DOLL

Happy Birthday

It'd been a long day at work and that meant Daphne was late for her dinner with Charlie. Her best friend just loved making jokes about her never having time for anything but her job, and Daphne was never able to prove her wrong.

Today, for instance, had been like any other day, until her boss came in with a stack of papers their field agents had put together about their latest mission. As great as her government job was, it was time-consuming and made it very hard to have an outside life. She got to say she worked with spies, though. She couldn't say anything beyond that, and that line only got used when she could convince people she was joking.

Charlie knew the truth though.

Daphne was an office worker where spies were based. Not just any spies, no, these spies were United Nations' spies. Which meant Charlie and Daphne could get in trouble for talking about it. And that was why, even on her taxes, Daphne had worked for International Talks, a company that provided interpreters and translators. Daphne didn't know a second language, but she told people she read English translations all day and made sure they were coherent.

That's what she told her parents she did with her English Degree.

Charlie didn't know everything, but she knew enough to stop asking questions and to only pretend to be upset when Daphne ran late for their meetings. Tonight was her friend's birthday, which only made Daphne feel worse about being late. She had intended, wholeheartedly, to be there before her friend, have the cake placed in the middle of the table, and a couple of cute waiters and waitresses to sing happy birthday when she walked in.

But now she received a picture of a table with two filled wine glasses, taken by Charlie as she leaned back to make the empty seat across from her painfully obvious. Under the picture, the message read: Oh happy birthday to me! Two glasses of wine to myself!

Rain dropped onto the screen as the ever-present chilling drizzle of late November came down in a steady patter. Daphne sighed and ran her fingers through her damp hair to get it out of her face. Then she used the hair tie on her wrist to put it up in a sloppy ponytail. She could take it down when she got to the restaurant, in the meantime, she needed a ride. She used an app on her phone to call an automated driver. The car swooped down from where it'd been flying along with traffic to the platform she stood on at the thirtieth floor on the outside of her building. The back door popped open and she stepped in.

"Where to?" the synthesized voice asked cheerily.

"Donny's Steakhouse and Bar, please." She didn't look up from her phone as the car took off and rejoined traffic.

"Right away, your trip will take approximately ten minutes and will charge your account: twenty dollars," the voice informed her. "Would you like some music?"

"No, thank you," Daphne said and tapped away on her phone, forwarding a report to her boss. She would come in early tomorrow to finish what was left from today, and she wouldn't be able to respond but to urgent messages the rest of the night.

The car settled in the drop off zone in front of Donny's. Daphne got out and tapped the icon on her phone to give her car a good review, then made her way inside. The restaurant was nice, the nicest she could afford, and right on the ground, so the owner had to be loaded, the fact she could afford a salad here was a Godsend.

The interior was dim with only accent lighting and windows that automatically tinted when the sun reached them, meaning it never got brighter inside. Everything was made to look like an old wooden cabin in the mountains, with a massive wall in the back dedicated to look like the restaurant sat across a lake from a mountain with the setting sun forever suspended just behind the peak. The leaves and needles of the green trees shook with the grass and water as wind 'blew' over them. It was just a projection, but as you moved through the restaurant, the perspective changed just as it would if you were there.