Gin

I always hold in having it if you fancy it
If you fancy it, that's understood
And suppose it makes you fat - I don't worry over that
'Cos a little of what you fancy does you good!*

“Good morning, ma’am.” The bank clerk gives me a polite smile through the bars.

“Good morning.” I reply, smiling back and sliding one of Cutter’s notes across the counter. “I’d like to cash this, please.”

“Of course.” The man takes the note and holds it up with a frown. “Just a moment, please.” He  steps back from the counter to put his head together with an older man. I am starting to get nervous, wondering what the problem is with the note. Part of me is curious though since if it was reported stolen he ought to be checking a list.

On my way back from the ladies’ I stop and look over the crowd below. The music’s stopped for bit and the dancers are congregating around the bars for a drink or two. I watch for a bit, then look up to study the tiers. There’s Mister Worth with Miss Sophia on his arm, and it looks like he's watching something. I follow his gaze and see he's watching Ned and Bill talk.

“What's he up to?” I wonder, because Fatty Ellison is a big man with connections to all sorts of people and robbing him would be like cutting your own throat, pretty literally.

A fine sea-fog has rolled over the city, covering the covering the streets in a gray-yellow blanket that is half fog, half coal smoke.  Above it all, the Castle squats on its rock like a toad; it looks rather like a ship at sea, I fancy.  From where I am perched, five stories up on the roof of an Old Town tenement house, the sounds of the street below are muffled and indistinct.  I watch as the fog rolls past, little clumps of it catching on the chimneys and spires below, tearing off for a moment before rejoining the main mass.