Snippet #1874393

"I think I picked the wrong day for my first time in a bar." The bartender was not paying attention to him; he wasn't sure that the red-haired woman was, either, but Mike spoke to her anyway. He was poking his head -and his prodigious hair- over the throng at the bar, doing that awkward, choppy dance that people do when they're not sure how to get someone to look at them. He kept speaking to the woman. "When I get this man to look at me -- sometime in the distant future, when...when I have a jetpack or something -- can I ask him to get you something?"

A thin black wire spilled from inside his jacket and swung near his knees, an impossibly-thin hammock. He didn't notice, or didn't care. "Hey, fella, I just -- look, I'm sorry about the glass, OK? Can I get another Coke?" Then, to the woman: "I don't think he's going to give me another Coke. Did I make him mad?"