Cat’s out of the Bag

I ran into Alan at a press conference the following week. Around us, were a group of US Embassy employees, many of them much older than both of us, and he winked at me knowingly, and nodded his head saying, “Russian girls…there’s really nothing that they can’t do. They never cease to amaze me.” I didn’t know how to respond to the comment that came pretty much apropos of nothing and after which he quickly disappeared. Alan was the gossip hotline to Tashkent’s small community of expatriates, within which, regardless, there was no point in trying to keep a secret.  ¶ 8:10 AM