Hansi met his eyes for several moments. Then he nodded.

“I thought you did, yes. Well, will you meet my friend? I have a new friend, yes.”

Hansi glanced over at him. Felix noticed that Hansi’s eyes were mostly directed toward his beret. He began to believe that Gebhart could well have predicted, and even planned, every move here.

Somehow he worked up a smile for Hansi.

“Come over here, Felix,” said Gebhart. “Felix likes kittens.

Don’t you, Felix?”

Felix reached out and got a gnaw from the kitten on his knuckles.

“Felix will do the wah wah for you, Hansi. Go with Felix.”

Felix tried a hard stare and his best ESP with Gebhart. There was no go there. What if this boy/man throws a fit with the siren?

“Go with Felix, Hansi. Felix is a good boy, just like you. But he doesn’t know anything about farming. Or the woods, either. Do you Felix?”

“No,” said Felix. “I know nothing.”

Gebi gave him a measured look before turning back to Hansi.

“See, Hansi? But I hear you know all about the farm. Show poor Felix. Felix lives in town. He’s kind of lost, you know.”

A look of concentration crossed Hansi’s face. Then he walked to the door, and put the kitten in a basket there. He looked at his father, to Gebhart, and then to Felix. With a sinking feeling, one made up of pity and annoyance, and now a clear desire for some sort of revenge on Gebhart, Felix saw that Hansi was keen now.

“Wah wah?” said Hansi.

“Atta boy,” said Gebhart.

Hansi held out his hand.

“He does that when he’s bothered,” said Himmelfarb.

Felix fixed Gebhart with a glare. Gebhart knew better than to look over. He had already begun to compliment Frau Himmelfarb on the strudel.

Hansi grasped Felix’s hand and tugged on it. Felix opened the door out onto the cement step under the wooden balcony where the window boxes had already swollen with blooms. He heard a cowbell, then others. He heard the talk about the strudel stop, the quiet, before he closed the door.