The Art of Rails®

Chapter 7. The Five Styles of AJAX

Web sat waiting in a booth at the back of the smoky pub, staring at the aged carving in the wood above his table.

LOKE ERST YE THENK, AND BE YE THE WOLRDE

And the phrase beneath it, in the same ornate style but newer, he thought, given the brighter color of the wood bezel.

FRIDAY NIGHT FISH AND CHIPS SPECIAL

The pub was a strange maze of tables and shadows, wood and brick columns holding up the floors above. It was buried underneath an otherwise normal building holding commercial space, an old wine cellar that used to belong to a distributer on the seventh floor. Before that it was the factory floor for a parachute company, and even before that it was rumored to have been an underground alchemy supply shop.

Now it was a pub. A damp, earthen smell permeated through the sounds and odors of fried fish and pipe smoke.

"Hi! My name is AJ, and I'll be your server today! Is there anything I can get you to drink?"

Web thought the waitress looked out of place in this old tavern. She beamed at him, waiting for his reply with her spiked, neon-blue hair; she wore a shining pink plastic halter top and costume-like makeup. She was balancing a tray of empty pint glasses on one hand and a skateboard beneath her feet.

"Actually, liquids tend to give me a short. Still some old ISDN lines in here," Web said, patting his stomach. "Could I just have some chips? You know what, throw in the fish, too."

"Sure thing. No liquids. Fish, chips, coming right up," she said as she rolled ...