Sokolov raised one finger to the ride side of his nose and pressed, at the same time breathing in through his mouth and closing the back of his throat. He exhaled violently, and a rocket of mucus ejaculated from his left nostril, in an almost semen-like fashion. A hint of satisfaction registered as the rocket impacted the concrete, landing on the crack between slabs in the sidewalk.

“Fuck this weather”, he thought silently to himself. He seemed to be perpetually congested to a point of discomfort and it was always his left fucking nostril. An internal chuckle rippled through him as the thought recalled the feeling of his knuckles breaking the nose of that little Austrian fuck with the deviated septum in grade school. God that filth deserved it. He, on the other hand, of course had no such gross deformities. No; his congestion was due largely to the shitty pollution in Munich, exacerbated by the humid summer weather, and the impairment of the cilia in his sinuses by a constant supply of cigarette smoke. The thought of nicotine tripped a synaptic switch somewhere in the Russian’s brain and without realizing, he silently fished out his pack of Sobranie Classics and a cheap American made Bic lighter. With a robotic efficiency, he slid a cigarette out of the pack, lit it, and drew the smoke into his lungs while returning the pack and lighter to his jacket pocket. As he finally exhaled, his shoulders sagged with relief as the nicotine took effect.

As he continued to gaze across the street with a practiced look of severe detachment, he felt a rivulet of sweat drip down from his armpit and slide down his ribcage. Trench coats were just so fucking uncomfortable in Munich in the summer. He detested the ridiculous belief that trench coats were necessary to conceal weaponry; the right posture and placement combined with the near-bovine complacency of the general public rendered any such garments utterly unnecessary. However they were necessary to conceal the fact that he was loitering on a somewhat disreputable street corner in a $7,000 tuxedo. He could forgo the use of flashy cars for the night but the attire was more or less indispensable if he was expecting to actually be admitted to the reception, invitation or not. Fortunately, trench coats were not that uncommon of a sight on this particular street corner, even if they were mainly worn for the aforementioned, more sinister purpose (albeit a superfluous one).

His reflection on trench coats was interrupted as the door to the Jewish bakery opened and the portly proprietor stepped outside, locked both deadbolts, and proceeded north, taking his time as he navigated the light counter-flowing pedestrian traffic, just as he did every weekday at six. As soon as the old Kike had withdrawn his key from the lock, Sokolov had clicked the stopwatch that had appeared in his left hand. As soon as exactly 270 seconds had elapsed, he crossed the street and sat down on a metal bench per his received instructions, slipping the stopwatch back into his pocket. He observed drily that the bench had needed repainting several decades ago, and now hardly bore any semblance of artificial color at all. He sat there for another forty minutes, smoking three more cigarettes, content to watch and be watched, the whole time marveling at the ridiculous cloak-and-dagger bullshit he was participating in. Finally a man with turtle-shell glasses clutching a newspaper exited a decrepit building directly in Sokolov’s view, crossed the street, and sat down next to him. Turtle-shell proceeded to flip through the pages of his newspaper for several minutes, trying desperately to affect a disinterested boredom, and nearly succeeding. He suppressed a smirk, once again content to let the little German play out his petty spy games. Nobody on that block would have given a flying fuck if he did a bump of cocaine straight off of a mailbox, and they sure as shit wouldn’t have cared if Turtle-shell had walked up and handed him the forged invitation on a goddamn silver platter. The minutes dragged on, but finally the 6:50 bus arrived exactly on time. The benches were rusty and the weather was shitty, but the Russian had to hand it to them: the Germans could run a fucking bus system. Turtle-shell tossed the newspaper on the bench between Sokolov and himself in what almost looked like a nonchalant way, then got up and walked stiffly onto the idling bus. As the bus accelerated down the avenue, the Russian snorted in derision, picked up the newspaper and walked the opposite direction, pulling the invitation out of the Classifieds section and discarding the newspaper into a gutter.

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That was a spontaneous narrative I typed up at 3am last night in bed. For some reason I couldn’t get that image out of my mind, so I had to put it somewhere.