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Imminent Demise

Clive Aaron Gill

    The loaded gun is heavy in my purse.
    A Nazi, his nose jutting, his gray hair curly, sits by himself during a storm at the table he occupies daily in the corner of a small, dimly lit café in Buenos Aires. The man wears a black, long-sleeve shirt and blue jeans that fit in with the clothing of other Argentinian men.
    Every day, he reads the business section of a newspaper. For nineteen minutes, the Nazi, convicted in absentia for mass murder, sips coffee with a trembling hand while the walls groan and the windows rattle in the sad café. He swallows the last of a biscotto. Does he remember the times he denied concentration camp prisoners their meager food allowance? Or how he ordered his subordinates to flog old women, then force them into chambers where poison gas was released?
    The storm subsides, and the Nazi stretches and folds his newspaper in preparation for going outside into the warm evening rain. I look down as his darting blue eyes study the ten people in the café. He rubs his small, black leather bag that he carries with him every day.
    Mateo, at the counter, nods at me, then looks up at the clock on the wall. He expects me to leave before the man gets up and to wait for him in the shadows of a side alley. But I take another sip of my espresso and ignore Mateo’s eyes.
    I’ll give the condemned man a few more days. I’ll enjoy watching him drink coffee and eat biscotto while ignorant of his imminent demise..

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