by Kris Vågen

1939.

Italy.

It didn't take him long to start drawing on the napkins. Blotted little cartoon figures, big schnoz and quizzical eyes. Wot, it said, no cigarettes?

The technical title of his position was 'His Majesty's Strategic Journalist', but Chaderick was taking liberties with it. Probably the storm troopers would take offense to his accent. Anyway, he'd run out of notepaper.

It was all a frustrating state of affairs because this was not what he wanted to be doing. He had, after all, had a father march off twenty-five years ago and never come back, and a mother that had never recovered from it, and in a broader sense a country that was still recoiling from the whole affair. There was a lot to be angry about, at least more actively than where the table boy was with his cigarettes, but none of it could be resolved under an office like 'His Majesty's Strategic Journalist.'

'If there are no cigarettes,' Chaderick declared to himself officiously, 'the boy could at least come by with another drink.'

Uriah Chaderick had a distinctly post-university look to him, something ill-shaven and rumpled without much sleep behind or in front of him. The tweed did it, to a large extent, although arguably the cameras worn around his neck didn't help. He also, for various reasons, had never gotten on well with his first name. His friends called him Chad, on the occasion he had friends, and even that assuming they lived long enough to get down to informalities. That was another nuisance these days.

The marching in the street next to the cafe persisted. It was getting downright tedious. You couldn't even follow it, the individual soldiers, the lines and ranks all blurring together so that they swam past more than actually walked, just sort streamed by in the corner of view. The thunder up the road said the panzers would be by shortly. When that happened Chaderick could say goodbye to any sort of peaceful lunch.

When the American sat down next to Chad under the canopy, he admired the procession and said, "Doesn't it make it even worse, the way no one says anything?"

Chaderick shrugged. "Sort of follows, really."

"How the hell are you," the American offered for salutations. "Jim Kilroy."

His Majesty's Strategic Journalist frowned at the crumpled napkins. The cartoon's ink had blotted so terribly it was completely unrecognizable.

"Kilroy," Chaderick murmured, thinking of the graffiti he had seen in the bathroom. "The same Kilroy?"

"Always the same Kilroy," the man said, his grin hanging cheshire-like in the corner of Chad's eye. "Care if I join you?"

Chad couldn't say he was inclined. He was on the verge of expressing as much, but he met Kilroy's gaze and figured he was the type to see through anything except the decent excuse that Chaderick didn't have.

"Free country," the journalist said with resignation. "Or, not really, but there you have it."

"So you're a journalist."

"Freelance. Yourself?"

"Freelance."

"Ah-ha," Chaderick deadpanned. "Well. I suppose we're equally indisposed. Do you drink? The boy's run off but we could call the maitre d' over to get us some wine."

"Maitre d'?"

"Well, who's keeping track?"

They stole the bottle, in the end. Left the cash on the inside counter and took the best from the rack, and a pair of glasses and some sandwiches. Kilroy had a room up above the hostel three streets away with a good view of the main street, the windows smashed out and tendrils of curtains floating with the dirty city breeze and stinking tank exhaust. Chaderick wasn't surprised to see Kilroy's graffiti by the bedpost.

Out of the sunlight Jim looked younger, around Chad's own age, if a fair sight brighter-eyed. And he wore blank dogtags under his clothes.

They stood at the window dressed down to shirts and slacks, holding their glasses of acquisitioned wine; Chad told Kilroy about the journalism farce and Kilroy admitted to the mortars he'd planted by the west bridge.

They waited for the thunder and watched the smoke plume up in a great cloud over the tops of far buildings. Kilroy laughed and Chaderick shook his head in complete lack of amusement.

But either way, an hour later they had an arrangement.
 
 

...Three hours later they were fleeing the city by rooftop, but that was another matter.

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finished at: 7:05, 23 January 2006.

No tanks were harmed in the making of this short story.