one door closes . . . again and again and again

Karl and I sat by the door. It was wintertime. Berlin. Several times in the past we had met at this same smoke-hazed Unter den Linden coffee shop to conduct business, interlaced with personal revelations, asides, and disclosures. What sort of business. Marketing concepts, content, mailers, brochures, slim jims, as Karl called them. But this time it was just us, discoursing discursively. No agenda. None I was aware of. True, there's always some sort of agenda, even if it is no more than get coffee, talk, drink, restroom, leave. Coffee and convo. BAM. The door slammed, sending tremors through the entranceway and derailing our verbal freight trains, barely on track in any event. How are the kids. One is in Fiji, righ-- SLAM. The door again. Maybe we should move over here. Too cramped. The back of my chair would butt against the table where Madame Defarge was knitting beside the guillotine. We needed space for some semblance of the cone of silence in case we were to drift into food porn, sedition, erudition, nihilism, co-dependency, or state secrets. Too cold to prop the door open. Don't they know this really bother-- BAM customers, at least these two customers. I mean this is bad marketing, don't you think. Curiously, some patrons would exit, we would brace ourselves and wince, and yet no crashing thud. Like some elaborate torture, we did not know when and if. How about one of those tables in back. Occupado. Do you have a sledgehammer on you. To the barista: Is there anything you can SLAM do about that door. We're aware. I know, but... Try to ignore it, just live with it. And what are your kids up to. How many grandchildren do you have. Say, do you have a question mark I can borrow. How old are-- BLAM. My brother Hans used to live what seemed like a yard from the S-Bahn train tracks on Warschauer Strasse (I wish I could make that elegant double S). The whole apartment would shimmy and rattle. It was just there. The tracks. The train ruthlessly on schedule. A trope. Background. Black noise. SLAM I thought we could do the drop here, the brush-off. Veteran spies shouldn't have to shout their secrets or write notes to each other back and forth. BAM Hand it off to me as you get cream for your coffee and as I'm returning with a croissant. Hide it in the croissant, you say. SLAM The jolt interrupts the pass-off, and I drop it on the floor, the napkin, the diagram, the schematic, the codes, stick figures, my venial sins. Out of nowhere, Mrs. (Madame to you) Defarge drops her needles and picks up une serviette d'espionage en papier. BLAM Now I get it. They knew. They knew all along. She knew, surely. The door closer, or door check, if you prefer, was removed on purpose. No one told us. No one told me. I can't answer for Karl. SLAM And Madame Defarge is out the door, the one unchecked. She's gone. Unchecked. No one stopped her. Karl, why did you ask me here. Tell me that. BLAM. Can you. SLAM.