Donnie looked down and saw an empty plate. On a table.

He looked up with a frown.

‘Would sir like to see the wine list,’ asked the waiter.

Donnie fell sideways from his chair, pain the only thing registering through the violent headache exploding through his brain.

‘Ahem,’ said the waiter. To Donnie he sounded like he was yelling through a 6000 watt PA system with the volume set to 11.

‘Please don’t speak so loudly,’ hissed Donnie as he clawed his way upwards again.

‘Terribly sorry sir,’ whispered the waiter, playing along. ‘Would sir wish to see the wine list?’

‘Ooo,’ said Donnie, a grin on his face. He winced from additional movement and while his conscious mind tried desperately to work out which muscles should stop moving, his unconscious formed a rather useful algorithm:

Donnie blinked a couple of times, and the logic made sense. He looked up and smiled some more, though not without further pain.

‘I would love to see the list,’ he said in an agonised whisper.

The waiter handed him the document with considerable distaste; it wasn’t becoming to lust after alcohol.

‘Hmm, old and dusty, old and dusty… ‘murmured Donnie. He looked up and addressed the man in another whisper.

‘I’ll have the Chateau Neuf ’35.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said the waiter. ‘And something to eat? Sir.’

Donnie gave him a blank stare.

The waiter coughed an ‘A-hem’; politely pointing out that he was making some kind of point which had hitherto not been noticed by Donnie.

‘Just the booze,’ whispered Donnie, now sure his brain was being pushed out of his ears like mince through a mincer.

‘The Armenian salad is particularly good tonight,’ insisted the waiter.

‘Does it have alcohol in it?’ whispered Donnie, checking his ears. No blood; of course, all that proved was that he was fundamentally brainless.

The waiter looked uncomfortable.

‘I am not aware of this possibility, sir.’ He coughed another ‘a-hem’.

‘Right, off you go then,’ said Donnie, fingering his ears; there had to be something coming out, surely? Other than earwax of course. ‘And bring my plonk forthwith.’

The waiter turned on his heel and stalked off.

Donnie closed his eyes in an effort to reduce the pounding agony he was experiencing, slowly letting the pain migrate from hemisphere to hemisphere and finally coalesce in his upper neck.

A can rattled loudly beside his left ear.

Donnie screamed and fell sideways from the chair, holding his head in his hands in an effort to stop the agony.

‘Would you like to make a donation,’ asked the young man standing beside the now vacant chair. ‘It’s to save endangered sea life.’

‘Only if you stop shouting,’ hissed Donnie. With white spots popping in front of his eyes and the pain back in his cranium, he crawled back onto the chair.

The waiter placed the requested bottle on the table and, in a most contemptuous way, paced off once more without even so much as pouring a sample for Donnie to try.

Not that it mattered of course. Donnie focussed on the bottle while murmuring to himself.

‘MyHeadHurts is true, Booze is true.’ He nodded with a smile. ‘Repeat…’

One of Donnie’s great unsung talents was a total lack of a gag reflex. He synchronised his breathing and guzzled the contents of the bottle in one go.

The man with the can winced slightly at the sound of the last of the expensive wine being sucked from the bottle.

Donnie pulled the empty receptacle away from his mouth. He gasped and sniffed, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Oh,’ he said after another moment, and noticed the pain had dulled substantially; the nuclear bomb tests going on in his skull had been successfully disrupted by a protest flotilla of nearly a liter of a good quality French red.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Donnie with a grin. ‘That feels better.’

© Lisa Sinclair 2004-2009 All Rights Reserved

The Grand Adventures of Daisy Donnie by Lisa Jane Sinclair is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.
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