Trance state [antikvár]

prologue Zurich June 16, 1996 It wasn't the Grande Jatte. Not exactly. It wasn't even the afternoon. Not quite. But it feh that way - just like the picture - as if nothing could ever go wrong. The placid park. The bright and dozy day. The neon-blue lake, shimmering in the breeze. Lew McBride was on a long run through the narrow park that follows the shoreline of the Zurichsee from busy Bellevueplatz out to the suburbs. He'd already gone about three miles, and was on his way back, jogging through the dappled shade, thinking idly of Seurat. The pointillist's great canvas was peopled with res-pectable-looking men in top hats, docile children, and women in bustles carrying parasols. But the age it captured was two world wars ago, before Seinfeld, the Internet, and "ethnic cleansing." People were different now, and so were Sunday afternoons (even, or especially, when they were the same). To begin with, it seemed as if half the girls he saw were on cell-phones, Rollerblades, or both. They had pierced navels and mischievous eyes, and cruised, giggling, past kids with soccer balls, dozing "guest-workers," and lovers making out in the lush grass. The air was fresh from the Alps, sunny, cool and sweet, its soft edge tainted now and then with whiffs of marijuana. He liked Zurich. Being there gave him a chance to practice his German. It was the first language he'd studied, chosen in high school because he'd had a crush on an 1