"But what about ..." Lucius´s words became a bit halting. "What about the ... I´m sorry, but I´m afraid I still don´t know how to discuss certain things with a lady present."
"Then pretend one isn´t" Sara said, a bit impatiently.
"Well," Lucius went on, no more comfortably, "what about the focus on the ... buttocks?"
"Ah, yes," Kreizler answered. "Part of the original story, do we think? Or a twist of our man´s invention?"
"Uhhh..." I droned, having thought of something but, like Lucius, unsure of how to phrase it in front of a woman. "The, uh ... the ... references, not only to dirt, but to ... fecal matter ..."
"The word he uses is "shit"," Sara said bluntly, and everyone in the room, including Kreizler, seemed to spring a few inches off the floor for a second or two. "Honestly, gentlemen," Sara commented with some disdain. "If I´d known you were all so modest I´d have stuck to secretarial work."
"Who´s modest?" I demanded ... not one of my stronger retorts.
Sara frowned at me, "You, John Shuyler Moore. I happen to know that you have, on occasion, paid members of the female sex to spend intimate moments with you ... I suppose they were strangers to that kind of language?"
"No," I protested, aware that my face was a bright red beacon. "But they weren´t ... weren´t ..."
"Weren´t?" Sara asked sternly.
"Weren´t ... well, ladies!"
At that Sara stood up, put one hand to a hip and with the other produced her derringer from some nether region of her dress. "I would like to warn you all right now," she said tightly, "that the next man who uses the word "lady" in that context and in my presence, will be shitting from a new and artificially manufactured hole in his gut."
I like Sara.
10
2
 - Caleb Carr, Edward Herrmann)
