by Martin Suter
As they entered the apartment Lorena asked, “Are you having construction work done?”
“Just renovating one room.”
“Which one?”
“Down there,” he said vaguely.
Since Lorena’s last visit Adrian had been keeping a small supply of Louis Roederer Cristal on ice. For just this eventuality. But when he asked if she fancied a few thousand tiny bubbles, she said, “Tonight is a gin fizz night.”
“I don’t know how to make gin fizz.”
“I do.” To get to the kitchen, they had to pass his mother’s bedroom. The door was missing and a transparent plastic dust sheet hung from the frame.
“Ah. You’re redoing your mother’s room. What’s it going to be?”
“A fitness room.”
She looked at him sideways in astonishment.
He watched her making the drinks, measuring gin, ice, lemon cordial, soda and syrup in the mixer then shaking it like a professional.
“Where did you learn that?”
“It was my job once.”
“Barmaid? Tell me more.”
“You don’t want to know. Where are we drinking this?”
“Wherever you want. You know the apartment.”
“In your study.”
The föhn had swept the sky clear, and a pale moon shed a sparse light into the room through the tall plate glass windows. “No, no light,” she begged, as he reached his hand to the switches.
They sat and sipped their long drinks in silence. “Did you do it?” she asked finally, pointing to the empty easels.
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“As they are one and the same, it doesn’t matter,” Weynfeldt said.
“True.”
They took their time with the drinks. Then she sat on his knee and kissed him. He smelled the gin and a hint of her slightly matronly perfume.
“Maybe we could complete the tour today,” she suggested.
25
“OH!” FRAU HAUSER EXCLAIMED, AND CLOSED THE DOOR again. Weynfeldt hadn’t heard her knock.
The room was in semidarkness, the curtains drawn, night-lights dimmed. The alarm clock was projecting 08:22 onto the ceiling.
They were lying on top of the quilt. He had his head at the foot; Lorena was the other way around. He could imagine the picture they presented to Frau Hauser.
Once, around forty years ago, she had walked into his parents’ bathroom without knocking and surprised his father—who told the tale often and with glee—naked at an untypical time of day. “I’m terribly sorry!” he exclaimed. To which she is said to have replied, “Come now, do you think I’ve never seen a naked man before?”
This time she had seen a naked man with a naked woman. She had probably been surprised he hadn’t appeared for breakfast. Worried even.
Weynfeldt looked at Lorena’s feet, next to his head. This time every nail was painted vermilion. Not like the first time, when they had poked through between the balcony and the balustrade, red, yellow, green, indigo, violet.
He looked at her white body—dappled with freckles on the neckline and forearms, more skinny than slender, more vulnerable than sensual—and imagined it painted. By Ferdinand Hodler, sketched with a thick, black outline; by Giovanni Giacometti, sculpted with colors, shades and reflections; by Felix Vallotton, realistic yet graphic, expansive yet detailed.
He got up quietly, slipped into his robe and slippers and left the room. Now he could hear the muffled din of the construction work. He’d forgotten the contractors altogether. For a moment he was tempted to retreat to his bedroom, take a shower and get dressed first. But then he reminded himself it was his apartment after all.
He walked to the telephone, called Véronique and told her he would be taking the morning off.
“What do you mean, taking the morning off? Blancpain is coming at quarter past ten, and Chester has already called twice; he’s expecting you to call back before half nine when he has to check in with Sydney.”
Blancpain was the curator of the Musée d’Orly, and Chester was the secretary of an Australian private collector. They were both top-notch clients, high on Weynfeldt’s list. “Stave them off with something convincing,” Adrian said, and ended the conversation.
He sauntered into the breakfast room. The table had been cleared. A little cross, he made his way to the kitchen. He was met by a clattering sound. His first thought was that it came from the contractors. But when he turned the corner of the corridor toward the kitchen he almost collided with a serving trolley. Frau Hauser was pushing a breakfast for two. “Ah,” she said in surprise. “I thought you were having breakfast in bed today.”
She looked at him without the faintest hint of a smile or a wink or any other tacit understanding.
“Good idea,” Weynfeldt said, and took the trolley from her.
Lorena was awake. She was lying under the covers, two cushions stuffed behind her back, leafing through the auction catalogue. When she saw breakfast she stretched and put the catalogue aside. “Between 1.2 and 1.5 million. I thought it was 2 to 3.”
Adrian knew what she was talking about: the price the Vallotton was valued at. It was gracing the cover, although due to its late inclusion it had been given a high lot number, 136. “That’s the estimate. The rest is up to the bidders.”
“I’d like to be there, at an auction where people bid millions.”
“Then come along.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
They ate breakfast in bed like a couple just fallen in love. And talked like one too. Lorena asked her disarming questions and Adrian surprised himself by how frankly he answered them.
“How much rent does the bank pay you?”
“Somewhere over a million each year, I think.”
“You think?”
“I’m sure.”
“Wow! And what do you do with all that money?”
“I spend most of it. The rest adds up slowly.”
“Why do you still work then?”
“What else should I do?”
“Travel.”
“I’m not really the traveling type.”
“Do nothing.”
“That was driven out of me as a child.”
“Lot 142. Estimate: forty to sixty thousand.”
Weynfeldt grinned sheepishly.
Lorena pulled on his earlobe. “Is that done? Putting your mother’s portrait up for auction?”
“If no one did it there would be no portraits of older women on the art market.”
She fished out another croissant. There had been four in the basket. Normally there were only two. Adrian wondered how Frau Hauser had got hold of the second two so quickly. Perhaps she bought four every day: two for him and two for herself. And this morning she had sacrificed her two.
“Which of the two paintings did you put in the auction?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come now.”
“You made them identical.”
“But you can still tell them apart.”
“Me and the forger.”
“And you’re both keeping mum?”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about the forger. They can be very vain.”
“Do you know this one?”
“Yes.” And then he said it: “A professional artist, as in professional circus artist, or professional bullshit artist.”
Lorena laughed. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Adrian reflected. “It just hasn’t happened that way.”
“And friends?”
“Sure I have friends.”
“Friends are important.”
“True.”
“I know. I don’t have any.”
“None at all?”
“No real ones.”
Weynfeldt considered whether he had any real friends himself.
“Why aren’t you asking me anything?”
“
What should I ask?”
“Don’t you want to know if I’m a hooker?”
“No, I don’t want to know that.”
“Why not? If you liked me, you’d want to know.”
“If I liked you, I wouldn’t want to know.”
In the distance they heard the howling and roaring of an electric drill.
“Why would I think you might be a hooker?”
“Because of yesterday. Didn’t you think that guy was a pimp?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Don’t you want to know if he was a pimp?”
“If you want to tell me, you will.”
“He isn’t.”
“There you go.”
“He’s a debt collector.”
“Not to be sniffed at either.”
Lorena laughed, and so did Adrian. “Not to be sniffed at,” she repeated, and laughed so much she spilled coffee on the quilt.
When she’d calmed down, she asked. “Don’t you want to know why I owe a debt collector money?”
“Used to owe.”
“If only.”
“You still owe him money?”
“A question at last.”
“And?”
“A hundred and twenty.”
“Not to be sniffed at either.”
26
ROLF STRASSER GOT TO THE THURSDAY LUNCH CLUB LATE as usual. He first noticed Weynfeldt wasn’t there when he looked for a bottle of wine and found only a small carafe of house white. “Isn’t Adrian coming today?” he asked Luc Neri, who sat mute and exhausted next to him.
Neri raised his shoulders, and released them again as if he’d had to hold them up for hours.
The friends pored over the menu for longer than usual, and several kept one eye on the door. When Weynfeldt finally arrived they had already ordered. This week it seemed no one had felt like the bistecca alla fiorentina—at forty-nine francs, normally a favorite at the Thursday lunch club.
Weynfeldt was accompanied by a redhead. Much younger than him and not really his style. Although Strasser had never seen Weynfeldt with a woman before, if he tried to imagine him with a girlfriend she would be more the high society type. This one was not that. She was good looking, for sure. But in a common kind of way. Although she was expensively dressed. Designer dress. But if you were Weynfeldt’s girlfriend you could afford designer clothes.
Weynfeldt had never had as much attention at the lunch club as he was getting now, with this woman. Everyone was watching how he behaved toward her. Strasser’s verdict was: head over heels.
Lorena—she had been introduced formally to each of them as Lorena—sat next to him. At one of the two extra places Adrian had long reserved in vain for unexpected guests. Now it had been worth it. She ordered the bistecca alla fiorentina and Weynfeldt joined her. The first time he hadn’t opted for his insalata mista and scaloppine al limone with risotto. Clearly head over heels.
She was funny. Unlike Weynfeldt, who tended to be boring. Late thirties. Done a lot. Good figure. Four or five more pounds wouldn’t look poorly on her. Seemed a bit affected, but that was understandable meeting Adrian’s friends for the first time. He’d presented them to her as “my friends.”
“So you’re an artist,” she observed. Weynfeldt had described him to her as “my friend, the artist Rolf Strasser.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I prefer the term ‘professional artist.’ It implies an occupation rather than an attribute. Like a professional circus artist, or professional bullshit artist.”
Lorena exchanged glances with Adrian.
“Rolf is both,” Adrian interjected. “Artist and professional artist.”
It was the first time he’d described him as an artist. Today was Weynfeldt’s day for firsts. No doubt about it: head over heels.
Then she asked the moronic question: “So what kind of things do you paint?” and Strasser started to revise his estimation of her.
“Whatever you want,” he replied.
And she saved herself with, “So more of a professional than an artist after all.”
The best thing about her was, she didn’t care about his chain-smoking, even helping herself to one of his Chesterfields without asking, and she could match his pace when it came to drinking wine.
It was three by the time the last of them left. Weynfeldt stayed till the end, also a first.
Afterward, in Südflügel, where Strasser went with Casutt for a grappa, they both agreed: this Lorena was a great addition to the Thursday lunch club.
27
“NOW THIS BIT. THAT’S LUUVELY,” TEREZA SAID FOR THE umpteenth time. The client said nothing, but Lorena heard an audible intake of breath as the beautician tore off another whole strip of wax.
Lorena was lying on a beauty treatment couch which, as Tereza liked to point out, had four motors, castors which could be lowered electrically and a foot pedal to ensure hygienic working conditions. She was wearing a headband to keep her hair out of her face, and the face mask Luxusní, formulated by Tereza herself using a closely guarded secret recipe. The mask alone cost a hundred and forty francs.
But Lorena had a bit of money at the moment, and she needed to come clean with herself. For some reason that always worked best with Tereza at Salon Perfektní.
The beauty salon consisted of one large space partitioned with a system of gold-trimmed brocade curtains to create a waiting room and three treatment cubicles. It smelled of perfume, nail polish remover and warm wax. A stereo system set on repeat played a selection of chill-out CDs which Tereza’s daughter replenished regularly.
Despite the background music you could hear every word spoken anywhere in Salon Perfektní. These were often intimate words, spoken by clients expressing themselves as freely as if they were in soundproofed rooms. But when they were silent, like the one in the next cubicle, Tereza entertained them with stories about her daughter, who lived on Fuerteventura with a man who worked in tourism, or about the defects in the three-room apartment they had bought there. At the moment it was the apartment, where she had just spent two rainy weeks. “Now this bit. That’s luuvely.”
Tereza was somewhere between fifty and sixty. She had lived in Switzerland since 1968, the Prague Spring. Her face was unwrinkled, thanks less to her profession than to her corpulence. Her eyebrows were depilated, and redrawn in a different place in black, arched so highly that her otherwise impassive face gave the impression of astonishment. Lorena had first met her at a catalogue shoot. Tereza had stepped in at short notice to do the makeup, and was the only one who occasionally made her laugh. Since then Lorena had been a regular customer—when she could afford her services.
The fact that she could afford them now was thanks to the two and a half thousand—her share of the five—which Pedroni had screwed poor Adrian out of. They had planned this job as a test. As a test, and to introduce Pedroni as Mr. X. For future, bigger jobs.
It had been fun. She’d come up with the idea, including the location for the handover—the cash point on the corner of Poststeg and City-Strasse, which sounded very professional. She’d been impressed by how hard she’d been—Lorena the ice-cold angel.
And afterward, at his apartment, she’d followed it through. Had hung up her heart with her coat and slept with him.
Next morning she’d had to remind herself a couple of times that he was just a signet ring man, who would get rid of her now that he’d gotten her into bed. Even if he was nicer than most.
And as if to prove to herself she’d left her heart with her coat, she started improvising. She’d come up with the figure one hundred and twenty thousand at random. Without consulting Pedroni. And Weynfeldt had laughed. What had he said? “Not to be sniffed at.” Nothing more. Just, “Not to be sniffed at.” And laughed.
Easy money, she thought, and the other project, with the old man, was looking promising too.
But then Weynfeldt had invited her to lunch and introduced her to his friends. That was definitely not signet ring man behavio
r. And it had been very pleasant. A meal with a group of very nice people. And she had officially been treated as one of them. Not only that: as the one who was his.
Back to plan C then? Certainly, when she’d met Pedroni later to discuss the state of play, told him about the hundred and twenty, and worked out the thing with the promissory note, she’d felt a bit sleazy. She’d have felt better sitting with Adrian, planning how to get one over on Pedroni. At any rate, when they had finished the business and he asked, “Your place or mine?” she had answered, “Whatever.”
The mask started to tighten, and the conversation on the other side of the curtain re-entered her consciousness. “… nothing but a little convector. No one thinks about heating on Fuerteventura.”
Was it happening again? The heart sabotaging the head?
The curtain behind her moved, and she heard Tereza’s voice: “Now the luuvliness is sinking into your pores, darling.”
Lorena nodded cautiously beneath the stiffening mask. “And drawing out the stuupidness I hope.”
28
THEO L. PEDRONI LAY FULLY CLOTHED ON THE DOUBLE bed in Room 212 of the Belotel waiting for Weynfeldt.
His jacket hung on a hanger in the narrow wardrobe between the imitation wood closet and the door to the ochre- and beige-tiled bathroom. Room 212 was described as a junior suite and therefore included an olive-green sofa bed with a matching armchair, and a mini coffee table strewn with leaflets.
Pedroni had his left hand bent behind his head; with his right he was smoking a cigarette, using the mug as an ashtray, balanced on his chest. Room 212 was a no-smoking room.
The TV was playing quiet Muzak. On the screen it said: “Welcome/Willkommen/Bienvenu Mr. Hans Meier!”
A daytime room, Lorena’s idea. To be honest, Pedroni hadn’t realized such a thing existed. A room you could rent for half price or cheaper to use during the day. She had come up with the idea while they were considering where he should meet Weynfeldt. Somewhere discreet, with just the two of them, not his apartment or Lore-na’s. And not Weynfeldt’s either. It was swarming with people there, Lorena had told him.