The only thing left in the place was the gentle hum of fridges with slightly dodgy wiring and the occasional flap of paper turning over. Why paper? Well, that was rather the fault of the woman in the corner, far away, where she felt she belonged. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.
The Notary was very thorough with her work. Everything was laid out to fit the entirety of the table as if with a set of dividers and a slide rule, which (handily for a narrator) was exactly what had happened. The table itself had been covered with a tarpaulin that smelled faintly of soap, so that no spills could occur. There was a potted bonsai tree that occasionally emitted blasts of acrid grey smoke in the corner, and a picture of two women in an extremely expensive frame that was rather at odds with the cheap, faded, beaten-up photo inside it.
The Notary reached a conclusion, her fountain pen delicately tracing patterns of geometric circles that contained her reasoning. If other people didn't speak High Gallifreyan, that was their problem, as far as she was concerned. She reached for the tumbler of amasec by the side of her desk and frowned upon realising it was a tumbler of air and slightly smudged dark lipstick. With a sigh, she rose gracefully to her feet and glided across the floor to the bar. It took her a few minutes to get another glass, mostly because the Notary was only able to pay by sorting out and refiling the establishment's library of order forms, but she was soon sated. The entire thing had taken place in complete silence. And so she worked, far away, out of sight, out of mind.
The barman only remembered she could speak after a few hours more work, so quiet he had to strain to hear it, as if she didn't even realise she was doing.
"I let you down," she said, punctuated with the occasional hitched breath. "I... I let everybody down, in the end."
Wonderful, thought the barman, another bloody maudlin drunk. Sensational. He prepared himself to use Mop #7 - for some reason it worked really well on tears.
"They hate me and they're right to," the Notary continued. "You probably do as well." She fished in her satchel for another file and tapped out something on an old-fashioned desktop calculator. "You're right to." The calculator beeped, and she swapped her fountain pen for one in red ink. "You're right to," she repeated, almost under her breath.
File. Drink. File. Drink. Cross-reference. File. Drink. Glide over to the bar like she's on castors and do a little more filing for the bar. Rinse and repeat. Stay in the background, like the aftermath of the Big Bang. Interference. Noise. Useless.
The barman had tried to engage her in conversation precisely once, and had received a look so venomous it had practically burned a hole in the wall behind his head. That was a lesson well learned.
It took several more iterations of the cycle before the Notary reached into her bag and found no more files, no more forms. The bar was still empty. She had run out of things to do. She folded the tarpaulin neatly into a perfect square (again with the aid of her slide rule), put the bonsai tree back in her bag, and went over to sit at the bar.
This was when the serious drinking started, as indicated by her just tapping the bar's order book as the barman put it on the square of blue tarp. Elaborate circles filled the book as it was reorganized to within an inch of its life, and as long as you could speak High Gallifreyan it really was more efficient. She drank, and drank, and kept going until she ran out of book. Then she turned to look blearily at the cheap old Polaroid in the beautiful white-gold frame.
She stared at it for some time, reaching out with a slightly tremulous finger to stroke one of the faces. Then she set the frame face down on the square, finished her drink, and took her stuff back over to the corner, whereupon she just seemed to shut down completely, like her off switch had been flipped.
In winter, it was staff policy to put a blanket on her. It was getting on for spring now, so the barman didn't risk it. Instead, he just sat behind the bar and waited for more normal people to come in.
