beware of strange women in foreign bars
I don't know where to start, there's so much and I'm so tired. But I must write this now for fear I'll forget; I'm sure when I finally sleep the memories will fade like a bad dream or some half-remembered movie starring some half-forgotten actor trying desperately to break out of soaps...
It all started two days ago - I can't be sure, the hours blur when i try to access them individually, but I'll try to piece together the whole story. I was sitting in a tavern in a small town in Germany whose name, interestingly enough, translates to "Pigs Crossing". Relying on what little German vocabulary I have, I was managing to entertain myself by discussing the relative quality of beer with the zaftig barmaid ("bitte beer? ya?") and where I might get a bite to eat ("der pretzelhaus velkommen?") and engaging in a little shop talk on the history of object oriented programming with a fellow named Vlad who sat down next to me at the bar. Vlad spoke only Russian and Mandarin Chinese but we managed to have a very interesting conversation about the problems with using CDC cards to design distributed architectures in smalltalk.
Suddenly I felt a shadow cast over me, a heavy hand on my shoulder and a voice like a hardened velvet in my left ear.
"You are... american?"
I turned to see a woman - a giantess, more like - towering over me. At least 6 feet tall, a mane of black hair cascaded to her waist from a severe knot at the top of her head. She was dressed in a tight-fitting black leather jumpsuit and had an evening bag slung over her shoulder, but the first thing I noticed (because it was eye-level) was a torn fingernail tinged with blood stuck in the zipper between her breasts. I was briefly suprised at how, as I stared directly into her cleavage, I had nothing but cold fear in my vein as I instinctively closed my hands to protect my own precious cuticles.
"Boy. Speak. You are american? or ... Canadian perhaps..." she spat down at me.
Trying desperately to make eye contact, or at least stop staring at her chest, I looked towards my new friend, but Vlad had gathered his collection of AAAI Magazine back issues and vanished, leaving his drink barely touched on the bar. Her grip tightened on my shoulder and I realized no one in the bar would be stepping up to rescue this poor traveller tonight.
"I am from the US, yes..." I stammered... "have we... um... met? already? ... perhaps?"
The woman smirked and with a snort, muttered "I do not meet with your sort when I can avoid it, boy..." and sat down in Vlad's seat. The barmaid was vehemently absent. "I am Inga" she growled at me "and I expect you know I've been following you since Belgium." Inga lifted Vlad's orphaned drink and sniffed it disapprovingly. Toying with the straw, she looked me up and down and sighed. "You will drink up now, yes." she demanded, pulling the swizzle stick out of the pinapple wedge and downed the contents of the plastic tiki cup in one gulp. "Now." she repeated.
Never one to disappoint a lady, I dutifully finished my beer. Perhaps not the best idea, I soon realized; "Good, good... finally he is shutting up." I heard her mutter as the room around me went dark. Two further sounds in slow succession: my head hitting the bar, then Inga's voice growling "I pay now. You will take diner's club?"
I awoke with a headache, a hangover, freezing cold and thirsty. I had become used to waking up hung over in strange beds over the past few weeks, but this was altogether a new and unpleasant experience. Gathering my wits, I took stock of my immediate situation: I didn't seem to be injured, I was still clothed, and a quick tactile check reassured me that my fingernails were indeed intact. Things, I told myself firmly, could certainly be worse.
I sat up slowly, quietly, looking around the room. Inga sat backwards straddling a straight-backed wooden chair, her left foot tapping in what I could only assume, based on our dealings thus far, was annoyance.
"You are awake. Finally." She sneered at me. "Lightweight." I flinched - I hadn't been called a lightweight since 4th grade when my mom made my older sister take me to the rave with her because she couldn't find a sitter. But now was not the time to go macho, I decided, and I let it pass.
"Where am I" I asked in what I hoped was a polite but firm voice, "and what do you want from me?"
"I think you know." she replied. "Don't be... " she looked up, as if searching for the right word. "Toy. Do not be Toy with me."
"I think you mean 'coy'." I pointed out.
She turned towards me, firey hate in her eyes. "NEVER correct me, coy boy toy! I know who you are and I want the prototype. It's not on your body or even IN your body, I have looked most thoroughly." I shifted uncomfortably and longed suddenly for a shower. Rising and moving towards me, she demanded "Where have you hidden it? You will tell me now. Or you will be... quite sorry..."
"I don't know what you mean, really! I swear!" My calm act had been shattered as I suddenly realized I had to pee. "What are you looking for? I swear, if I knew I would tell you!"
Inga leaned over me. "Your contact in Brussels. You are not so stealthy, you know! I see you, I see the whole transaction. Now where is the prototype?" She pressed something to my neck, something cold, I didn't want to know what it was.
"I... don't know anyone in Brussels! I swear! I was only there for a few hours, I got some chocolate waffles and a pint of beer, I didn't even talk to anyone!"
As the words left my mouth, I remembered - that tattered urchin on the street outside the train station. She had asked for change for a 5 Euro note to buy her sick grandfather some pornography, and although I though it was strange that an urchin would have paper money, I obliged. I suppose I knew there was something odd about her. Perhaps it was the story, or the way her clothes looked so carefully soiled, or perhaps it was her accent - at times it seemed to slip into, well, something rather southern californian. But I was still a little drunk from the train ride (I'd met up with a group of Austrailian fraternity boys in the bar car and played a drinking game based on canasta and a modified version of truth-or-dare). I remembered examining the money as I walked away and marvelling at how colorful it was, thinking it must be brand new, hot off the Euro presses, to be so crisp and new...
"The girl?" I asked desperately.
"Ahhh, come to your senses finally!" she laughed. "A little persuasion so you can tell your bosses you were a brave american boy, eh?"
"But... I just made change... I gave her coins, she gave me a 5 euro note... I'd never met her before!"
"yes, yes, and where is the note?" she said impatiently...
"I... I..." I couldn't remember... where did I go? "Wait, I'm trying to think!" I begged. From the train station I wandered through a park and looked at some art, sat under a tree and sobered up a bit, and then found a waffle stand, bought a waffle and a pint... "The waffler!" I shouted. "I paid for my lunch with the bill! The waffle man has it!"
Inga sat back on her heels. "Well." she said, sharply. "Crap." Sighing, she looked down at me and scowled. I felt a sharp jab at my neck. The room started swimming all-too-familiarly and I tried to protest, but my european languages tangled in my mind. "no.. please.. donde... donde es la toilette... bitte ... por favore... kein mehr bier..."
I awoke in a sleeper car, tucked into a couchette with my luggage stowed carefully under my feet. My pajamas were clean, I was bathed and freshly shaven, and my shirt smelled slightly of jasmine. My wallet and passport were in my backpack where they belonged, and I noticed that my socks had even been folded just the way I like them. After a while, I determined that the train I was on was destined for Italy - the next stop on my journey - and in addition to my belongings I now also had two bottles of very expensive sangiovese, a small titanium corkscrew, a book of Bulgarian poetry (in Bulgarian, sadly, perhaps someday I will learn to read it), a postcard addressed to my mother but otherwise blank, the other side showing a picture of a man guiding a donkey pulling a cart full of what looked to be very large turnips down a dingy cobblestone road, and a 5 Euro note clipped to a slip of paper on which was written, tersely, in dark red ink, simply: 'Sorry.'
Perhaps I will never know.
It all started two days ago - I can't be sure, the hours blur when i try to access them individually, but I'll try to piece together the whole story. I was sitting in a tavern in a small town in Germany whose name, interestingly enough, translates to "Pigs Crossing". Relying on what little German vocabulary I have, I was managing to entertain myself by discussing the relative quality of beer with the zaftig barmaid ("bitte beer? ya?") and where I might get a bite to eat ("der pretzelhaus velkommen?") and engaging in a little shop talk on the history of object oriented programming with a fellow named Vlad who sat down next to me at the bar. Vlad spoke only Russian and Mandarin Chinese but we managed to have a very interesting conversation about the problems with using CDC cards to design distributed architectures in smalltalk.
Suddenly I felt a shadow cast over me, a heavy hand on my shoulder and a voice like a hardened velvet in my left ear.
"You are... american?"
I turned to see a woman - a giantess, more like - towering over me. At least 6 feet tall, a mane of black hair cascaded to her waist from a severe knot at the top of her head. She was dressed in a tight-fitting black leather jumpsuit and had an evening bag slung over her shoulder, but the first thing I noticed (because it was eye-level) was a torn fingernail tinged with blood stuck in the zipper between her breasts. I was briefly suprised at how, as I stared directly into her cleavage, I had nothing but cold fear in my vein as I instinctively closed my hands to protect my own precious cuticles.
"Boy. Speak. You are american? or ... Canadian perhaps..." she spat down at me.
Trying desperately to make eye contact, or at least stop staring at her chest, I looked towards my new friend, but Vlad had gathered his collection of AAAI Magazine back issues and vanished, leaving his drink barely touched on the bar. Her grip tightened on my shoulder and I realized no one in the bar would be stepping up to rescue this poor traveller tonight.
"I am from the US, yes..." I stammered... "have we... um... met? already? ... perhaps?"
The woman smirked and with a snort, muttered "I do not meet with your sort when I can avoid it, boy..." and sat down in Vlad's seat. The barmaid was vehemently absent. "I am Inga" she growled at me "and I expect you know I've been following you since Belgium." Inga lifted Vlad's orphaned drink and sniffed it disapprovingly. Toying with the straw, she looked me up and down and sighed. "You will drink up now, yes." she demanded, pulling the swizzle stick out of the pinapple wedge and downed the contents of the plastic tiki cup in one gulp. "Now." she repeated.
Never one to disappoint a lady, I dutifully finished my beer. Perhaps not the best idea, I soon realized; "Good, good... finally he is shutting up." I heard her mutter as the room around me went dark. Two further sounds in slow succession: my head hitting the bar, then Inga's voice growling "I pay now. You will take diner's club?"
I awoke with a headache, a hangover, freezing cold and thirsty. I had become used to waking up hung over in strange beds over the past few weeks, but this was altogether a new and unpleasant experience. Gathering my wits, I took stock of my immediate situation: I didn't seem to be injured, I was still clothed, and a quick tactile check reassured me that my fingernails were indeed intact. Things, I told myself firmly, could certainly be worse.
I sat up slowly, quietly, looking around the room. Inga sat backwards straddling a straight-backed wooden chair, her left foot tapping in what I could only assume, based on our dealings thus far, was annoyance.
"You are awake. Finally." She sneered at me. "Lightweight." I flinched - I hadn't been called a lightweight since 4th grade when my mom made my older sister take me to the rave with her because she couldn't find a sitter. But now was not the time to go macho, I decided, and I let it pass.
"Where am I" I asked in what I hoped was a polite but firm voice, "and what do you want from me?"
"I think you know." she replied. "Don't be... " she looked up, as if searching for the right word. "Toy. Do not be Toy with me."
"I think you mean 'coy'." I pointed out.
She turned towards me, firey hate in her eyes. "NEVER correct me, coy boy toy! I know who you are and I want the prototype. It's not on your body or even IN your body, I have looked most thoroughly." I shifted uncomfortably and longed suddenly for a shower. Rising and moving towards me, she demanded "Where have you hidden it? You will tell me now. Or you will be... quite sorry..."
"I don't know what you mean, really! I swear!" My calm act had been shattered as I suddenly realized I had to pee. "What are you looking for? I swear, if I knew I would tell you!"
Inga leaned over me. "Your contact in Brussels. You are not so stealthy, you know! I see you, I see the whole transaction. Now where is the prototype?" She pressed something to my neck, something cold, I didn't want to know what it was.
"I... don't know anyone in Brussels! I swear! I was only there for a few hours, I got some chocolate waffles and a pint of beer, I didn't even talk to anyone!"
As the words left my mouth, I remembered - that tattered urchin on the street outside the train station. She had asked for change for a 5 Euro note to buy her sick grandfather some pornography, and although I though it was strange that an urchin would have paper money, I obliged. I suppose I knew there was something odd about her. Perhaps it was the story, or the way her clothes looked so carefully soiled, or perhaps it was her accent - at times it seemed to slip into, well, something rather southern californian. But I was still a little drunk from the train ride (I'd met up with a group of Austrailian fraternity boys in the bar car and played a drinking game based on canasta and a modified version of truth-or-dare). I remembered examining the money as I walked away and marvelling at how colorful it was, thinking it must be brand new, hot off the Euro presses, to be so crisp and new...
"The girl?" I asked desperately.
"Ahhh, come to your senses finally!" she laughed. "A little persuasion so you can tell your bosses you were a brave american boy, eh?"
"But... I just made change... I gave her coins, she gave me a 5 euro note... I'd never met her before!"
"yes, yes, and where is the note?" she said impatiently...
"I... I..." I couldn't remember... where did I go? "Wait, I'm trying to think!" I begged. From the train station I wandered through a park and looked at some art, sat under a tree and sobered up a bit, and then found a waffle stand, bought a waffle and a pint... "The waffler!" I shouted. "I paid for my lunch with the bill! The waffle man has it!"
Inga sat back on her heels. "Well." she said, sharply. "Crap." Sighing, she looked down at me and scowled. I felt a sharp jab at my neck. The room started swimming all-too-familiarly and I tried to protest, but my european languages tangled in my mind. "no.. please.. donde... donde es la toilette... bitte ... por favore... kein mehr bier..."
I awoke in a sleeper car, tucked into a couchette with my luggage stowed carefully under my feet. My pajamas were clean, I was bathed and freshly shaven, and my shirt smelled slightly of jasmine. My wallet and passport were in my backpack where they belonged, and I noticed that my socks had even been folded just the way I like them. After a while, I determined that the train I was on was destined for Italy - the next stop on my journey - and in addition to my belongings I now also had two bottles of very expensive sangiovese, a small titanium corkscrew, a book of Bulgarian poetry (in Bulgarian, sadly, perhaps someday I will learn to read it), a postcard addressed to my mother but otherwise blank, the other side showing a picture of a man guiding a donkey pulling a cart full of what looked to be very large turnips down a dingy cobblestone road, and a 5 Euro note clipped to a slip of paper on which was written, tersely, in dark red ink, simply: 'Sorry.'
Perhaps I will never know.