The Girl in Suite 777• Five Hargreeves

Oo2| when they won.

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DINNER ROLLS AROUND Chet beckons you to the bar, before huffing his way back to the front desk counter. You stand infront of the wine parlor, every bottle imaginable is slotted on the wooden shelves behind you. Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, in its fine glory rests on the highest shelf— where you couldn't reach it, coincidence? I think not—an Oakville great, Screaming Eagle—Sauvignon Blanc. To Cote Des Roses Rosé 2019 and it's olive oil look-alike Bogle Chardonnay 2018 littered all across collection. You weren't much of an alcoholic, although your affinity of expensive things did lead you to an afternoon spent taste testing all the hotel's most expensive drinks.

Your previous cleaning attire is replaced by the formal black tie, white dress shirt and black slacks with a H.O imprinted apron. The night of polishing glasses and making as many cocktails as you possibly can before someone else relives you of your duties starts off quite eventful.

Coming in, battered, bruised and in desperate need of a drink is non-other than one of the new tenants. One of the Hargreeves—The one with the daughter, you recall, her name... Allison. Allison looked around lost, as she walks briskly towards the bar. Her movements haphazard as if she can't quite understand where she was. "Shot— something strong," she manages to say once dropped uneventfully on the swiveling bar stool.

You take a minute to assess her, people at the bar are always so easy to read. She's heartbroken, whatever about— you assume it may have been with her not-husband but father of her child. Or maybe the child in question. Anguish coats her expression, her eyes remain sullen and red rimmed, she keeps chewing on her chapped lips, taking a hand through her hair, a shame, she's rather a beautiful woman.

Expertly, you place three shot glasses in-front of her, small amounts of clear liquid made up half of each half of a glass. She looked at it, then at you, you simply smiled. "It's like getting punched in the solar plexus," you said, she obviously remained lost on your words. But nonetheless, her head tipped back, and all three shot glasses were downed in an instant.

Ah, Heartbreak it was.

By her sixth shot she was done, draped on the counter with tears streaming down her face. "My whole life," she slurred, voice above a whisper, "... has been absolute shit."

"Tell me about it," you scoffed, rubbing a white towel in a wet glass.

Sluggishly, with more coordination than she had when she walked in, she sat up. Leaning her head against her arms. "My... my stupid family, came to get me in 1963. To save the fucking world, and—and I knew, I fucking knew! Something would go wrong. But I still came, and here we are, our horrible father, replaced us. And— and my daughter— my Claire, isn't ...Claire anymore. She's..." her red eyes turned down, looking at the counter where a reflection of herself stared back at her. "Not... mine."

Soon, her sulking turned into a series of unintelligible gibberish, as she stared at her own hands in shock. As if she didn't know she had hands. You wondered how she was going to get to her room, she wasn't going too far with that Spirytus pulsing in her veins.

"Allison!?" Alas, came her savior, short and as lacking in presence as ever. Rushed her younger sister. "What are you doing back, I thought you went to see Claire?" She asked, coming from somewhere outside of the hotel.

"Claire isn't even real!" Sobbed Allison, as she turned to glare at her sister.

"What do you mean she isn't real?" Poor Vanya was so concerned. "She has to be real, she's your daughter."