He couldn’t help it. Whenever he was near the Red Room now, his nerves were on edge. Max was already observant, constantly on the lookout for trouble and quickly putting a stop to it before it started, but with Babette having taken up residence there, he was more nervous around there than he ever had been. Not that he would ever admit that. There was so much that he wouldn’t admit where the new diamond was concerned, but he put his head down and continued working through the knots in his stomach just as he always did.
Unlike every other day though, something made him stop as he worked on replacing a cracked board on the staircase leading up to the club’s highest point. Someone was yelling up there. Angrily. He paused and looked upwards, gripping the hammer in his hand more tightly in his anxiety and waiting, hoping, for it to stop. It infuriated him to no end that some of the patrons could get rather hostile when they didn’t get exactly what they wanted exactly when they wanted it. There was a fine line between when they could be placated and when someone needed to step in, so he was grateful that he didn’t have to walk it tonight when he heard a door slamming and was nearly knocked down by a man he vaguely recognized hopefully running for the exit.
With him out of the way, his thoughts turned once again to the woman who was left there. In the silence that followed the commotion that had died as quickly as it started, he felt a shock of fear that something had happened to her. Few things could have been worse. Without a second thought, he bolted up the stairs and down the hall and tried to knock as softly as he could. If she didn’t answer, he could get that door out of the way pretty quickly.
“Babette?” He knocked again. “Are you- Babette, are you alright?”
@sparklingdiamant