The MacGuffin Read Online Free PDF Page B

her prepare it, grinning, moving his lips) through the history of the Sunni-Shiite discord, telling them about Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali, Ali’s kid, Hussein, the Imam’s martyrdom by the troops at Karbala, the enmity between the Shiites and Abdul Wahhab. To Druff, already lost, the whole thing sounding a little like the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys. She’d delivered the information neutrally, with a sort of willful dispassion, though Druff guessed at once—the chador was a clue—she was full-blooded Shiite.
    “Well,” Druff said when she’d finished and looked toward him for a decision on the merits, “it all sounds to me like your typical power grab. We see it time and again down at the Hall.”
    “Really?”
    “Time and again. Year in, year out.”
    “Is that so? Really?”
    “Oh yeah. Sunrise, sunset.”
    (Well, Nun of the World. She’d been standing during her discourse, backlit by a low-standing chrome high-intensity lamp. He could see her shape where it came away from her garment as if the chador were an X-ray photograph. She wasn’t wearing underwear. He saw Shiite snatch. Mikey beamed, and the commissioner wondered if his son might not have had a hand in that, too.)
    “Perhaps you’d care for some candy, Su’ad,” Rose Helen suggested.
    “No,” she said. “Thank you, but it is forbidden. There are often liqueurs in American candies. A Muslim may not eat them.”
    “This is a Hershey’s,” his wife said. “All it has is almonds.”
    Su’ad smiled but shook her head. Indeed, she seemed to take a sort of delight in turning down all the Druffs’ hospitality, declining whatever was offered as if it were a snare. She turned down their fruit, refused their supper. And, though she agreed to take tea—which she made no move to drink—with them in the living room, she rejected the comfortable armchair to which his son had shown her and sat instead on a kind of stool.
    They talked (Su’ad drawing him out on the issues) about the national interest, world affairs, the big geopolitical stuff. He tried to tell the girl he was merely a humble City Commissioner of Streets. Su’ad would have none of it and dismissed his demurrers as if his modesty were only more Druff hospitality—poisoned grapes, tainted chocolate. There was just so much Druff would take, but when the young Lebanese rose from her stool and, looking like some feral Mother Courage, resumed her plantigrade in front of the lamp, he relented and agreed to take a few more questions. Druff, his mind on automatic while his glands took notes—he thought he could make out thighs, bush, and, when she turned, the heavy, flowing principle of breasts—drew upon the various white papers of his imagination for his answers, from the presidential trial balloons he’d floated on taxpayers’ time in his office, from his appearances on “Meet the Press,” “MacNeil/Lehrer,” “Face the Nation,” diplomatic, vague as the best of them, forceful as any, evasive as most. While discussing some options which might lead to a possible solution to the problem of the West Bank, he felt an unaccustomed erection stir in his pants and sit in his lap and Druff brought the press conference to an end.
    Mikey was beaming at all of them now, at Su’ad for her tricky questions, at Druff for, well—who knew? It could have been anything—the hard-on insinuated into his dad’s pants or the way the commissioner had sidestepped Su’ad’s earnest inquiries. He might even have been beaming at Rose Helen for the drama he’d introduced into their living room. (All three had ringside seats at the shadow show.)
    The second time his son brought her over she stayed the night, sleeping with Mikey in his bed. Druff made a mental note about the gaucheness, the erratic behavior of foreigners on the other guy’s turf. (This might turn out to be useful, he thought, the next time he scheduled a summit conference.) No, but really, he thought, there is something