Free Bitter Remedy by Conor Fitzgerald Page B

I would not have taken such great care of my body!’
    ‘Well, Niki-with-a-K, Niki with a condition, what are you doing in my room?’ Blume found himself standing on the floor. Without quite realizing it, he had decided to get dressed. The first thing he pulled out of his suitcase, however, was a blister pack of Lyrica lozenges. He muscles were tensed, his eye kept wandering over to the corner of the room and seeing movements where there were none. To be on the safe side, he took three.
    ‘Drugs?’ said Niki, amiably enough.
    Blume ignored him and started getting dressed.
    Niki now tugged at the tail of his white shirt that billowed like a clean sail, executed an elegant pas de valse , put his hands on his hips and stared at Blume, his face flushed with defiance and anticipation, as if he had just been challenged on one of his strong points. ‘What do you think I weigh?’
    Blume peered upwards with the air of a professor disturbed from his studies, then lowered his eyes again, and did not answer.
    ‘No, seriously. How much?’
    Blume glanced at him again. Maybe 70 kilos, he reckoned, about 1.68 metres tall. Blue eyes, thinning fair hair – in his mind he was describing a suspect. ‘I haven’t a clue,’ he said.
    ‘Sixty-seven!’ declared Niki. ‘I am aiming for 62. That’s my ideal weight. Yours?’ He stroked his eyebrows and lifted up the side of his lip with a finger to examine an eye-tooth. Blume folded his arms like a passer-by determined not to pay for a piece of street theatre he has been watching. Seeing as he was getting no response, Niki said, ‘OK, so you couldn’t guess my weight. Here’s an even harder one: how old do you think I am?’
    He patted his stomach, and turned his insubstantial flank towards Blume. ‘Go on. Guess.’
    ‘Forty-six.’
    A look of shock followed by rage passed across Niki’s face, which he managed to twist into a tight smile.
    ‘You must have looked that up.’
    ‘Just a lucky guess.’
    ‘People don’t guess with such precise numbers. Usually you say 30–35, something like that. You don’t just come out with a fixed number.’
    ‘I do.’
    ‘You looked it up.’
    ‘Where, when, and, also, why the fuck would I bother doing that?’
    ‘Because you’re a policeman, pretending not to be one.’
    ‘Listen, Niki-with-a-K.’
    ‘Stop saying that.’
    ‘I could call you Nicola. Is that your proper name?’
    ‘On my birth certificate only. My mother named me after San Nicola of Bari. My father renamed me Niki in 1976, after Niki Lauda.’
    ‘Either way, you’re a saint or hero. Is that where you’re from: Bari?’
    Niki sat down, and stroked his throat with forefinger and thumb, then gently patted his own cheek. ‘Did you know that men have better skin than women? Women over a certain age envy men their skin. They don’t like to talk about it, of course.’
    ‘Answer my question, Niki-with-a-K.’
    ‘ Minchia , you’re a real cop, Cop, aren’t you? I’m from Molfetta originally. A long time ago. There, satisfied?’
    Blume shrugged.
    Niki picked up his shoulder satchel, opened the flap, extracted a thin metal disc, and opened it.
    ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking drugs but –’ He dipped in two fingers and scooped out some white cream, ‘Moisturizer. Men should not be afraid to use cosmetics where necessary. I had my eyes lasered, my teeth whitened. These are things you could do for yourself. Along with losing some weight, maybe. Women find me attractive. Women of my age find me pretty irresistible. We men, we can just keep going, can’t we? We don’t have to limit ourselves. They say Picasso fucked on his deathbed.’
    ‘Silvana?’ Blume could still not quite believe it.
    ‘What about her? She’s my fidanzata , but she recognizes my needs and rights. No man in my line of business could do otherwise, but you don’t know about my line of business, or do you? Is that why you’re here?’
    Blume gazed at Niki’s patent