#chapter | 02

It would be a generous thing to say time passed slowly by, a rather more fitting description of its progression fell somewhere between traipsed and dragged. Erik had an inkling it had something to do with the fact he was still nursing that same stale champagne from over an hour ago. He didn’t even like champagne, just found that people tended to ask a lot less questions and pay a lot less attention so long as you were nursing something. And he was not yet desperate enough to be tempted by the travesty. The crowd had gone sweatier and louder and drunker. To a sober Erik it felt like being trapped in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting - around the edges of his vision people became caricatures, spinning around in sparkling flashes of black and silver and every colour under the sun. Post-impressionism made him dizzy, and not the good kind. 

He smiled his smiles, charming and elastic, made his brazen excuses and spun the little white lies about how he was going to be back (...in just a minute. Hold that thought for me, won’t you? Perfect.), before slipping out the back to the terrace where he could smoke in peace. And he would have, had he not been leaned against the railing, the cold stone biting into his back where a spare revolver was safely tucked away, just at the right angle to see Robinson strolling by the long line of windows separating him from the inside. He watched her for a moment, slowly savouring a drag from his cigarette as if he’d already decided it was his last for the moment, before flicking it over the railing and letting that twitchy little impulse inside him prevail. 

Maybe if he hadn’t been so bored out of his mind, or if he hadn’t had to grapple with her shockingly inadequate substitute this morning, he would’ve remained in his spot and lit another cigarette. Instead, he slipped through one of the glass doors and moved to cut her off in her path. “Robinson,” he said under his breath, as if not to draw the attention, then reached forward to catch her at her elbow . “Robinson. Outside.” He was staring down at her as if almost daring her to say no or make a scene. If there was ever a time he could get her to cooperate for five minutes without involving some fucking scribe of hers, it was tonight. “I promise, you’ll live through two fucking minutes. I’m sure you don’t want your guests to see us bickering.”