A bakery with no one in it.

“Hallo, Hallo, ist jemand hier?” The store smelled like freshly baked bread, but the only person inside was a girl behind the counter. She grabbed her apron tightly when she spotted Graeber. She didn’t smile back at Graeber when he took off his helmet and greeted her. She looked about 18, perhaps in her 20s.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” He asked. She shook her head.

“English?” He follows with.

“Small,” she says. “Small English.”

“You ought to learn German, you know?” He says, taking stock of the items. He became a little more lenient with the original Polish population after getting to know Katarzyna a bit better. He spent some of his furlough on her and had no regrets. “I don’t care if you can or can’t, but the SA would.”

Graeber walked over and stumbled over a tray of hot drink samples. A kind of cider, he thinks. “Is that a threat?” The girl behind the counter asks.

“Oh, no!” Graeber, his hands occupied with cider, spun on his heel. “I meant it as a friendly warning. I’m sorry if it came out as hostile.”

The girl now seemed interested in him. A small crept in the corners of her freckled face. She had big green eyes and long red hair. She looked more Irish or Scottish, not Polish at all. Graeber stared into her eyes, figuring a mixed gene pallet was in her bloodline. He tried to think what that would make her. Good or bad?

The genuine tone and sincerity of the German’s voice calmed her. This was the first German she had not felt intimidated by since September 1939. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Graeber,” the soldier says. She waits for more. “Uh, just Graeber.”

“Julia,” she says, and now Graeber is waiting. “Just Julia.”

Graeber smirks. “OK, Julia. Where can I buy these?”

Julia looks at the samples and frowns. “I don’t know which ones you grabbed."

“Oh…scheiße.“‘

“Sip from one of the cups and tell me which one you like the most, then I’ll try it, and I can show you which one it is.”

“OK,” Graeber looks into the translucent orange liquids. He thinks they look the same, but one of them and then the other—the same taste. Too embarrassed to say he got two of the same, he downs one cup and hands Julia, the other. “I like this kind more.”

Julia drinks from the cup and nods. “Oh,” she laughs a little bit. “My favorite too.”

“We don’t have any of this in the store displayed, but we have some tins in the back.”

“The, uh, back? Hinterzimmer?”

Julia looks back; a confused expression is painted over her face. “Yes. Is that a problem?”

Graeber turns back. Through the window, he sees the column and armor and rifles. “What if someone comes in?”

“We won’t be long.”

Graeber adjusts his webbing material and his rifle. He clips his helmet to his straps and follows her into the Backroom. It’s dark but smells of spices and sweets. Julia lets Graeber shadows her into another room that looks like a closet. There are the promised tins, but she doesn’t seem satisfied. Finally, the closet door closes on its own, and everything becomes still.

“Off to fight the Bolsheviks then?” Julia asks suddenly, fingering through the labels of the tins.

“Scum of the earth,” Graeber says with a handsome smile. Julia glances and smiles too, but it’s loose and missing emotion.

“Are you still a virgin?” Julia asks, more suddenly than the last question.

“Uh, no… I met… I visited the Moulin Rouge in France 2 years ago and met a French girl there.”

Julia's eyes drifted over the cans, puckering lips to one side and sighing. Her eyes finally stop on Graeber’s chest. She looks up and flutters her eyes.

The look Graeber spots in her eyes are confusing. He stammers. Julia gives a seductive smile. “Did you really sleep with a French girl?”

“Yes.”

Julia doesn’t believe him. “Do you think I’m pretty enough to sleep with?”

“No,” Graeber says, but then coughs. “I mean, yes. I mean— what is happening?”

Julia advances on Graeber, and he places a hand to stop her. She takes his hand and places it on her petite chest. Her heart is steady, the opposite of his. “If you’re going to fight the Russians, I should give you a reason to fight, don’t you think?”

“We invaded… we helped the Russians… the Russians helped us…” the words are burned before they can be fully developed into a sentence.

“The Russians killed my brothers three years ago,” Julia’s expression bitters somewhat when she says this. She looks at the gray uniform of the man she’s about to pounce on, obviously having a grunge with the Germans too, but has more negative feelings about the Red Army. “The least you Krauts could do for me is to kill some Soviet brothers too.”

She grabs his cock and applies generous pressure to make him hard. “Plus, You’re the first German to pass my doors not to steal something, so that must mean you have some good in you.”

“Good parents raised me,” Graeber says, feeling awkward… feeling her firm breasts. “What now?”

“Get undressed, or at least enough to pipe me back here,” Julia says, stroking his Wienerschnitzel passed his military trousers.