You Chews #15

"Tonight will be a good night" that is what Alexander says to himself every night as he straightens his cap in the mirror. He is an older man, in his forties; time has done him well with only a small spot of gray behind his right ear to give his age away. For twenty years he has had the same routine he wakes up around dusk, fills his French press, and puts the same Bing Crosby record on the Wurlitzer. He has lived alone in the same small flat since he was twenty years old. He has never been married nor does he have any children, the last of his immediate family died years ago. The closest he ever came to have a meaningful relationship was when he asked out Mary Owens to his senior prom. With all this said he is a well-adjusted man with not an ounce of worry to speak of.He steps out the door every night at promptly at 7:15; the light from the gas street lamps paints the sidewalk with in an orange glow. The night air has crispness, the first of the season, with the moon behind him and the streets before him he sets off. All he wants to do is retire, find a nice little house next to a lake and fish, somewhere up state. Three years that’s all he has left, that what he tells himself.
For the longest time he has cursed his chosen profession, he dreams of the old days when he had no cares in the world, when he felt safe. Most people take for granted that safe feeling, like a pig in a pen not like a chicken in a snake coop. Some people think that “sleeping with one eye open” is just a phrase but no Alex does not fall asleep with his eyes closed he fall asleep with his eyes open. His house is like a fortress with all kinds of booby traps and noisemakers but all of this was still not enough to let him get a good night sleep. When he awakens in the morning it is not with a yawn and a stretch but with a jerk. He pops up out of bed like a jack in the box with his Wather in his hand even before his eyes open, this continues all day while he is home moving his Wather from one room to another, from the bathroom sink, to the stove, to the closet. Most people get burnt out before they put in half the time in the agency that he has. He just hopes that time has not caught up with him, that somehow he will out run this one last stint. He never really liked France it was nice at times but it was never home. His work tonight takes him in the middle of town and gives him time to stop off and have a cup of coffee. There me meets a man he has known his entire career. They sat and chat about the old days before the wall fell and how they are getting along. After a long while Alex and the man part ways but is not the only chance encounter of the night. Later he runs into an entrapanure a man that is a millionaire and has ties to everyone. The next person he passes cross with is an old friend for the agency. Later on he meets a neighbor and talks with him for a while nothing seems out of the ordinary.But some time during his rounds someone slips him polonium-210, a rare radioactive isotope, and fatally poisons him. His name was Alexander Litvinenko he was exKGB officer, Britain gave him asylum because he was outspoken about the Kremlin and the new state of Russia. It is yet to be determined who was behind this but I seem to feel that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin, since snitches get stitches and all.Some places, names, and/or events are wrong, some are right you choose.