid of those horrible scars left from the acne—he shuddered just thinking about it) to the touch.

"What's your book about?" Polite conversation.

"India," she says succinctly. "Salman Rushdie spent a number of years in exile for having a mind of his own, and this novel was one of the results. About a large number of children who were born in the space of an hour and all had remarkable powers, except not quite so lame as that sounds."

Eyes (grey as insomnia, grey as cats and storm clouds and dripping time) fixed somewhere to the left of his face (where the person-that-isn't is sitting in his hair, braiding and smoothing and leering gently).

Immediately his hand went slightly-to-the-left. At this rate, he was never going to get finished with his omelette. He brushed at his cheek. His ear? Scrubbed helplessly. Still smiled, though. Just a worried one.

"Is there something wrong?" Not with the book. "Do I have something on me?"

He didn't bother to ask if he had someone on him. That would just be crazy.

She very nearly says, Yes, there's a little man making faces at me on you, but that might be cruel.

Instead she smiles brightly (at least she's got good teeth, aside from those fangs). "No, of course not," she replies (the itch escalated to a gentle burn, she really oughtn't have gone so many days without) gently. It's a wonder her voice isn't more irritating, with that rusty tone to it.

He smiled with relief (why was everything so sharp about this lady?) and went back to working round and round his omelette. Truthfully, she frightened him. Slightly, at least.

And this was the guy that liked to claim he was descended from Herkales.

"Well, that's good. Will you be getting something to eat?"

Idle talk was hard when it looked like the person you were having a conversation with was about to crawl out of their skin.

"No," she says, waving her cup vaguely, "just coffee."

She mightn't crawl out of her skin- shed it, maybe, of a piece, like snakes- but really she's just sitting there, comparatively demurely and the little person is playing in Atlas' hair- amusing little thing, really (the person, not Atlas) but as it climbs down to sit on his nose she's losing interest already.

"Just coffee is always good." But I prefer tea.

He finished the omlette. Last bite, directly in the center. Kept the plate on the table, reclined slightly, observed the woman. He wanted to ask her something, and it was at the tip of his tongue, but he was grappling for it and losing it. Usually he was good with idle conversation, but for some reason he was drawing a blank.

He quit drawing a blank on the napkin with his finger and smiled. Well, grinned. Widely. Like a Cheshire cat. Like his face was going to split in half if he smiled like that for too long. Like Dameon from Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Like...

...well, just really, really big.

She meets his gaze with a blank, amiably unperturbable sort of expression. Damn. He's smiling again, why doesn't he stop smiling? Moira briefly entertains the thought of what he might do if she clawed that smile up, and then looses the thread when the little person on Atlas' face explodes violently.

She could use some more coffee. Or some alcohol. And a cigarette.

He looks like the lower half of his face is about to explode with joy- like the little person, maybe, except a lot happier.

Maybe he was trying to scare her away.

Maybe he was trying to impress her.

Maybe he was doing a little bit of both, because she scared him and she impressed him.

Maybe he wasn't happy, and was really actually mulling over things broodingly in a dark corner of his mind. The wide smile certainly didn't reach his eyes. His look wasn't friendly. It was cold. It was calculating. It was as if he was trying to read her like a classic, or a self help book, and wasn't quite sure how to.

He sipped his water. He didn't wipe away the water ring. The question was still there, and it had words to it now.

What are you?

Well, an unasked question doesn't seem about to bring an answer about. So after a suitably befuddled smile, she sets her coffee cup down.

"Can you name every country in Africa?" Her tone bright, nonsequiter, and cheerful. Africa? What?

He didn't ask because asking what someone was could raise some problems. Instead, he knit his eyebrows together.

"No. Can you name every dialect?"

"Oh, god, no," she replies happily.

"I can barely speak a coherent sentence in English let alone remember that South Africans speak English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, and six other lesser known African languages, or that no less than nineteen countries- or more, I forget- speak French, or- goodness- all manner of things."

Tat-tat-tat go her fingernails.

Up goes his eyebrows.

He leaned forward. "That's interesting." It was. "Can you speak anything other than English?" He could. "I'm fluent in Greek."

"Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that," flit of her hands. "I'm Greek. Or part Greek, perhaps. Or not." Rather vague, no? (No, actually- for Moira that's very nearly straight-forward.)

"That's interesting. Me too. It's always nice to know I have something in common with a stranger."

A pause.

"I think."

"Oh, I'm sure it is," Moira agrees with a warm smile- feline smile, predator smile, some large cat bred down to household size but you can't breed down instinct because there she is, sitting by the mousehole with thousands of years' worth of single-minded concentration; what is behind this hole, and when will it come back out?

She leans forward, elbows on the table and chin in her hand. "So what else do you do besides read, Atlas?"