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drifting, dreaming, as he could do only when alone.
    Back at his apartment before seven, Rickie telephoned his sister Dorothea, who was married to a radiologist and lived in Zurich. Did they, he and his sister, really have to go to their mother’s for her birthday in a week? Was Dorothea going? She was not. She was going to telephone and send a present.
    “Good,” Rickie said, relieved. “I could drive, of course, but I don’t drool down my chin at the thought.” The childhood phrase made his sister chuckle.
    “Rickie, sweetie, you driving—after Mummy’s party!”
    “Oh, I’d stay the night.”
    “Even so! You’re doing all right, dear? Everything fine?”
    Rickie assured her that it was. “And Elise?” he asked. This was Dorothea’s daughter.
    “Still hasn’t finished her thesis—and she’s met a new young man, so we can only hope.” Here Dorothea gave a laugh. “That she buckles down and does it, I mean.”
    Elise was Dorothea’s only child, who was taking her master’s in business administration. “Keep well, dear sister. I’ll sign off. Love to my niece—and to Robbie.” The latter was Dorothea’s husband. As he hung up, Rickie imagined his sister’s orderly and somewhat heavily furnished apartment, leather chairs, dark-wood furniture, much of it gifts from their mother’s and Robbie’s family. Ah, well, pillars of society.
    By nine-thirty that evening, showered and in the same pale-blue shirt and wearing a raincoat, Rickie rang Philip Egli’s bell from a bank of twenty in the building entrance.
    “Rickie!” he shouted into the speaker.
    Someone buzzed him in. Lulu, sensing a party, danced on her feet as she walked, expending energy like a jet plane. Such was her nature. The show! She was a circus dog, from circus stock, and had been stolen from her mother when two or three months old. Out of the lift, and apartment 4G. Rickie rang.
    Philip Egli opened the door, tall but not as tall as Rickie, with wavy, light-brown hair, an earnest, alert face. “Welcome, Rickie! And Lu lu ! Our honored female guest! Ha-ha!”
    The living room was completely occupied, including part of the floor, and a few fellows were standing. The hum did not entirely subside with Rickie’s and Lulu’s appearance.
    “This is Rickie Markwalder,” Philip began. “Joey, Kurt—”
    “Who needs no introduction,” Kurt said.
    “Heinrich,” Philip continued.
    “Weber,” Heinrich put in from the floor, where he lay propped on an elbow.
    “Peter, Maxi, Fr—”
    “Peter here too!” cried a voice from a corner.
    “OK!” Rickie said, embarrassed as ever by introductions. He knew half the group vaguely, and had been to bed with a few in years past.
    “And that’s enough!” someone said. “Give Rickie something to drink!”
    Rickie had been to Philip’s apartment a few times. Where books did not line the walls, photographs—many enlarged—filled the space, teenaged boys, many naked, gazing forward, some smiling invitingly. Another photo showed two sleeping heads, the rest of the subject under a sheet. The books, apart from a small paperback section, were heavy textbooks with dense titles pertaining to physics and engineering, of which Rickie knew nothing, a deadly contrast to the merry boys. Philip’s family was not wealthy, Rickie knew, so Philip worked hard, not wanting to prolong his education, therefore the expense for his family. Rickie admired that, because Switzerland was full of students who spent years at their theses, decades even, living nicely on parents’ charity and government loans that were essentially interest-free.
    Rickie accepted a Chivas Regal. There were also wine bottles on a table by the window, and beer bottles in a couple of buckets of water. “Thanks,” Rickie said. “Just a splash of water—good. And what’s the occasion for this party, Philip?”
    “Nothing. It’s Friday,” Philip said, pushing up his shirtsleeves, ready to dash off again to attend to his guests.