And on the Seventh Day....

More writing outside! It's a beautiful day! Everything is sunny!

We're a week into Nano here, and we're over a quarter done on the word count. We still have no plot to speak of, but things are progressing towards one, perhaps. Nothing like a cryptic mysterious figure to speed things along.

But poor dear, desparate, deluded Dui. Here is a longish excerpt (467 words!) of a diner scene that rivals the great meeting between Pacino and DeNiro in Heat.

They adjourned for breakfast, that morning, soon after meeting. Decimal spoke of a restaurant around the corner that Dui had long been a fan of. As they ate their eggs and bacon, they were silent, but when they had finished, Dui began firing questions rapidly at his tablemate.

"So, who are you?" he asked.

"We already figured that out," Decimal replied. "I'm Jonathan Decimal."

"Yes, yes," Dui said. "I mean, who are you?"

"Oh, I understand. No wait, I don't. I'm Jonathan Decimal," Decimal repeated his name loudly and slowly, as if Dui didn't speak English and just by changing the speed and volume of his speech, Decimal could impart understanding.

"You are a frustrating son of a bitch, aren't you?" Dui asked. His swear earlier had felt good and he thought he might try it some more. He was always on the lookout for new hobbies.

"Oh you have no idea, sir," Decimal replied, that infuriating smile, along with a fleck of scrambled egg, on his lips. He leaned back in his chair and patted his belly, and looked for all the world as a man without a care, a man without a thought, and absolutely, thought Dui, a man without any intention of explaining his sudden appearance in Dui's quarters, in Dui's life.

Well, thought Dui, I can play that game too. He took another sip of his coffee and leaned back in his own chair, patted his own belly, tried on an expression of smug satisfaction, checked his reflection in the window over Decimal's shoulder, decided that the expression wasn't the look he was going for, tried another, and another, until he felt that he had found the proper one.

Decimal laughed and said, "Are you going to make faces at me all day, or are you going to tell me why you called me here?"

"Why I called you here?" Dui asked, his facial expression returning to his usual ("worried schoolboy called to the principal's office for something he may or may not have done but isn't sure and is wracking his brain to discover if there is something infraction in his recent past for which he has been caught") all sense of cool, calm and collected out the window. "You appear in my apartment unannounced, you know everything about me, you invite me to breakfast, you stick me with the tab" -- Decimal had deftly ignored the check as the waiter had presented it, had waited it out so long that Dui had felt no option but to pay the bill -- "and now you want to know why I called you here? Sir, I've had just about enough. I wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you, but it has been anything but. It has been everything but."