Small g by Patricia Highsmith Page B

don’t you, what happened with this Petey you were infatuated with. He teased you. Oh, they love to be the center—”
    “He did not tease me,” Luisa interrupted. “Ever. Petey was very serious. And honest.”
    “You see what happened, though. Stabbed to death in the bedroom of this overaged man friend. It’s the company they keep! What else can you—”
    “He was stabbed in a street .” Luisa’s voice shook on the last word. “It was in the newspapers. It’s only a few people like you, maybe, who say—”
    “Who told you that?”
    “Told me? Now I remember Ursie and Andreas saying it. Petey went to a film that night. He took a shortcut home, a dark street.” Luisa went on, determined, sure of herself. Her words tore at the picture Renate and a few others had created, even Willi Biber, maybe, that Petey had been stabbed by a pickup of Petey’s, “I didn’t read it in the newspapers. I was so shocked to hear about him—from you. I thought you had real information—the truth , I thought. Maybe from Rickie even. But it wasn’t true. He was killed in a street.”
    “Luisa, who are you to say that I and my neighbors are wrong?” Renate rapped out the question.
    “I’m sure I could find it in the newspapers. Mid-January.”
    “Luisa, you are recently arrived here. What do you know about the neighborhood, the people who live here? Stop scowling and stop mooning over this worthless—homo boy!” Renate stirred, about to get up to signify her disgust at all the emotion. “A kept and worthless homo!”
    “Petey was not kept. He was living with his parents and going to school. He wasn’t poor.”
    “You’ve been talking to this Rickie Mark—something—or one of his entourage. I don’t want to hear about Petey again, do you understand? Not in this house!” Renate stood up.
    Luisa stood up too.
    “Let’s have coffee, Luisa. It’s silly to—”
    “No coffee. I’ll come back in a minute, help you with—”
    “Never mind the dishes. Where’re you going?”
    “Just to my room!”
    Renate stomped after her, clump, scrape, not caring. “The last episode of Hit Squad is on—in twenty minutes!”
    “I don’t care! Thank you!”
    Then Luisa appeared, carrying a summer jacket.
    “What’s all this?”
    “All what? It’s eight-forty, not even dark. I’m going out for a walk.”
    Renate had an impulse to seize her arm as the girl swept past her. Luisa was stronger, taller, and never had they come to a struggle. “Where’re you going?”
    Luisa took a breath and it sounded like a gasp. “For a walk! Do I have to say where? Nowhere!”
    The apartment door slammed.
    Renate went and opened it. “You may find it bolted when you come back!”
    Luisa’s quick steps kept on, downward.
    Renate ducked back into the flat, and locked and bolted the door. How she would have loved to follow Luisa, see where she went, what kind of stranger she decided to talk with, even if—after a walk to cool her temper, she only stopped for a glass of wine somewhere. Renate’s bad foot prevented that: she was both conspicuous and slow. But as she often reminded herself, there were compensations, too—she got special privileges from strangers.
    Willi Biber. See if he was at Jakob’s, Renate thought, give him a small task: to see if Luisa was there this evening and remember whom she was talking to. Renate hesitated, however. Sometimes she disguised her voice when ringing Jakob’s, and she considered herself good at that. But too often was too often. She suspected that Andy might know that it was she on the phone, though sometimes Ursie answered, and Ursie was always in such a hurry, all she wanted to know was what or whom the caller wanted. Willi? If he was there, Ursie went and got him.
    But who in the name of God wanted to talk with the dunce except Renate? They had to meet and talk on the sly, almost, like star-crossed lovers. Her small, rather ugly face wrinkled, her eyes nearly closed, as she yielded to a few