The Driver's Seat Read Online Free PDF

time together, a little peaceful time, in a room, just talking, I
could give you some idea of how it works. It’s an idealist’s way of life. I’m hoping
to get the young people of Naples interested in it. I should think there would
be many young people of Naples interested. We’re opening a macrobiotic
restaurant there, you know.’
    Lise
peers behind her again at the staring, sickly man. ‘A strange type,’ she says.
    ‘With a
room behind the public dining hall, a room for strict observers who are on
Regime Seven. Regime Seven is cereals only, very little liquid. You take such a
very little liquid that you can pee only three times a day if you’re a man, two
if you’re a woman. Regime Seven is a very elevated regime in macrobiotics. You
become like a tree. People become what they eat.’
    ‘Do you
become a goat when you eat goat’s cheese?’
    ‘Yes,
you become lean and stringy like a goat. Look at me, I haven’t a spare piece of
fat on my body. I’m not an Enlightenment Leader for nothing.’
    ‘You
must have been eating goat’s cheese,’ she says. ‘This man back here is like a
tree, have you seen him?’
    ‘Behind
the private room for observers of Regime Seven,’ Bill says, ‘there will be
another little room for tranquillity and quiet. It should do well in Naples
once we get the youth movement started. It’s to be called the Yin-Yang Young.
It does well in Denmark. But middle-aged people take the diet too. In the
States many senior citizens are on macrobiotics.’
    ‘The
men in Naples are sexy.’
    ‘On
this diet the Regional Master for Northern Europe recommends one orgasm a day.
At least. In the Mediterranean countries we are still researching that aspect.’
    ‘He’s
afraid of me,’ Lise whispers, indicating with a jerk of her head the man behind
her. ‘Why is everybody afraid of me?’
    ‘What
do you mean? I’m not afraid of you.’ Bill looks round, impatiently, and as if
only to oblige her. He looks away again. ‘Don’t bother with him,’ he says. ‘He’s
a mess.
    Lise
gets up. ‘Excuse me,’ she says, ‘I have to go and wash.’
    ‘See
you come back,’ he says.
    She
passes across him to the aisle, holding in her hand both her hand-bag and the
paperback book she bought at the airport, and as she does so she takes the
opportunity to look carefully at the three people in the row behind, the
ill-looking man, the plump woman and the young girl, who sit without
conversing, as it seems unconnected with each other. Lise stands for a moment
in the aisle, raising the arm on which the hand-bag is slung from the wrist, so
that the paperback, now held between finger and thumb, is visible. She seems to
display it deliberately, as if she is one of those spies one reads about who
effect recognition by pre-arranged signals and who verify their contact with
another agent by holding a certain paper in a special way.
    Bill
looks up at her and says, ‘What’s the matter?’
    She
starts moving forward, at the same time answering Bill: ‘The matter?’
    ‘You
won’t need that book,’ Bill says.
    She looks
at the book in her hand as if wondering where it came from and with a little
laugh hesitates by his side long enough to toss it on to her seat before she
goes up the plane towards the toilets.
    Two
people are waiting in line ahead of her. She takes her place abstractedly,
standing in fact almost even with the row where her first neighbour, the
business man, is sitting. But she does not seem to be aware of him or to care
in the slightest that he glances up at her twice, three times, at first
apprehensively and then, as she continues to ignore him, less so. He turns a
page of his newspaper and folds it conveniently for reading, and reads it
without looking at her again, settling further into his seat with the slight
sigh of one whose visitor has left and who is at last alone.
     
     
    It has turned out that the
sick-looking man is after all connected with the plump woman and the young