| but I’m not anymore.” St. John paused long enough to make the secretary uncomfortable. “All right, St. John, I’ll see what I can do.” “Just lean on the SEC.” “I’ll see what I can do.” “It will be good for all investors, Tim. And for your people. Who could be against eliminating unnecessary paperwork?” “I’ll see what I can do.” It was a conversation Abdur Pandit of Kavreen Style would have recognized and keenly appreciated. “Yes, yes!” he might have said, brimming with admiration and envy. “Oh, yes. You Americans are the masters of business, no doubt. It is how I would like to speak to Mr. Vikram Rob, the independent agent who keeps throwing up barriers in front of me. It is how things are done in the capitalist world. It is how business is done. The world is like a sewing machine. It must be kept in good repair; it must be cleaned and oiled, so that it can continue to sew. It doesn’t mean terrible things won’t happen, which are no fault of our own. Catastrophes even, yes. But these have nothing to do with the system. They come like a meteor, from outer space. The fire that happened, I could not have foreseen or prevented it. Oh, it was a terrible thing. I weep for those people who died. But it does not change anything. We know how the world works, do we not? And we do what needs to be done, even when it is |
hands, a voluptuous slurping noise. Then he smelled vanilla as Marlies began working on his chest. She pressed deeply with the heels of her hands and moved out toward his arms as though she were separating his muscles into discrete bundles to be worked on later. He opened his eyes. She stood above him, her face directly over his as she worked. She held the tip of her tongue pressed between her lips in concentration. There were little beads of sweat on her forearms and wrists, and she breathed strongly from the exertion. Her pulse flickered at her throat. She noticed St. John looking. “How is that?” she said. St. John smiled. “Good,” she said. She slid her arms under his shoulders and used his weight to work the shoulders. She took his left upper arm in her strong hands and squeezed and released and squeezed and released it. St. John watched as her body bobbed above him in time with the work her hands were doing. She wore a loose white T-shirt. He could plainly see the contour of her body beneath it. She saw him looking and smiled. St. John smiled back. St. John liked for a massage to merge into sex. And Marlies was generally willing to comply. He closed his eyes. The music she had brought was a seductive melding of orchestra and female voices, with the voices sometimes taking instrumental parts and the instruments, including cellos and accordions, singing as human voices might. The song |
