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mirror. She was a
tall, elegant girl, dressed in a low broderie-anglaise dress the color of
buttermilk, which showed off her deep-tanned shoulders and her soft cleavage.
Her brunette hair, streaked with subtle tints, was brushed back from her face
in fashionable curls. She had unnusual, asymmetrical features – a slight squint
in her hazel eyes and pouting lips that made you think she was cross. At the
moment, she was cross.
    ‘Do you have to
drive over every pothole and bump?’ she said, as her lipstick jolted up over
her lip.
    Dr. Petrie
grinned. ‘It’s a hobby of mine,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It’s called “Getting Your
Girlfriend to Push Her Lipstick Up Her Nose”.’
    Adelaide patted
her mouth with a pink tissue. ‘You’re such a laugh, aren’t you. What time are we supposed to pickup Priscilla?’
    Dr. Petrie
checked his watch. ‘Ten minutes. But I like to go a little early. Margaret has
a habit of making her wait outside the house.’
    ‘I don’t know
why you stand for it,’ said Adelaide tartly, crossing her long brown legs.
    Dr. Petrie
shrugged.
    ‘If I was you,’
said Adelaide, ‘I’d march right in there and beat the living shit out of
Margaret. And that flea-bitten dog of hers.’
    Dr. Petrie glanced
across at Adelaide and smiled a resigned smile. ‘If you’d paid out as much
money as I have – just to get free from a wife you didn’t want any more – then
you’d be quite satisfied with paying your alimony, seeing your kid, and keeping
your mouth shut,’ he said gently.
    Adelaide looked
sulky. ‘I still think you ought to break the door down and smash her into a
pulp,’ she said, with emphatic, youthful venom.
    Dr. Petrie
swung the Lincoln left into Collins Avenue. ‘That’s what I like about you,’ he
said. ‘You’re so shy and ladylike.’
    He switched on
the car radio. There was a burst of music, and then someone started talking
about this year’s unusual tides and weather conditions, and the strange flotsam
and jetsam that was being washed up on the shores of the East Coast. A
coastguard and a medical officer were discussing the appearance of unsavory
bits and pieces around Barnes Sound and Old Rhodes Key.
    ‘I’m not
prepared right now to identify this washed-up material,’ said the medical
officer, ‘but we have had complaints that it contains raw sewage, in the shape
of sanitary napkins, faecal matter and diapers. We have no idea where the
material is coming from, but we believe it to be a completely isolated
incident.’
    Adelaide
promptly switched the car radio off. ‘We’re just about to have dinner,’ she
protested. ‘The last thing I want to hear about is sewage.’
    Dr. Petrie
glanced in his mirror and pulled out to overtake a slow-moving truck. ‘One of
my patients complained this morning... She said she went down for a swim, and
found her whole beach smothered in shit.’
    ‘Oh, Jesus,’
said Adelaide, wrinkling up her nose.
    Dr. Petrie
grinned. ‘It’s pretty revolting, isn’t it? Maybe we’re learning that what the
Bible said was right. Throw your sewage on to the waters, and it shall come
back to you.’
    ‘I don’t think
that’s funny,’ said Adelaide. ‘This is supposed to be the great American
resort. I make my living out of people coming down here and playing tennis and
swimming and having a good time. Who’s going to come down here to paddle in
diapers and sanitary napkins?’
    Dr. Petrie
shrugged. ‘Well, it hasn’t killed anyone yet.’
    ‘How do you
know? They might have swum out there and sunk without trace.’
    ‘Listen,’ said
Dr. Petrie, ‘more people die from bad food in restaurants than ever die of
pollution in the sea. You get uneducated kitchen staff who don’t wash their hands, and before you know where you are, you’ve got yourself
a king-size dose of hepatitis.’
    ‘Leonard,
darling,’ said Adelaide, acidly, ‘I wish you wouldn’t play doctors all the
time.
    For once, I
wish I was cooking my own