Thai food nearly broke my ankle

We’ve ordered Thai food. ‘They say we can pick it up in twenty minutes,’ says the Evil Sulphura.

‘We should leave here in twenty minutes,’ I say. ‘It always takes at least half an hour, and I always end up sit­ting in that crowded bit at the front, wait­ing with all the other gull­ible losers who believed it would only be twenty minutes, while an end­less stream of smug win­ners swan past me and col­lect theirs straight away. They’re the smart ones; they’re the ones who waited an extra ten minutes.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense. How do you even know they’ve waited another ten minutes?’ says Sulph.

‘It hap­pens every time,’ I insist. ‘There’s some­thing tri­umphant in the way they swish their car­rier bag as they leave.’

‘They prob­ably just ordered less than us.’

I take this as an accus­a­tion of glut­tony. ‘I’m going to do some work on the com­puter,’ I say, stalk­ing off towards the study.

‘We’re leav­ing in ten minutes!’ Sulph calls after me. I pre­tend not to hear.

Ten minutes pass.

‘Are you ready?’ calls Sulph.

‘I’m play­ing a game now,’ I say. ‘I’m just fin­ish­ing. Give me a few minutes.’ I watch the clock tick: I have decided that I am going to prove my extra-ten-minute the­ory by for­cing us to leave after twenty minutes. I have decided that tonight, I will be one of the winners.

‘I’m hungry!’ calls Sulphura.

‘I can’t find my shoes!’ I lie.

We leave after pre­cisely twenty minutes, in some­thing of a tense silence. As we approach the res­taur­ant, Sul­phura says, ‘it’s too busy to park: you jump out and I’ll drive round the block.’

‘Make it a short block,’ I say con­fid­ently, ‘because I’ll be out in thirty seconds.’

The car veers away. I race into the res­taur­ant. The crowded bit at the front is crowded with empty benches. ‘I’ve got a phone order under the name Sul­phura,’ I say to the cashier.

‘Oh sure,’ says the cash­ier. ‘You’re pretty much the only order we’ve had all night. It actu­ally only took about fif­teen minutes, sorry.’

She hands me a car­rier bag. It’s a freak event: I used to live oppos­ite this res­taur­ant, and I’ve never seen it empty. It proves noth­ing. The bag is cool to the touch.

I race out into the street and, see­ing Sul­phura emer­ging from a side street, I change dir­ec­tion too fast, tread on the edge of the kerb and twist my ankle, the loss of equi­lib­rium caus­ing me to invol­un­tar­ily fling our tepid din­ner about my head. I limp the rest of the way to the car, even though there’s no real damage.

‘So,’ says Sul­phura, ‘did you feel like a winner?’

‘Bloody Thai food nearly broke my ankle!’ I cry.