Still, Ernst thought those brown shirts and chocolate-colored shorts quite fetching. He’d only dated much older men. I had hoped that he would end up with a nice girl, in the end. Loving men was dangerous, and I would have shielded him from that danger if I could, or had him not choose to go down that path. But I knew that he had no choice. He had been exactly who he was from his earliest days. Still, he could have chosen a man less predatory than Rudolf. Perhaps this boy had been an improvement for him. I stifled a sob. Too little, too late. At least he’d been alive while dating Rudolf. I rubbed my hands over my face, trying not to think of Ernst as dead.
Would Ernst have left a good provider like Rudolf for a youth? He cared so much about his own comfort. When he betrayed Rudolf in the past (as he had often done), he’d been careful to conceal his affairs. Rudolf was a jealous and powerful man.
The bell for the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church rang ten. I was late for the trial. If I did not go, I might lose my job, lose everything. I thought about trying to convince Ernst’s landlady to let me into his apartment, but did not think I could face his rooms after all, with his dresses and his scent.
I plodded back toward the subway station. A sign with a white U against a dark blue background marked the entrance. Ernst called those signs empty smiles. He had preferred the confines of a taxi with a rich partner to the crush and noise of a subway car. And now he was to be buried alone, without the pomp he loved. I clutched Rudolf’s box and walked to the platform.
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