The Loo Sanction by Trevanian Read Free Book Online Page A

self-portraits. But I have to suppress this mad desire I have to add to my measuring thumb. Your face is not so bad, you know.”
    â€œI’m glad.”
    She turned to her salad. “Yes, it’s an interesting face. Bony and craggy and all that. But the eyes are a bother.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œAre you sure you’re not hungry?”
    â€œPositive.”
    â€œActually, they’re smashing. But they’re not very comfortable eyes.” She glanced up and looked at them professionally. “It’s difficult to say if they’re green or gray. And even though you smile and laugh and all that, they never change. You know what I mean?”
    â€œNo.” Of course he knew, but he liked having her talk about him.
    â€œWell, most people’s eyes seem to be connected to their thoughts. Windows to the soul and all. But not yours. You can’t read a thing by looking into them.”
    â€œAnd that’s bad?”
    â€œNo. Just uncomfortable. If you’re not going to eat that salad, I’ll just keep it from going to waste.”
    Over coffee, over cognac, over more coffee, they talked without design.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    â€œDo you know what I’ve always wished?”
    â€œNo. What?”
    â€œI’ve always wished I were a tall, terribly handsome black woman. With long legs and a chilling, disdainful sideways glance.”
    He laughed. “Why have you wished that?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know, really. But think of the clothes I could get away with wearing!”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    â€œ. . . oh, it was a typical middle-class Irish childhood, I suspect. Cooed over and spoiled as a baby; ignored as a child. Taught how to pass tests and how to stand with good posture. My father was a rabid Irish nationalist, but like most he had suspicions of inferiority. He sent me off to university in London—to get a
really good
education. And they were delighted when I came back with an English accent. I hated school as a girl. Sports and gymnastics particularly. I remember that we had a very, very modern physical culture teacher. A great bony woman, she was, with a prissy voice and a faint moustache. She tried to introduce the girls to the joys of eurythmics. You should have seen us! A gaggle of awkward girls—some with stick legs and knobby knees, others placid and fat—all trying to follow instructions “to writhe with an inner passion and reach up expressively for the Sun God and let him penetrate your body.” We’d giggle about inner passions and penetrations, and the teacher would call us shallow, silly girls and dirty-minded. Then she’d writhe for us to show how it should be done. And we’d giggle some more. Cigarette?”
    â€œI don’t smoke.”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    She didn’t seem to realize that she had stopped her story midway and had turned her thoughts inward.
    He allowed the silence to run its course, and when she focused again on him with a slight start, he said, “So you won’t be going back to Ireland?”
    She butted her cigarette out deliberately. “No. Not ever.” She lit another and stared at the gold lighter as though she were seeing it for the first time. “I should never have gone to the North. But I did and . . . too much happened there. Too much hatred. And death.” She sighed and shook her head briskly. “No. I’ll never go back to Ireland.”
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    â€œSay, do you like Sterne?” she said.
    â€œAh . . . funny you should mention him.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI haven’t the slightest idea who you’re talking about.”
    â€œSterne,” she said, “the writer.”
    â€œOh. That Sterne.”
    â€œI’ve always had this deep intuition that I would get on well with any man who had a fondness for Sterne, Trollope, and