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“Luisa—you’re dreaming today!” Stefanie was bending toward Luisa, offering a tray of variously colored thread.

“Oh! OK, I’ll take a black. Thanks, Stefanie.”

Luisa started at every phone call. Since Renate was more often on her feet than the others, she usually answered. The fourth call brought Renate back into the workroom after she had answered it.

“Luisa—someone for you,” Renate said.

Luisa went into the hall. Renate’s eyes were on her, and Renate followed until she was hardly two meters from the telephone.

“Luisa!” said Teddie. Then more softly, “Did you see my article?”

“Yes. You know—it’s hard to talk now, so—”

“Can we have dinner tonight? Something in town? If I come in a taxi around seven? Please!”

“It just isn’t so
easy
.”

“Tell him good-bye!” Renate said with a wave of a hand, turning her back. But she turned again, listening.

“It’s just—impossible,” Luisa finished with a gasp. “Try Rickie!” That was the best she could do now, as far as communication went. She hung up, and faced Renate with an eye as steady as Renate’s. Then Luisa looked straight ahead as she made her way past Renate to the workroom.

“Try Rickie indeed! He should
live
with him!” Renate said grimly but quietly, not wanting the workroom to hear.

Luisa ignored the comment. Rickie, yes. Luisa thought of Rickie as a fortress she could run to. Indeed, Luisa supposed, Renate probably wouldn’t enter Rickie’s apartment or studio under any circumstances, because Renate would consider his dwellings contaminated.

Renate had an appointment that afternoon. Frau Huttmann, a buyer for an expensive Zurich shop, was coming to look at the trouser suits. This would be at four. So Luisa was sent out to choose the best in the way of a torte—a whole cake, Renate said—that L’Eclair had to offer. During this time, Luisa rang Rickie at his atelier, whose number she knew by heart.

“You didn’t make a date with Teddie,” Rickie said.

“I couldn’t with Renate listening to every word! Rickie, can I see you later? Maybe—before dinner? I’ll try it.”

“But of course, dear Luisa. You mean at my studio?”

Luisa hesitated. “I want to see you alone.” It sounded so romantic, it was funny. And she’d said it in a passionate tone.

“Can you come to my apartment if it’s at six? It’s even closer to you.”

Luisa made the tea, and got the cups ready, enough for the girls too, plus plates and forks, and the large blue paper napkins.

The clock did not creep, it leapt to a quarter to six. Stefanie and Elsie had taken their leave, only Vera remained. Frau Huttmann was gathering herself. Luisa removed the empty teapot. Good-byes and it was a pleasure, and until soon—with the deliveries, that meant.

“I’m going out for a few minutes,” Luisa said, almost as soon as the door had closed on Frau Huttmann.

“Where?” asked Renate.

“Just to get some air,” said Luisa as if she meant it, and she went out, empty-handed, with no money.

“Luisa!”

She was racing down the stairs in her sneakers. Had Renate called her name? Was she dreaming, having a nightmare? Anyway, Renate couldn’t possibly catch up with her, and she wouldn’t try.

20

R
ickie was home, Luisa saw from the slightly open french windows. She rang the bell.

Seconds later Rickie opened the door into the front hall. Luisa restrained herself: she felt like embracing him. Instead, she held his left hand, squeezed it as they walked toward his door.

“Luisa—what’s the
matter
?”

“Nothing!” She smiled at Lulu. “Hello, Lulu!”

“Arf!” Lulu wriggled a greeting, recognizing her.

“You’re all out of breath,” Rickie said.

“I was just running. We had a showing—sort of. Renate had an important buyer—tea. You know. I had to make the tea and serve the cake.”

Rickie looked at her. “And what else?”

“Nothing! I just felt like seeing you. So I ran out!”

“I—see. I am honored. Sit down—somewhere. A Coke?”

“No, thanks. Well—yes. Thank you.”

Luisa leaned back against the sofa pillows, and took a deep breath.

Rickie came with her Coke and what looked like a Scotch on the rocks for himself. “Your health!” He lifted his glass. “Did you talk with Teddie today?”

“He phoned. Wanted me to have dinner with him. I couldn’t just
arrange
that with Renate standing there, trying her best to hear! I had to say no, of course. He’d have picked me up in a taxi, he said. Maybe he’d have to lie to his mother, since she doesn’t want him in Aussersihl. Why is life so complicated?”

Rickie shrugged. “Other people,” he said calmly. “Six more months, you said—with Renate?”

Luisa nodded. “Yes. Sounds like years to me sometimes.”

Rickie lit a cigarette, and spoke with deliberate objectivity, as much as he could muster. “But you’re almost nineteen. You need to live somewhere else, Luisa.”

“And keep on working for Renate?” Luisa gave a laugh. “Not to mention that I can’t afford an apartment on my stipend from Renate.”

Rickie knew. Luisa was welcome to sleep on his sofa, he was thinking, but hell would break loose, Renate would call the police and invent weird stories! “Did you know I have a bedroom, a shower, a kitchen in my
studio
? Where I
never
sleep at night, and seldom take a nap in the day? You are most welcome, Luisa! Free of charge.”

“Thanks, Rickie.” Her voice sounded weak to her, although she meant the thanks. “That would be heaven—just not having to eat with her. But—it still belongs to you. It—” Luisa allowed herself a few seconds of dreaming: living in Rickie’s atelier, borrowing some of his novels and big art books which she saw here,
not
having to play chess with Renate in the evenings, being able to call the atelier her own in the evenings, Luisa was sure. Independence! And Rickie’s studio was so attractive with its white walls, its good lights, and his sketches and cartoons tacked up.

“But
think
about it,” Rickie said.

“She’d absolutely have a fit! She might throw me out, you know, because—she’d say I was associating with—maybe not criminals but homosexuals.”

“True. Renate would have a hard time catching me in bed with a girl.”

They both laughed. It was suddenly funny for Luisa to imagine.

Rickie was glad to see her laugh, but sorry his atelier idea had been rejected. Luisa would have been out of his studio at precisely the hours when he needed to work there.

Luisa had wanted to talk about Teddie, why trying to make dates with him seemed not worth it as long as she was apprenticed to Renate. But this, Luisa knew, would have led her to talk about Petey, and she didn’t want to remind Rickie of Petey now. It was not that she was still in love with Petey, but that Teddie came nowhere near inspiring in her what she had felt for Petey, that feeling that the world had totally changed, that the air she breathed, the space she walked in, had been different and special, and that everything small and large that she set her mind to she would succeed in, and with ease. That was being in love, and only with Petey had she felt this.

The doorbell rang.

Luisa thought at once: Renate has followed me here and there’s going to be a war! Then she remembered that Renate would consider the premises dirty, out of bounds.

“Forgot to tell you, Dorrie’s coming for a drink,” Rickie said, getting up. “So smile,” he added with a wink, and went to open the doors.

“Hey! Luisa!” Dorrie said on coming in. “What a nice surprise!”

“Surprise, yes,” Rickie said. “Luisa had a rough day, so I am the lucky one, she pays me a visit. What’ll you have, dear Dorrie?”

“First a glass of water, please, Rickie.” Dorrie said to Luisa, “Isn’t that nice news about Teddie’s article?”

“Nice—yes,” Luisa said.

Rickie was inspired to say, “It’s Renate cracking the
whip
today. Unburden yourself, dear Luisa.”

“My troubles, nothing but my troubles,” Luisa said, embarrassed. “I’ve said enough.”

“Luisa feels she must decline the offer of my studio as a cost-free dwelling place,” Rickie said in a precise manner, “because Renate doesn’t like queers. Luisa escaped this afternoon and came running to me. I am most flattered. But I hope you have your housekey, Luisa.”

Luisa knew her keys weren’t with her. “They’re in my handbag at home.”

“Good. You have a bed here and in my studio too,” said Rickie. “You have a choice.”

“And I’ve got a spare! Sort of a camp-bed, but still. That makes three beds. You mean the old bitch might not let you in? Why?” asked Dorrie.

Luisa took a breath. “Because I’m supposed to be there right now—helping to get dinner for us.”

“Call her. Tell her you’ve got a date for dinner tonight, eh, Rickie?”

The two of them exerted a force. Luisa went to the telephone at the end of the sofa. She dialed, said, “Hello, Renate,” and started to speak.

“Where’re you calling from?” Short and angry.

“I’d like to have dinner out tonight. I have a—”

“Who’re you with?”

“I’ll be home—before eleven.” Luisa felt a light sweat breaking out again.

“And just what brought
this
on?”

“Good-bye,” Luisa said in the middle of Renate’s question, and hung up.

“Wow! Good for you!” said Dorrie. “I could hear her! And she doesn’t know where you are?”

“No. Maybe suspects.”

“What do you say we phone Teddie and we all roll out to dinner somewhere air-conditioned? I’ve got my car with me. What’s Teddie’s number?”

Rickie knew the number, but protested that Dorrie and Luisa should go out together, as he had to do some accounting. They could phone Teddie from here, of course.

“I really don’t want to see Teddie—tonight,” Luisa said.

Rickie stopped himself from asking why. Luisa had her moods, she would have her reason.

Dorrie looked surprised. “OK, the three of us. Come on, Rickie.”

“Can’t. Won’t.”

Then Luisa was in the BMW with Dorrie, heading toward Zurich’s center. Dorrie said she knew a restaurant called Der Fang.

“Cold lobster salad—a speciality,” Dorrie said.

They lifted stemmed glasses of white wine. The restaurant was air-conditioned and had some space between tables, a luxury. Dorrie was asking her questions about her family, how she had encountered Renate, but the questions were light, not like an inquisition.

“And your stepfather?”

“Oh—a child-molester,” Luisa replied bluntly. “This went on till—I suppose I threatened something when I was fourteen or fifteen. It’s funny how I forget, maybe because I don’t want to remember.”

“Really a molester?” asked Dorrie, wide-eyed. “Fooling around in bed and all that?”

Oh yes. And it was a miracle she hadn’t become pregnant, though she had made an effort to wash herself. Luisa spoke flatly. If her biology was uncertain, so was that of a lot of girls and women who became pregnant when they thought they couldn’t have been impregnated (Luisa had read about such), and after all she was talking facts.

“My God,” Dorrie said, impressed. “I think you look remarkably normal—considering.”

This made Luisa laugh. She told Dorrie about the years from fifteen to seventeen when she had done her best to look and act like someone who slept in the streets, riding motorcycles with boys, smoking and drinking wine in bar-cafés, making her mother and stepfather furious, for different reasons.

“I wanted to be a tough and I was. I can still see myself talking with the fellows and the town whore in the neighborhood square—and people staring at me, wondering if I was a girl or boy.”

“Trying to make yourself as unattractive as possible to girls
and
boys, it sounds like.”

That was true, for that period. Unattractive to her stepfather, for sure.

“I wanted to say something about Petey tonight.”

“Petey? Rickie’s friend?”

“Yes. I liked him very much, you know.”

“I know. I heard—something.”

“Sometimes I think I’m not over it yet. I suppose I
am
over it, it’s just that I haven’t felt like that since.”

Luisa tried to describe those weeks, maybe only six or seven, when she’d been so happy and sure of herself. It hadn’t mattered that Petey hadn’t been in love with her. She had felt outside herself, like a person everyone on the street might look at twice—though people hadn’t. She had been
happy
, and she wondered if that feeling would ever come again. Luisa told Dorrie about Petey saying so earnestly and gently, “Don’t be in love with me . . . I don’t want you to be sad.” That hadn’t mattered. She had assured Petey she wasn’t sad, wasn’t going to be disappointed, no matter what. And that was true, until Petey had been killed. Then she had thought: Petey is no more, but her love was still alive, which she supposed was a natural feeling for a while, maybe a long while. Now she wondered if she would ever again exist in such a special way, because of another person.

“Does that come just once in a lifetime, do you think?”

Dorrie looked into a corner of the room for a few seconds. “I dunno. Maybe only once. And maybe three times. You’re not even twenty, after all.”

Dorrie was perhaps twenty-four. Luisa didn’t want to ask. “I wanted to say—tonight, it’s not like that with Teddie. Never could be. I couldn’t have said all this in front of Rickie, you know. And I didn’t want to say Petey’s name. And yet—he knows, I’m sure, the way I cared for Petey.”

“Does he? I knew Petey. A nice, serious boy, but what you’re talking about is all one-sided, your own idea of Petey—isn’t it? Because you were never very close to Petey, let’s face it. So it’s like a dream.”

“I know,” said Luisa firmly, as if she meant to hang on to her dream, and why not?

“You see, here—I reach a point where I can’t say one more thing. So I’m going to change the subject. The lemon meringue here is especially good.”

They ordered, and espresso to follow.

“I have an idea. Come to my place. I’d like you to see it. Telephone Renate, if you want to, to make sure you can get in tonight.” Dorrie had to laugh here. “If not, you stay on my camp-bed tonight, and I’ll take you to Renate’s around the time the girls arrive in the morning, and you go in with one of them.”

Luisa had thought of that. She felt better suddenly. But Renate was not going to say on the telephone whether she could get in or not tonight.

When the bill arrived, Dorrie said, “I’m inviting you tonight, OK? Suppose when you phone Renate, she’s all sweetness and wants you to come home?”

“I don’t think I will phone her.”

“Good! That’s progress.”

Independence. But the truth was, Luisa did not want to hear Renate’s yelping voice on the telephone. Put it off till tomorrow, Luisa thought, and don’t ruin tonight. They got into the car, and Dorrie drove first across a large avenue Luisa knew, then into darker residential streets, some tree-bordered.

“And here we are,” Dorrie said, pulling in at an unlit curb, “with a parking place, extra lucky. I have a garage though.”

Then Dorrie was unlocking a partly glass front door, turning on a light in the lobby. They took a lift to the third floor, and Luisa saw the lobby light go off as they rose. Dorrie unlocked another door and put on a light.

“My place is disorderly—but no more than usual. Welcome!”

A short hall with a doorless cupboard for coats was followed by the one room Dorrie had mentioned. A low double bed showed an expanse of rumpled white sheets.

“Bed still unmade. This morning was a rush.” Dorrie gave a laugh. “I’d ask you to sit down, but my bed’s the sofa once I fold it. However—there’s a chair.” She gestured toward a white-covered easy chair. “Excuse me.”

A naked female mannequin, bald-headed, stood in a corner by the front windows, one foot raised as if to step up a curb. A blue-and-red dishcloth hung neatly over her forearm. There were two big bookcases, a record player, a small TV set.

Dorrie was back from somewhere, bearing what looked like firewood. It was the camp-bed. Luisa helped.

At last it was up, stretched taut, hard as the floor, Luisa thought, amused. Here came a pale blue sheet, so large, Luisa suggested they just fold it over. Then a pillow.

“Now I’ll check the facilities.” Dorrie disappeared again, and returned after a minute, waving a still-wrapped toothbrush. “Yours. Standard equipment here, for the unexpected guest.”

Luisa went and took a shower, cool and delicious. There were cartoons on three walls of the bathroom, half of them by Rickie. On the back of the door was a large photograph of Japanese wrestlers in action, and by some retouching of breasts and rouging of lips, these had become convincing females. Luisa got into the pajamas.

Dorrie went into the bathroom.

Luisa stared at the TV that Dorrie had turned on, and thought of tomorrow morning. An impulse to ring Renate vanished as soon as it had come: the damage was done, and phoning so late would make things worse.

“Now, set chronometers,” said Dorrie, reappearing in blue pajamas, strapping on her watch. “Ten to midnight, I’ve got. I’m usually up by seven. What time do your girls go in?”

“Around eight. Not exactly on the dot, but—”

“I’ll have you there by ten to eight. All right?”

“Perfect. Thanks.”