Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Dana Grigorcea

but with your permission, we should leave now, before the storm breaks. Your colleagues are leaving too.” Our chief security officer calls almost all his coworkers “Director’ or “Madame Director.’ This doesn’t annoy those who actually are directors and who—according to our Director of Teambuilding andAdherence to European Standards—should only be differentiated from all other employees by the fact that they’re allowed to eat fish with their hands on company outings. We just call our chief security officer “Chief.” After all, we’re striving for a level playing field. Was I the one who gave the security people permission to go? The police files leave that open. I stand outside, before the large sliding door, my back to the coworkers heading out for the evening. I breathe the smoke in deep and blow it out again, watch the blue cloud float a few feet off the ground and, through it, see the Museum of National History across the street. One step back would set off the smoke alarm. Twigs and leaves flying by appear to divide the distance to the shopping arcade below into smaller and smaller segments. Flavian is waiting for me there. Last week he was appointed head of the Romanian Institute for City Planning—quite a coup. “Since no one else wanted the position,” he’d told me on the phone. Be that as it may,

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