𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐞; eugene roe ✔

PART ELEVEN

Word count; 2,009

Valentina

Nixon had his own room opposite the study Winters used. He unlocked the door with a small brass key and kicked a stopper beneath it, strolling forward to meet a glass cabinet in the corner. A desk was in the centre of the room, crowded with piles of paper and documents. On the two armchairs before it were more files and pieces of carboard, the coffee table between the two also blanketed in paper.

"Forgive me for the mess, Miss Fritz." He poured himself a glass of whiskey from a glass bottle, proceeding to ask if I wanted one.

I shook my head, watching as he shut the cabinet and moved over to another table, filled up with newspapers.

"Now, Winters said you wanted some." He jugged down the whiskey, picking through the pile. "I don't understand one bit but I think this is the last issue from before we burst into here. Then we found these, some excess atributions which hadn't made it into the paper, we guessed."

He took a paper into his hand and held it out.

"It is, dated four days ago." I examined, turning it over in my palms.

"You sound dispirited."

I looked up from the newspaper, finding Lewis staring directly at me.

"What do you want the paper for, anyway?"

"Reading." I jested and he laughed. "There is a section on the second-to-last page, filled with notes from, well, whoever. Submitted by those here."

"I see." He nodded. "Got someone special on there?"

I denied with a smile, making up an excuse, "Not at all. Only I enjoy it; you find many different jokes and anecdotes within them, from elderly women to their husbands or-"

"Yeah, I get it." He grinned. "Something similar in a paper back where I'm from."

"However, this is the wrong paper. The Cliffside Times. I would read The Salty Post."

"The what?" He chuckled.

"I think it translates to something like The Salty Post."

"Right." He furrowed his brows. "Right."

"You may laugh."

"No, no." He simpered, trailing back to the whiskey cabinet and pouring another glass. "Are you sure you don't want one?"

I let a breath escape from my mouth, "Why not."

"That's more like it." He cheered. "I knew you were a fan."

"Of whiskey?"

"The divine taste of cultured booze." Lewis proposed a glass, half-full with hickory-coloured liquid.

"It is all right." I sipped on the drink.

"No, no, that's not how you do it." He said, proceeding to throw the whole glass into the back of his mouth and swallow. "That's how you do it."

I mirrored his actions, grimacing at the taste and how dry it made my throat.

"There you go!"

"I am-" I sucked on the layer it left on my tongue. "Never doing that again."

Lewis chuckled, "C'mon, it wasn't that bad."

I shook my head, putting the glass down on the desk. Nixon moved around the room, to another pile, but after a minute or two of scanning found nothing.

"Sorry, Miss Fritz-"

"I thought we agreed on less formalities."

He glanced up, a smirk lighting his lips, "Sure. Sorry, Valentina. I cannot see any of your 'Salty Post'."