Trust the Saint Read Free Page B

showered themselves by dissatisfied spectators according to the antique custom. The reality and actuality of this wild hypothesis was promptly concretized by a servitor who arrived with two large sheets of plastic and politely but matter-of-factly indicated that they should be tucked on like oversized bibs before even ordering anything spillable.
    “I shall drink beer all the time,” Eva said rather primly. “It’s the cheapest thing to order, and it’s always safe even in the worst places, and we shouldn’t get drunk in the first dive or two we try.”
    “I suppose that’s a sound approach,” said the Saint, with respect.
    The superannuated discard of a travelling opera company who had been sentimentally vocalizing on the stage bowed off, with the muted approval of the congregation; a tarpaulin cover was removed from what might have been a shallow orchestra pit, revealing that it had been converted into a kind of wading trough paved with moist brown muck; the spotlights brightened, and two women entered from opposite wings and met in the center of the stage, draped in vivid satin robes which they threw off as the loudspeakers identified them. Underneath they wore only bikini trunks and their own exuberant flesh and glands. The formalities having been complied with, they seized each other by the hair and fell into the tank with a juicy splash.
    Thereafter it was much the same as the traditional ballet popularized in the commercial guise of wrestling by hundreds of artistes of the grunt and grimace and groan, except that these performers not only had an opportunity to illustrate the more delicate and sensitive feminine approach but had a shallow quagmire of lusciously textured sludge to do it in. This gave them a few extra vulnerable targets to kick, twist, and gouge, and an additional weapon to bring into play. While one of them was attempting to suffocate the other by grinding her face into the mud, she could suffer the indignity of having her panties pulled down and stuffed with the same goo; and when not so intertwined they could throw gobs of it in each other’s faces, which if inaccurately aimed might splatter the scenery or the onlookers—which explained the spray flecks on the walls and the considerately furnished bibs. By the time this tender choreography had run its course, both the exponents were decently covered from crown to toe with a succulent coating of gunk, and their sex appeal was almost equal to that of two hippopotami emerging from a wallow.
    Simon, dividing his clinical attention between the grappling amazons and Eva, was somewhat nonplussed by her reaction, or the lack of it. She seemed to be neither startled, nor shocked, nor disgusted, nor embarrassed, nor morbidly fascinated, by these revelations of the infinite range of female grace and tenderness. The most you could have said, based on her outward placidity, was that she was mildly amused. It was none of the obvious responses that he would have expected of a woman so bent on experience that she had to pick up a stranger in a bar to facilitate it.
    “Shall we sit out another minuet?” he inquired. “Or should we move on?”
    “I think we should try something else,” she replied with the same demure detachment. “Do you know—you won’t believe me—I’ve never seen a strip-tease?”
    “I believe that can be easily remedied,” he said, with the same gravity.
    The German strip-tease follows much the same pattern as the American original, but with characteristic efficiency it moves much more briskly towards the essential objective, which is that the teaser should strip. In the opinion of many students, this leads to what might be paradoxically called a decent haste in the peeling. The esoteric stimuli of the bump and grind have never enslaved many, addicts in Europe; but to replace that allure the German ecdysiast has the advantage of a law which permits her to expose every last square centimetre of her person provided she does not