Anthony - Unlikely Opportunities
I remember when I first met him. I was sitting in the pub with a G&T, quiet night, relaxing in the corner and observing humanity, and suddenly he was sitting across from me. I hadn’t seen him come in, I hadn’t seen him pull up there chair, he was just absent from my life one moment, and there the next.
Older man, tired, graying hair and kind face. He spoke English like someone who learned in meticulously and lovingly from a book. Accent? Russian. He knew my name, and he spoke of chances and offers, and future, and said comrade with an easy welcomingness. At first I didn’t believe him, but the man didn’t seem to know how to be anything but perfectly serious.
“Who are you?”
He smiled, a smile that was parental. “You can call me Otto.”
Whether ironic or terribly appropriate, we all had fathers who represented all we most hated, the four of us. Mine, the church, Guy’s, the military, Kim’s and the colonies, and, of course, Donald’s in government. We rejected them all, some of us sooner, some of us later, the institutions along with the men. But we got Otto in exchange, to help us through stumbling blocks and see us to safety, and let us go when he thought we were ready. I like to think of him as my father instead.