Self's deception Read Free Page B

the couch, and she pulled out of a shoebox a student's life of carnivals and end-of-term parties, vacations and field trips, a demonstration here and there, a weekend work study, and pictures of her boyfriend, who liked to pose on his motorbike.
    “Here's one of her at a wedding.” She handed me Leo on a chair, dark blue skirt and salmon-pink blouse, a cigarette in her right hand and her left hand resting pensively on her cheek, her face concentrating as if she were listening to or watching someone. There was nothing girlish about her anymore. This was a somewhat tense, assertive young woman. “In this one she's coming out of the city hall—she was one of the marriage witnesses—and in this one we're all on our way to the Neckar River. The wedding party was on a boat.” I figured her to be about five foot six. She was slim without being thin, and had a nice, straight back.
    “Where was this one taken?” Leo was coming out of a door in jeans and a dark sweater, her bag over her shoulder and her coat slung over her arm. She had dark rings under her eyes, her right eye squeezed shut, her left eyebrow raised. Her hair was tousled and her mouth a thin, angry line. I recognized the door and the building, but couldn't place them.
    “That was after the demonstration we had back in June. The cops had arrested her and taken her in for fingerprinting.”
    I couldn't remember there being any demonstrations in June, but now I saw that Leo was coming out of the Heidelberg police headquarters.
    “Can I have these two?”
    “You want this one, too?” Andrea shook her head. “I thought you were planning a nice surprise for Leo's father, not trying to get her into trouble or something. You'd better leave this awful photo and take the nice one—the one where she's sitting, that's a good one.” She gave me the picture of Leo on the chair and put the other pictures back in the box. “If you're not in a hurry, you could drop by the Drugstore Bar. She used to hang out there every evening, and I ran into her there this past winter.”
    I asked her the way there and thanked her. When I found the bar in the Kettengasse, it all came back to me. I had been shadowing someone once who had had a cup of coffee and played chess here. He's no longer alive.
    I ordered an Aviateur, but the bar was out of grapefruit juice and champagne, and so I just had a Campari straight up. I struck up a conversation with the bored guy behind the bar and showed him Leo sitting in her chair. “When did you last see her?”
    “Well, how about that, it's Leo! Nice picture. What do you want with her? Hey, Klaus, come here.” He waved over a short stocky man with red hair, rimless glasses, and sharp, intelligent eyes. The spitting image of what I imagined an intellectual Irish whiskey drinker would look like. The two men talked in hushed tones, falling silent under my interested gaze. So I turned away and pricked up my ears. I could tell I wasn't the first one who'd come to the Drugstore Bar looking for Leo. Somebody had been here back in February. Klaus also asked me why I was looking for her.
    I told him I was her uncle, that I'd been at the residence hall on Klausenpfad, and that Andrea had sent me over here. The two men were still suspicious. They told me they hadn't seen Leo since January. That was all I got out of them. They eyed me as I finished my second Campari, paid, left, and looked through the window one more time.

5
Turbo on my lap
    My next move was to scour the hospitals, even though I knew in cases where they have patients who are unable to speak they contact relatives. They also notify the police when a patient's identity is unclear. But it's rare for a doctor to authorize that relatives be contacted against a patient's will. A person being sought by relatives could be lying in a hospital only a few streets away. Perhaps the patient doesn't care that his loved ones are crying their eyes out not knowing where he is. Perhaps that's just what he