The Last Weynfeldt by Martin Suter

Author:Martin Suter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: e9781939931320
Publisher: New Vessel Press
Published: 2016-02-08T16:00:00+00:00

18

LORENA WOKE WITH A BACKACHE. BUT WITHOUT A HEADACHE. That might have something to do with the quality of the champagne she had been drinking in the Trafalgar. Perhaps it was true what she had read recently, that people only feel one pain at a time, and that one pain obscures any others. Perhaps she would have a headache if her entire capacity to feel pain wasn’t taken up with her backache.

Her clock radio had eased her gently awake. She always set it so she heard the last couple of songs before the news while she was coming to. She hated being woken abruptly by the latest disasters.

The main topic was the weather. Even now, at eight in the morning in late February, it was already 54°F. And there wasn’t even a föhn wind. Previously unreleased sections of the UN climate report alleged that a climate catastrophe was now unavoidable.

Lorena wondered what she should wear. If she got up at all. She hadn’t decided. Another day as a booth babe in the dreary world of motorbike fans wasn’t exactly enticing. Never mind seeing the Ducelli asshole again. But she had no intention of letting the agency keep her wages from the day before.

At the end of the news, after a weather forecast fit for a nice day in June, she got up. She touched the sensitive spot and realized the pain wasn’t coming from her spine or her back muscles.

She clambered over the suitcases, bags and cardboard boxes to the bathroom and examined the spot with a hand mirror.

Around the kidney area was a dark bruise, almost black, the size of her palm. A bloodshot patch caused by that macho Ducelli idiot’s fist. She decided she would go to the motorbike fair after all. The man wasn’t going to get away with this.

In the streetcar to the exhibition center she took a free newspaper from the dispenser and sat down cautiously on one of the hard seats.

Her picture was on the cover. Wrapped around the Ducelli in a provocative pose, with a seductive look for the camera. The caption read: “Superbike with ultra-transparent chassis and high-torque motor: the new Ducelli 7312.”

She read the article carefully; she wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the main text either. Not even as an accessory, not even as something which stopped you from getting a good look at the bike. It was as if she didn’t exist.

At the next stop she got out and took another streetcar, to the offices of the agency which had arranged the job for her. She would demand the fee for her work yesterday, and if they were awkward about it, she would show them the bruise on her back, threaten to make a big fuss about it, naming the agency and their client and giving all the details.

A snotty receptionist led Lorena into the waiting room. She sat down and began leafing through today’s newspaper, already tattered.

She came across her photo here too. Now the article was not about the motorbike fair but “The image of women in the world of two-wheeled racing vehicles.

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