The Informer by Craig Nova

held together with metal Xs, all the way up to the tracks overhead.
    He looked around.
    “We shouldn’t be seen together,” he said. “You from your side, me from mine.”
    They went into a restaurant that had a long bar at the back, parallel to the windows at the front. This made the place bright, and the surface of the tables, which was a black marble, gleamed under a cloud of cigarette smoke. Some tables were arranged on the sidewalk, but Gaelle and the man went by them, inside to a table as far away from the door as possible. The man went to the bar, where people got out of his way. He brought back two glasses, which he put down just like that. Bang.
    “What’s your name?” she said.
    “Aksel,” he said. “And yours?”
    “Gaelle,” she said.
    “Gaelle. And, Gaelle, where do you live?”
    “On Fliegstrasse,” she said.
    “There’s a park there,” he said. “I know the place.”
    “It’s a small park. Kids and their mothers.”
    She wanted to say something to insult him, to make this end. Why couldn’t she be more in control of things like that? She had another drink.
    “So,” he said. “What are you doing with those guys?”
    “I have my reasons,” she said. “What about you?”
    “In the middle of the street fights everything is clear. That’s what I like.”
    “And are you going to be doing some fighting someplace soon?”
    “You think I am that stupid,” he said. “You come here with me, and then I tell you things? And you tell your pals?”
    “I thought you wanted to talk,” she said. “That’s all.”
    “And what about you? Don’t you want to talk to me? Isn’t there something eating at you?”
    “No,” she said. “I have nothing to say to you.”
    “You’re sure? You look worried,” he said.
    The bar was filled with cigarette smoke, and down at the end someone laughed. It all seemed so ordinary, really, just a bunch of men having some beer while outside two uniformed policeman went by.
    “I tried to give you a nice time. And what do you give me? Contempt,” he said. He looked right at her.
    She leaned close to him and came into the slight odor of his hair and skin, and she knew that her perfume made him lean toward her. The perfume was muted and made a special scent, different on her skin than it was in the bottle. She leaned closer, and then said, “Thanks for the beer.”
    “That’s all you have to say?” he said.
    “No,” she said. She looked right at him. “You’re such an idiot.”
    “Yes,” he said. “I know what you think about us on our side.” He put out his hand. “Well, I won’t forget you.”
    She almost took it, but then stopped and turned into the smoke in the bar, which was as thick as a layer of fog near the ceiling. She tried for a businesslike gait, square shouldered, passing the men at the small round tables who read newspapers, smoked, and tried to discover something in the thin lines of print. She turned and looked back when she was outside.
    Aksel was still looking at her, smiling, and when she was about to turn away for good, he blew her a kiss. It was so sudden a gesture that she almostfelt it, like the touch of an insect against her cheek. And while she had been infuriated, she kept thinking about it. Then she went back up to the station to go one stop to the Zoologischer Garten station and as she waited for the train, she thought, Fuck them all.
    After the delicious, momentary relief from thinking this way, her sense of fear came back almost as though it were a gas that seeped up from the ground and hung around her. Like something escaped from a sewer.
    She thought of the slick texture of her mother’s dress, of the comfort of being there in her mother’s lap, and the attractions of going home were so enormous that she momentarily forgot her isolation. But she had already tried that, and so she stood on the platform and stared into the distance. At least she took some comfort that the desire to be loved was now carefully