63...

Alexis nodded her head slowly.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “We don’t need anyone else here.”
She glanced over at Matthew, waiting for more from him. He continued to smoke and stare out at the street. She knew he could feel her stare, but still he would not return it.
“Do you know anything about him? This new guy?”
“No,” he finally glanced back at her for a brief moment. “Jeff had just mentioned that Mr. Blume from the head office was sending this guy here. I just assumed it was someone in his family, or a friend or something.”
Matthew once again faced the shimmering cars out on the street. He took a final, enormous drag off the cigarette and put it out on the soul of his shoe. He looked at her again, lowered lids and shy.
“See ya inside Sheryl.”
He put the cigarette butt in the trashcan near the door and entered. Alexis distantly heard the chime inside as he passed the sensor in the store. She wanted to crack him so bad, find out what it was that had him in such a neurotic twist. She took a large drag of her own cigarette and threw it flaming into the street.
“Look out Matthew,” she murmured with a devious smile. “I’m onto you.”
She walked back into the store and plunged past Jeff at the register with a brief flick of her hand, heading directly back to the section of books she was shelving.
“Romance,” she whispered. “Fucking A.”
Alexis was waiting on a phone call, on contact from a superior. She needed to find out where to go. She was hiding in this strange little bookstore with a new, strange little name, and beginning to grow impatient at the wait. It had been over a week, and she assumed she would have heard something; a ‘move quickly and without notice to somewhere and wait for contact’, or a ‘stay put for the time being’. But there was nothing.
“What’s going on Sheryl?”
Alexis spun and saw Robin regarding the romance section with the same surliness she dished out for everything else in the world.
“Hey Robin, how’s it going?”
“Hear you get to train the new guy,” she said with a derisive grin. She was carrying a handful of true crime towards some other destination.
“Yeah. How come I get the pleasure and not you guys? You and Matthew have been here longer me.”
“I have, yeah, but…”
“Hello Sheryl,” an unwholesome and veneered voice called out. Alexis shivered with distaste at the picture of Jeff that her mind produced.
“Hello Jeffrey,” she said while turning. He stood before her, a short and pale companion to his right.
“This is Louis, our newbie. I know you’ve been looking forward to training him.”
Alexis’ smile was, truth be told, closer to a grimace, the sort of face one makes when you smell something rotting. She attempted to shift it into something friendlier when she faced Louis, but something about the shadow over his eyes, the reptilian features to his glance, froze her mouth moving from grimace to question.