What you're about to hear is based on actual events.

Listen to their discretion is advised.

It is getting cold out again.

He says, wrapping his fingers on the table.

The woman, her name is Aida, watches them over the rim of her beer glass.

They are the stubby, hard fingers of a working man, despite the posh way he's dressed.

Every strike of a fingertip against the wooden table is muffled by the almost leathery pad

of callus.

She raises the beer and takes a sip.

Soon enough it'll be snowing.

Perhaps she replies, looking toward the exit.

The place seemed popular enough when they arrived, but now the crowds are dwindling.

It's very warm here in Dusseldorf though.

He gives her a sudden harsh look.

Not the first of the evening.

He is handsome of severe looking, but his eyes are the dullish, violent blue of a terminally

bored man.

He seems almost not there.

At least Aida says, hoping to quell whatever bad feelings she might have evoked.

That's what I've heard.

Despite his oddness, the man had been nice to her.

He'd lived hand to mouth since the surrender, working three hours from home by train in

...