“A phone call, sir.”
“For me? Here? Hey, but who knows where I am?”
One of his minds raced. The other dawdled lovingly over the food it was still shovelling in.
“Excuse me if I carry on, won’t you?” said his eating head and carried on.
There were now so many people after him he’d lost count. He shouldn’t have made such a conspicuous entrance. Hell, why not though, he thought. How do you know you’re having fun if there’s no one watching you have it?
“Maybe someone here tipped off the Galactic Police,” said Trillian. “Everyone saw you come in.”
“You mean they want to arrest me over the phone?” said Zaphod, “Could be. I’m a pretty dangerous dude when I’m concerned.”
“Yeah,” said a voice from under the table, “you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.”
“Hey, what is this, Judgment Day?” snapped Zaphod.
“Do we get to see that as well?” asked Arthur nervously.
“I’m in no hurry,” muttered Zaphod, “OK, so who’s the cat on the phone?” He kicked Ford. “Hey get up there, kid,” he said to him, “I may need you.”
“I am not,” said the waiter, “personally acquainted with the metal gentleman in question, sir…”
“Metal?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you say metal?”
“Yes, sir. I said that I am not personally acquainted with the metal gentleman in question…”
“OK, carry on.”
“But I am informed that he has been awaiting your return for a considerable number of millennia. It seems you left here somewhat precipitately.”
“Left here?” said Zaphod, “are you being strange? We only just arrived here.”
“Indeed, sir,” persisted the waiter doggedly, “but before you arrived here, sir, I understand that you left here.”
Zaphod tried this in one brain, then in the other.
“You’re saying,” he said, “that before we arrived here, we left here?”
This is going to be a long night, thought the waiter.
“Precisely, sir,” he said.