Re: Quicklog: Jack & Newt at the B&B
[Jack had shucked tradition as soon as he'd discovered it could feel binding, like a coat long outgrown that had gotten tight in the shoulders until stripping was a painful experience but you could never imagine climbing back in. He felt that way about Britain, much of the time. As if it were a too small, depressing little island that could be examined from a distance but never summoned back. He'd taken on Americana like thumb prints on clay, which he didn't suppose Newt would ever do the same. The laughter eased the thick silt in his throat and he smiled more freely, which was to say at all when he was finished.]
I run the newspaper. [And he knew how that sounded and Jack compounded the worst by elaborating.] It's small and it doesn't sell and it runs recipes. And up until now, it's been running on printers from 1998.
[Newt's pause was overlong. It was a gap that shouldn't have been there and he hadn't been around his brother in half a decade to know whether that was normal or it wasn't. But the careful picking out of words felt like walking over ice, even if Newt smiled like it slathered on comfort. He was good at that, Jack realized.]