Andromeda, by Joe Nobel, Part 19

You don't have to start from the beginning. Just hop in bed and join the fun.

 This post begins the Second Movement of the novel, Andromeda, Anna Released.

 1960, springtime (Three years later)

 Three women sat at an outside table at the Cafe Gerbeaud, the famous confectionary in the heart of Budapest. It was unseasonably warm for this early in the spring. The opportunity to be in the sun was welcome after the dreary winter. They sat waiting for their coffees and delicately prepared pastries to arrive. They watched people pass through Vorosmarty Square. Young people strolled arm in arm, they too, happy to cast off their cold weather clothes. A government functionary, balding pate with a combover, scurried to whatever official dealing he had. Some passers by had time to dally and sit at the outdoor tables of the cafe for espresso and torta.

 One man stood out in the square. He faced the cafe, planting his feet like a military man. He snapped a photograph of the building’s ornate façade and the outdoor tables in front of it. He centered his camera directly on the three women.

 “I do believe someone’s taking pictures of us,” Aida said.

 “Photographers give me a bad feeling,” Anna said, watching. Watching not only him, but for signs of her mysterious woman in black and her wizard-like companion. They hadn’t appeared since that day in June three years ago when her master first decided to let her out on her own. But in all this time she never let down her guard.

 “Why?” Aida asked.

 Anna turned to him just as the man snapped another shot.

 “They just do,” she said in an idle daydream-like voice. Yet she watched the man with the camera. Her sleepy eyes taking in more than she let on.

 Two young boys, perhaps nine or ten, ran around the photographer with arms apart as if they were pigeons of the square.

 “Hey mister, wanna’ take a picture of us?”

 The man lined the two up in front of the fountain in the middle of the square and snapped an impatient shot. Then he turned and walked quickly away towards Vaci Road. Anna was relieved nothing earth shattering happened.

 Two foreigners walked by, two businessmen. They spoke English as they passed. American English. No, neither of them was an unfocussed lookalike of her lover and mission handler. The only Americans now in Budapest were with the Embassy. Anna followed them with her eyes. Her body tensed. She almost sprang out of her chair.

 “Don't even dream of it,” Liudmila said, thinking Anna was contemplating escape. She never learned about the space/time anomaly Anna had experienced shortly after the last time someone snapped a photograph then spoke in English to her. Liudmila pointed with her chin to a man in a cheap suit leaning against the fountain in the middle of the square. “Uri trusts us,” Liudmila added. “But, he always sends someone to watch.”

 “Don’t worry, I’m not about to betray his trust. It took too long to earn it.” Anna said, snapping back to the present. “Still, don't you girls miss having outside lives, careers, husbands, babies?”

 Aida rolled her eyes and turned away from Anna. She pushed her chair away from the table and looked around. It seemed as if she couldn’t decide to get up or not.

 “Aida, what is it?” Anna asked.

 “Stupid question you have,” Aida mumbled.

 “I see I struck a raw nerve somehow, I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about that.”

 “No, that’s okay,” Aida said, her voice was up an octave. She straightened out her dress and pushing her chair back in. “If I wasn’t as here as Uri's slave, I’d be dead.”
 

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Look for more Erotica, Science Fiction, and Fantasy at @joe.nobel

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