Service By Karim Khan

INT- NOON - INNER CITY CAFE Its Lunch time hour and the place is busy as ever. There are voices, chatting, whispering and waitress moving back and forth from the kitchen. Clashing plates and cutlery. This sound OVERLAY of the dark image and the shot of the door appearing. The door opens a man with rather posh looking boots walks in, the bell that the door makes rings, alarming the cafe of a new customer. There is also a wisp of air that rushes through the heated and stuffy cafe. The cafe is busy and a single handed waitress is the main focus. She walks across the cafe handing tables their orders and rushing back for the ones she hasnt yet had the chance to serve. Things are chaotic for Jenni, because she is the only waitress the restaurant could possibly afford. The camera shot is static and doesnt change or alter from this very image. The irksome nature of Jenni is portrayed. There is no one present, everything seems to be the subject of Jenni or the visitors imagination. Voices are apparent but no people and no sense of identity. Jenni comes to the center of the camera, who happens to be her next customer. She looks at him as though she looks at everyone, with the same extent of bore and mundane, because he isnt any different to any other person that turns up at the door. She opens her mouth as though to speak, yet her chewing distorts anything she could say or feel. She rapidly chews as though to avoid any possible human interaction. She moves out of his way yet directs him to a the way towards his table. The shot reverses and Greg looks around with a sense of awareness and insight, he discovers the business of the cafe. He follows the journey that Jenni has already placed for him. Jenni stands next to a table that seems to detached from the outside world. She points at it to make Greg clear of his position. Sitting down, Greg looks hopeless and waiting. Waiting for something that seems to be unclear and not exact. His voyeurism continues as he looks around again, in some search for something of some sort.

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A great wad of piece of paper comes right in front of him and blocking him from his voyeurism. He looks at it and gathers that she has given him a menu to look through. The menu drops to his table right in front of him and looks forth, directly at the camera. Greg picks up the menu slowly with every inch of certainty and exactness. Looking at the menu he finds dirt surrounding the menu. It disgusts him and he feels helpless again. He is unsure of what it is and how it came there. Perhaps, the customer who last used it put food on it accidentally. He rapidly wipes the dirt of with a napkin from his pocket, closest to him. He does this so rapidly that his movements are so absurd. His behaviour hints a sense of OCD. A voice creeps up behind him again, the same rapid presence of Jenni. Yet it scared him horrifically. JENNI Ready to order your wife, you will see the wide range we have on our menu. The voice is so subtle and hazy that it almost seems a hallucination. Focusing on his back, he looks round to find where she may be. Shes not there. He looks back forward and sees her waiting helplessly and impatiently for what he wants. She has a small waitress pad in her hand and she clicks her pen continuously. He looks back at the menu that he had been wiping for the last thirty seconds. The POV shot exposes haziness and obscurity. He sees images of different kinds of women. This seems absurd to him. He rubs his eyes again and then says: GREG (sigh)Ill have...(posh rare dish). She looks at him from her small note book and then writes it down with surprise. He taps on the table rhythmically,as though hungry and bored, with helplessness. Greg always finds waiting for food so painfully annoying. He sees others eat and clatter their cutlery, which makes him so envious.

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A clash of object sound is heard from the kitchen. The camera explores forth beyond where Greg was sitting to uncover the mystery. The camera pauses on the mysterious door which has a "No Entry" sign defined on it. Jenni rushes out of the kitchen with all her hair displaced. Her tears have made her make up run and her face look dreadfully ugly. She wipes her face and sniffs her emotions as though to return to her previous self. She walks forward to where Greg was sitting, the table ahead of him. This table was messy and something of the unbelievable. The food and drink was all over the place, half complete yet half incomplete. Jenni bowed her head towards all of the objects positioned on the square tabled and began. She began clearing it and scrubbed every last piece of dirt, it was as though she had fallen into a trance. This trance like dimension was hers only, and no one else could be part of it... She glared upwards and her gaze met that of Greg. He looked his way towards her and his tapping fingers paused. This gaze was tranquil for both as it allowed a certain extent of escapism. He entered her trance like dimension and could empathize with her position. Yet this couldnt last, a voice came from the kitchen and Jenni had to resume her duties: KITCHEN CHEF Service! This short and blunt verse seemed monosyllabic to Jenni. It sliced her trance like day-dream and brought her back to the reality. She rushed hurriedly towards the serving area as though she had to redeem herself from doing something wrong. She brought the dish that belonged to Greg. Finally he could eat and this is what he came for and waited for. She rushed to him with his dish as though it was too hot to maintain. She dumped it two millimeters away from Greg and therefore the massive disaster was saved. As it landed on the table, a great pang of liquid rushed out of the dish and sprinkled over the cleaned menu. The menu was dirty again. She ducked her head close to his as she attempted to clean around the bowl, in making it presentable, clearing every spit of dirt. His tapping wasnt interrupted, it hinted some sort of urge and hunger to eat.

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She left him, and he gasped to eat. The cutlery mingled with the soft texture of the food that he was eating. He was hungry, not greedy but hungry. The clashing cutlery joined the sound that he heard when he entered the cafe and now he could understand the cafe and its ambiance. He took a pause and digested all the chewed pieces with a big gulp of wine that was in his glass. The camera pans to the woman who pauses for a second. She sees him and how he eats, then a smile that was so faint and acute crops up from her mildly beautiful face. The smile that was so fine and yet so acute took so much endeavor from the saliva of her mouth, that the chewing gum that she chewed was now tasteless and rubbery. The same bell sound that was created by the entrance of Greg is repeated, as a new customer has enters into the cafe ready for his or her lunch. And then the loud cry of the chef recommences: KITCHEN CHEF Service! The End.