Small g by Patricia Highsmith

passport size, which Luisa still carried in her wallet.

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