Informant38

Pauline had forgotten the envelope with her sister's address on it, and at first she was devastated, we both were, but she was brave in the shame and confusion of it, stoic beyond my assessment of her ability to be.
A complex series of numbers and names in a foreign language, now neither of us could remember enough of it to be credible when questioned. And the money, we'd laughed about it, how it had turned in the crucible of events from a bourgeois fetish into something as sacred as the breath of a lover.
And now that it was gone it had turned again.
How close the border had seemed that morning! Yet by noon it was a story we'd heard as children and put away, like a fairytale, as we took on the detailed narrative of our adult lives.
It was still possible we might find it, somehow, though we couldn't go back to the hotel of course, and finding the tram we'd taken through the grey dawn was out of the question.
We'd searched everywhere in the cafe, our few pockets, even the men's room. Usually I was the one who thought of things like writing a duplicate of the address, splitting the money into two separate packs, but I'd been too busy in the little time we'd had the night before, and this morning there'd been no time at all.
Once we'd accepted it, once she realized it was irretrievably gone, her eyes had shifted from mine, then made that quick glance back�was I paternal, disapproving, made strong by her weakness? Or worse, was my need for her strength increased, was it her task now to decide which locked door we'd try next?
Then I saw it come over her, a tremor of will, determined, insistent, the kind of courage that has no promise to light its way, cold purposeful defiance that would be hers no matter how the end came.
I reached across the table and touched the back of her hand with my fingers; she smiled, just enough, then called to the barman for another mat�.
It was November, there was still frost in the shadows of the trees, though the sun came through the long windows like summer.
We had four hours of daylight left, three after that until the curfew.