adolph's tub

"You want me out"? She shuddered. It was more of a man's tub, chilled and unwelcoming, even filled with sudsy hot water.
"No. Take your time. We've got all the time in the world". She could tell he said it through gritted teeth, hidden beyond the door.
She threw the washcloth against the tile. Squinting, she observed water seeping out, escaping between tile and the settled edge of the porcelain. She smiled and spoke firmly, secured by her own Walther P38 pistol under her folded pink bathrobe, smuggled easily past a puffy-eyed guard.
"There's a leak in your thousand-year bathtub, Adolph".
"That's not funny", he would end up saying, those famous last words. Sitting in lukewarm water, she would freeze, the sound of struggling from the other side of the bathroom door, shots fired, yelling and cursing, booted feet running away, ultimately retreating deeper into the dark winter forest. And then silence. Moments later an American Soldier peeked around the door as she was standing, toweling off. Her eyes widened.
"Ma'am?", she heard in an unusual drawl, perhaps a voice from somewhere in the deep south. "You about done?"


photo: Lee Miller in Adolf Hitler's bathtub, Munich 1945, by David E. Scherman