I came by the café where B?awat worked daily anyway, but he ignored me every day.

  I couldn't sleep.

  I checked the mail obsessively, that maybe by chance they hadn't already sent me the entire order to appear at the EXTRA term. I knew that I had very little time.

  And the business with B?awat dragged on horribly.

  Finally, he came through.

  -Tomorrow, at the fish probery, at three thirty, you take one of the two-person tables under the wall across from the bar, he explained to me inconspicuously on the third day.

  -You'll read this magazine, he said, handing me some awful Russian shit. Someone will come up to you and say "nice autumn weather today." You will respond while reading the magazine, "for some nice, for others even nicer." That's your contact. Can you handle that?

  The next day, I checked the mail again, but nothing had come from the army.

  At well before three thirty I was already sitting at a two-person table across from the bar at the fish probery.

  I ordered carpe in the Jewish way and a glass of white wine.

  Punctually at three thirty, with visible objection and disgust, I picked up the Russian magazine.

  The worst was the fear that I'd be seen by someone delighting in some Russian press. I cursed the ugly number B?awat had pulled on me. At this moment I wholeheartedly hated him.

  Leo interrupted.

  -Nice autumn weather today, he said.

  -Sure is Leo, I responded. Sorry, I continued, I'm actually, uh, waiting for a hot date.

  In my life, it would never cross my mind that this someone I was waiting for would be Leo.

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  -For some nice, for others even nicer? I finally asked him.

  -I see you have finally began to read normal magazines, Leo said to me. Tell me now, how is Comradtte Nadiezdza Krupska?

  The boots he wore, the kind security forces did, had always made me suspicious of him, so I was delighted to see he was clean as a whistle.

  I had actually known Leo for a few years. He handled in clothing.

  He once had a stall in a giant marketplace in town where you could buy anything:

  Rembrandt.

  Every kind of arms and ammunition.

  French impressionists.

  Real and counterfeited Stradivariuses.

  Well-built women.

  Coleman Hawkins records.

  Motorcycles of every brand name.

  Dogs of all races.

  American dollars.

  Gold Patek Phillippe watches.

  Otto Dix.

  Morphine.

  Gold.

  And tipped American prophylactics, the American reliability being important with the spread of French diseases like syphilis throughout the country.

  Every seller and every buyer, with tears in their eyes, reminisced of the not yet so distant times when en masse the rest of the Germans here were deported.

  They were allowed only a bag in their hand, and in practice only what they could manage to pack on the spot.

  The once rich German residents' possessions were disposed of at this market often at a rate equivalent to one percent of the actual value, and rightfully so.

  This situation was the Germans'. It was their fault we had what we had. Let them give thanks for all this to their beloved Hitler.

  Eventually, Leo moved his business to an apartment located in the center of town.

  He held court every day from five to seven at a table in a small coffee shop not far from B?awat's. Visits to his apartment were strictly BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. No exceptions were made.

  He lived alone and even asked me a few times to come by to visit.

  He would go back and foth in the apartment, because some clients were coming and he wasn't so sure about them.

  He offered amazing wares, so you always left all your money with him, sometimes coming back the next day with the rest of the owed sum.

  Banks then, as they were, were a clean fiction. Cash was king.

  But Leo's main punch line was ties.

  They were always gigantic with some colorful scene.

  Some were a complete provocation.

  Topless Polynesian girls on the beach, cowboys and their horses, paradise sunsets, jazzmen. One tie had an American dollar on it.

  Punishment for the possession of or trade in dollars, for example, ran up to the penalty of death.

  It was not just that Leo's ties were American. Leo's ties were, in fact, America.

  Leo got settled at the table with me and ordered two vodkas.

  Me, I always had a negative stance toward vodka.

  Every finished glass was another brick in the task of building communism.

  Sometimes I fell into conflict with different colleagues who themselves imbibed liberally.

  They couldn't understand how you could be like me and not drink profusely.

  The only breach of this was fulfilled with the phenomenal Zula.