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8

R
ickie Markwalder cruised in his Mercedes. He had bought the Merc, as he called it, secondhand, but still it was a Mercedes-Benz, and when clean and shining, as it was now, it made an impression. The car even inspired Rickie to don a jacket and tie on excursions like this, at 11
P.M.
on a Friday night.

As slowly as traffic conditions permitted, Rickie crawled along the Limmatquai, his eyes out for solitary young men whose eyes might be also looking around. This was where the strollers strolled, and Rickie was not the only cruiser, of course. In his mirror, he saw the car behind him stop, had a glimpse of the driver grinning, talking, looking out the window. Music, loud pop, came from somebody’s car radio, and the mangled words sounded like something out of Africa. But who wanted a street pickup? Or was that sour grapes? Pickups could be nice, he’d known at least two nice ones, if he thought about it. And any street around here was a pickup area, Niederdorfstrasse for pedestrians only, Zähringerstrasse where the Bagpiper and the Carousel were. Or there was the Barfuesser, if he felt up to it, in Spitalgasse. Rickie cruised with open windows.

“Hi, Papa!” yelled a blond boy, whom Rickie had indeed been ogling.

His two companions laughed, a bit tipsily.

Rickie managed a smile too, waved a hand as if to dismiss them as they had dismissed him. Still, it hurt. And what if they saw his abdomen, if he walked into a bar like the Barfuesser, for instance? Rickie hadn’t been there for six or eight months, he supposed. Really hip, that bar was, all the latest and the youngest. He’d taken Petey there a couple of times—and with such pride! A lot better than Mercedes-Benz pride!

By a little past midnight, Rickie decided to head for home. What a waste of an evening, or part of it. So now, at slightly more speed, he rolled past the lighted façades, the
BAR CÉSAR
,
CAFÉ DREAMS
, beer-brand names in neon, the
CLUB HOTEL
, the drifting beer-can-sipping males—homeward.

Rickie pressed a bit hard on the accelerator, but he felt quite in command, more sober than drunk certainly, and his car behaved well. In a dark street somewhere—everything looked dark compared to what he had just left—Rickie put on more speed. Watch it, he told himself, and so he did at the next quiet and residential intersection where there was no traffic but a
STOP
written on the asphalt. Rickie stopped, then on again.

A minute or so later, he heard a siren behind him, saw a car flashing its lights, and Rickie thought: Certainly not for
me
. He slowed a little, not enough to look guilty, and kept going. He was nearly home. One big curve and he would be back in his nest, in his own garage under the building in which his studio was.

The police car followed him round the big curve.

The flashing lights signaled to Rickie that he had better stop, which he did, at the curb. Had he been going
that
fast? Rickie composed himself, and tried to forget the couple of Scotches he had had more than one hour ago.

The short cop touched his cap and asked to see Rickie’s license, which Rickie produced. “You were speeding. You know?”

“I didn’t realize. I’m sorry,” Rickie said with polite contrition.

The little cop was writing a ticket, pad in one hand, ballpoint pen in the other. Carbon copy of course.

This would be a couple of hundred francs, Rickie supposed. “Didn’t realize I was going so fast,” he repeated, accepting the paper.

“Over sixty in a residential area,” said the cop, going off to his car. “See yuh.”

Rickie put his car in his garage, and walked off to his apartment down the street. He felt depressed, defeated. Only Lulu welcomed him when he opened the door, and he took her out for a short walk.

When he had finished his shower and put on pajamas, the doorbell rang. Rickie was instantly wary. He went to his still unrepaired balcony window and peeked, but could not have seen a figure on the doorstep, because a high bush concealed anything there. Rickie’s old building had no speaker, so he put on a dressing gown and went into the hall.

“Who is it?” he asked at the locked door.

Seconds of silence, then, “Police. Open up.”

Rickie curled up inside. More queries, and he’d just had a nip, and he felt vulnerable in pajamas and dressing gown. Rickie opened.

A short, blondish man smiled at him. He was the cop who had just given Rickie a ticket, but now he wore ordinary clothes. “Hi. Can I come in?”

What was this? But Rickie had begun to suspect. He was still cautious, polite. “This way,” Rickie said softly, leading the way to his flat door, which was ajar.

“Nice big place,” the cop remarked on entering. “My name is Freddie.” He was still smiling. He looked about thirty-five, certainly not handsome, just ordinary.

“Freddie,” Rickie repeated.

Lulu gazed, silent, from her pillow bed on the floor.

“I think you like boys. What else were you doing in that area, eh?” The cop was certainly getting down to business. He pulled a folded paper from the back pocket of his blue trousers and tore it up, smiling. “Your ticket. Hee-hee! Hah!” He seemed genuinely amused. “Well—do you feel like it?” He walked toward Rickie, arms open.

Rickie thought, tried to. It wasn’t a frame-up, because he could report the cop, thanks to the ticket in his own jacket pocket. What else was he doing tonight? The cop was
here
, the man. “One thing—I’m HIV positive—so I—”

“Me too.”

“I use condoms, though.”

“So do I.”

Less than ten minutes later, they were horizontal, with unfinished vodka and sodas on the floor beside Rickie’s large bed. Rickie considered a low bed sexier. Freddie left around half-past two, after a second shower. He had written his name and two telephone numbers on a piece of paper, in case Rickie was ever in a bit of trouble.

“Small trouble,” Freddie had qualified with a smile.

His name was Freddie Schimmelmann and he lived in the Oerlikon direction, in Zurich.

O
N SATURDAY
, Rickie pottered in his studio, putting stacks of paper in order, throwing things out. Finally he had a meter-high stack of cardboard, newspapers and outsized publicity material on the floor inside his door. He took a length of sturdy twine and tied it up. This was for recycling, to be stored in his garage till paper-collection day in about a week. Ah, the tidy, thrifty, law-abiding Swiss! Uptight. Why else did the Swiss have the highest drug-abuse rate per capita in the drug-abusing world—meaning the world? Too uptight. Rickie finally swept even the corners of his studio.

Three
P.M.
now. He had been to the supermarket with the Merc that morning, laying in the usual, tonic water, beer, milk, dog food, orange juice, coffee, heads of lettuce, a couple of fillets of beef, fresh spinach, and from a good bakery an apple tart.

Rickie thought hardly at all of Freddie. He had had such encounters before, he reminded himself, more than he could reckon up. But none since Petey. Therefore Freddie was different, and in a way memorable. But by no means a marker, in his experience. Freddie had a wife, he had told Rickie, volunteering this information as if to discourage Rickie from getting too deeply involved with him—not Rickie’s intention. Was he worried about what his wife might think? Maybe he’d ring Freddie some day, but probably he wouldn’t.

Rickie was about to leave, when his telephone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Rickie,” said his sister Dorothea’s voice. “Working this afternoon?”

“No-o, I am dreaming, sweeping—tidying here. Ha-ha!”

“Tried to get you at home. You didn’t phone after Mum’s—you know.”

Mum’s birthday. “I did send flowers. And I phoned her. Maybe I phoned the day afterward.”

Such was the case. Dorothea told him that she and Robbie had driven up to Lausanne, but daughter Elise had not come with them, which did not surprise Rickie. Their mother had given a dinner party for six or seven people, and seemed in fine health.

“You sound sad, Rickie.”

“Sad? Not at all, Dorothea! Why? I wasn’t even saying anything.”

“Maybe that’s why you seemed sad.”

Rickie laughed. It was a conversation like others they had had, comforting to Rickie. Dorothea knew about Petey, of course; she had said the proper sympathetic words, and in her way she had meant them. After all, Petey had been in Rickie’s life for nearly a year. The months might be intense, hopeful, Rickie supposed, but it still wasn’t a marriage in his sister’s eyes or in anybody’s eyes, Rickie knew.

“Now cheer up. Come and see us soon. Come for dinner—bring a friend, if you want. You know. Elise would like to see you too.” Dorothea laughed. “And you can meet her new heartthrob, maybe.”

“Looking forward.”

“Don’t joke, Rickie. Phone us. Promise? Room to stay the night, you know.”

“I promise. Thank you, dear sister.” They hung up.

Rickie looked around at his visibly tidier tables, chrome this and that, unframed blowups on the walls, metal wastebaskets, his little sink and two-burner that looked like something in a hospital. There were times when Rickie was proud of his workplace, times when he was ashamed. Just now, he felt somehow ashamed.

Silly inferiority complex, Rickie told himself. He didn’t live here, he worked here.

And tonight—he’d go to the Small g, where dear Philip Egli might be, despite his exams, where Ernst surely would be, and maybe the darling Luisa. Maybe. And shitty Willi.

Rickie chuckled at the thought of Willi on a Saturday night, when everyone was merry but Willi! Rickie went out and strolled to his apartment house, greeting a neighbor on the way, old Frau Riester, a widow who lived in his studio building. She was carrying two shopping bags, one of woven rope that sagged with age. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, a mauve cardigan.

“And how are you faring, Frau Riester?”

Her wrinkled, smiling face looked up at him. “Pretty well, Rickie. And I’m
Ruth
to you, remember?”

“Of course I remember—”

“You taking care of your laundry well enough?”

Out of the past, more than a year ago, Rickie recalled: he’d been down with flu for several days, and Ruth Riester had called for his laundry and washed it in her machine, and brought it back with his shirts and even his socks ironed. “Yes, Ruth—I swear. I wield a fine iron.” Rickie pantomimed ironing. “You should come to our local pub more often. Jakob’s.” Ruth hardly ever came. “It’ll cheer you up.” Rickie was drifting away.

“Oh, I’m cheery enough. So people say.” Smiling, she trudged on.

Rickie went to Jakob’s just before 10
P.M.
that evening, wearing a new white cotton jacket, dark blue summer trousers, well-polished black loafers. He preferred sneakers, but at his age he thought sneakers suggested that he was trying to look younger than he was.
I’m just looking around tonight
, he told himself as he walked in with Lulu in her pale blue leather collar, which happened to match Rickie’s shirt.

“Lulu!”

“Hi,
Lulu
! Good evening!”

“Hello, Rickie! Sit with us?” This was from a sextet at the table where Renate and Luisa usually sat in the morning.

Rickie vaguely knew two of the fellows, the blonde girl with them not at all. “Not just yet, thanks, maybe later.”

A young boy and girl were dancing to music that came from a radio behind the bar. There was an amplifier on the other side of the dance floor, which Rickie now circled, drifting toward the back terrace, which he wanted to look at, see who was there.

“
Rickie!
”

Rickie saw Ernst Koelliker in the far right corner, half standing up as he hailed Rickie. There were four or five people at this table. “’
Evening!
Maybe in a minute!”

“Hey, you on luxury cruise tonight?” a voice on his right asked, just as he was about to enter the back terrace.

The man who had asked that was about thirty-five, blue jeans and denim shirt, blank-eyed yet aggressive, the drug type. Rickie kept a neutral expression and walked on.

“Hey, what’s your dog’s name?”

If he didn’t know by now, Rickie thought, too bad.

The back terrace was noisy and somewhat drunk. But there was Luisa in the far corner! With her was a brown-haired fellow, in short-sleeved shirt, focusing on Luisa as she talked, but she had seen Rickie and smiled.

“My dear Luisa!” said Rickie, bowing to her. “I’m Rickie,” he said to the young man.

“Uwe,” replied the young man, looking not happy to see Rickie, but if Rickie was a friend of Luisa’s—

“Want to sit down?” Luisa asked Rickie.

“No-o—I shall walk a little with Lulu, thank you, and come back.” Rickie looked round at the doorway where a few days ago he’d seen Willi standing, observing the scene. “Have you seen our mutual friend this evening?” He saw Luisa hesitate, as if wondering if he meant Renate. “Willi,” said Rickie with a smile.

Luisa nodded toward the dark garden beyond the terrace. “He was here a minute ago—heading out there.”

“I am going to join Ernst inside. See you later, Luisa.” Rickie looked over the terrace once more, then took the garden path which ended at a gate on the pavement. He strolled along the pavement where more cars than usual were parked tonight, then turned, intending to enter again by Jakob’s main door. Before he and Lulu got there, a car door slammed behind them and two young men in white trousers and shirts walked past Rickie and entered Jakob’s front terrace.

“. . . both . . .
white
!” one of the young men was saying in an annoyed tone, and gave a quick laugh.

Nice-looking boys, Rickie thought, especially one of them. By the time Rickie entered the main door, the two in white were standing at the far end of the bar, every stool of which was occupied.

The music was now a tango; several couples were trying it, some clowning, and laughter broke out in the main room. Rickie much wanted a beer, but Ursie and Andreas looked frantic behind the bar, and Tobi was nowhere to be seen, though Rickie had seen him a minute ago.