The Boy Who Followed Ripley (Ripley, #4)

by Patricia Highsmith

Marie tossed her curly black hair with a trace of coquetry, and her big mouth, bright with lipstick, gave Tom a reckless smile. She was fifty-five if she was a day.

“They have a Paris address. Post box, I think.” Billy smiled now. “Wouldn’t it be funny if the place didn’t exist?” This possibility amused Tom too. “Yes. Just a charity racket. Why didn’t that occur to me?” Tom opened two more beers.

Tom watched him with interest. Billy—Rollins, was it?—had suddenly come alive.

“But for pleasure—” That was what painting was all about, Tom thought, regardless of Picasso saying that paintings were to make war.

Heloise had it up loud, and was dancing by herself, with shoulder-shrugging movements,

Amazing, Tom thought, that people put value in such essentially ugly objects—garish even—as this diamond and emerald necklace.

What was tragedy for one man was not for another, if he could assume the right attitude toward it.

Tom laughed and stared at the little fish of brilliant blue, hardly six inches long, cruising at what could be called moderate speed, apparently in quest of nothing,

They didn’t often make love, didn’t always when Tom shared her bed, which was hardly half the time, but when they did, Heloise was warm and passionate.

Tom walked into a terrible smell of what he thought was stewing lamb mingled with cabbage. Worse, they were promptly ushered into the kitchen whence the smell originated.

Tom had to admire one boy in drag, with a long black stole—or what was it—of feathers partly around his neck and partly hanging, one end of which he wafted gently as he strolled about. Few women went to such trouble to look their best.

Sit down, Tom! Would you like a coffee? Or a drink?” “A drink first, I think. Could you manage a gin and tonic?”

No wonder Berliners liked disguises! One could feel free, and in a sense like oneself in a disguise.

he did not want to endanger Peter’s life, in case a couple of them stormed out of the house shooting at him, and Peter tried to pick him up. Tom knew he sometimes imagined the worst, the absurdest.

Johnny seemed to have no sympathy for the department of lost loves.

The mouth was gently smiling, but so worked over by the painter, Tom did not look for reality or character in it. What had John Pierson had to pay for this mess?

Tom thought of ringing Heloise, since it would be around nine in the morning there, and didn’t. He realized that he was shattered. Shattered.

At some point, miles high and in a black sky, Tom went to sleep under a blanket provided by a redheaded stewardess.