Nightfall of Diamonds

It was good to meet a friend and sit in a warm and crowded place surrounded by strangers who seemed happy and relaxed, and it was good to talk and drink Saxonian beer and forget the outside world for a moment. My friend had come to town on business and he was staying in a tiny apartment for the night. There was no bath cream in the apartment and he had forgotten to bring any with him, so he went to a pharmacy around the corner of the crowded place where we met and asked for a bar of soap. The woman behind the counter looked at him with a wink. “For touristic experiments?”, she said. My friend was surprised and asked her why she thought he was a tourist. “I can see that”, she replied and sold him the bar of soap. When I asked him what she might have meant by “touristic experiments”, he looked at me and smiled. He took another sip and then put down the earthen mug. A big yellow star was shining down on us, and people were chattering and laughing and eating at the other tables. “I have no clue”, he said. “Absolutely not.” We stayed and drank and talked, and we left when everybody else had already gone.