THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE Read Online Free PDF Page B

clicked shut her gold-plated lighter and exhaled her first drag. She inched down the window and bit her bottom lip as if appraising the situation.
    'I'm sorry to lay my problems on you, but you did ask .'
    'Well, I'm glad I did. You seem calmer than when you first got in.'
    'Yeah, I guess,' she said reluctantly. She drew on her menthol cigarette and glanced sideways at him. 'So what's with your accent? Like, are you from England?'
    'No. Australia.'
    'Australia.' Her eyes narrowed and the tip of her cigarette flared orange as she sucked on it. He could almost hear the wheels turning in her head. 'Australia,' she repeated. Tendrils of smoke escaped her parted red lips. 'So where is that exactly?'
    Goldman wasn't too surprised by the question. Many Americans were unfamiliar with his home country. Many confused it with Austria; though he supposed this would change once the world became more localized through improved transportation and communication technologies. 'It's, um, close to New Zealand.' That didn't help much. 'It's in the Southern Hemisphere.'
    'Hmm, so you're a long way from home.' She held her Salem menthol at a gracious angle and glanced uneasily at him. 'So how long have you been here then?'
    'Oh, a few years now.'
    Another awkward silence fell between them. After a time Goldman found the courage to ask the question foremost in his mind: 'So tell me, did your, um, boyfriend give you that black eye?'
    She turned again to the passenger window, her reflected face staring out at the failing light. He half-expected a hot-blooded response from her; but after toying with the back of her hair, she faced him and said: 'Yeah, he did ... though he's not the violent type. He wasn't himself at the time.' Her voice lowered. 'He was on cocaine.'
    'Cocaine?' Goldman glanced in the side mirror and flicked the indicator switch to change lanes. 'Must be rich.' Not knowing what else to say.
    'If only,' she said with open derision. 'No, he gets it wholesale from some guy in DC and he ... look I won't go into it.' She curled her lip and crushed her cigarette into the door's ashtray, really mashing it up. 'Anyhow, he's totally fried from the stuff.'
    She gazed through the windshield and Goldman wasn't too surprised when she launched into another disparaging account of her boyfriend's shortcomings.
    '... what gets me is that when I confront him lately about our relationship, he just passes me off with standard answers like: “The only thing that needs to be worked out is your head”. He's so full of himself. And last night was really...'
    Goldman checked the rear-view mirror and tried to keep abreast of her emotional monologue, but her fetching presence only compounded his difficulty, for more than once since her time in the car had his wandering gaze settled upon her shapely legs disappearing into the darkness underneath the dashboard, or equally upon the swell of her breasts as they moved freely under her sweatshirt.
    '... so he was with his work buddies at an anniversary party for the US edition of La Belle . I arrived late, angry he hadn't called me like he said he would ...'
    Hardly versed in matters couture , Goldman nevertheless connected the magazine's title to her striking looks. 'So, you're a model then?'
    'Sure,' she said offhandedly. 'I've worked here, and abroad.' She glanced at a passing Volvo, its chrome fittings agleam with the last light of the sun. 'I've been a model since I was sixteen.'
    He didn't doubt her claim, as her fresh Nordic features had credited him with the impression of her having stepped from the glossy pages of a fashion house's catalogue, or equally from the bright lights and flashing cameras of an internationally accredited catwalk. Her breathy voice, however, soon reclaimed his attention.
    '... well because of that I got out of the car.'
    He looked at the softly lit instrument panel and saw he was low on fuel.
    '... and that's when he hit me and drove off in my Alfa. Can you believe it?'
    'Hmm, sounds