The Driver's Seat Read Online Free Page B

snack
composed of salami on lettuce, two green olives, a rolled-up piece of boiled
ham containing a filling of potato salad and a small pickled something, all
laid upon a slice of bread. There is also a round cake, swirled with white and
chocolate cream, and a corner of silver-wrapped processed cheese with biscuits
wrapped in cellophane. An empty plastic coffee cup stands by on each of their
trays.
    Lise
takes from her tray the transparent plastic envelope which contains the
sterilized knife, fork and spoon necessary for the meal. She feels the blade of
the knife. She presses two of her fingers against the prongs of her fork. ‘Not
very sharp,’ she says.
    ‘Who
needs them, anyway?’ says Bill. ‘This is awful food.’
    ‘Oh, it
looks all right. I’m hungry. I only had a cup of coffee for my breakfast. There
wasn’t time.’
    ‘You
can eat mine too,’ says Bill. ‘I stick as far as possible to a very sensible
diet. This stuff is poison, full of toxics and chemicals. It’s far too Yin.’
    ‘I
know,’ said Lise. ‘But considering it’s a snack on a plane —’
    ‘You
know what Yin is?’ he says.
    She
says, ‘Well, sort of …’in a vaguely embarrassed way, ‘but it’s only a
snack, isn’t it?’
    ‘You
understand what Yin is?’
    ‘Well,
something sort of like this — all bitty.’
    ‘No,
Lise,’ he says.
    ‘Well
it’s a kind of slang, isn’t it? You say a thing’s a bit too yin …’; plainly
she is groping.
    ‘Yin,’
says Bill, ‘is the opposite of Yang.’
    She
giggles and, half-rising, starts searching with her eyes for the man who is
still on her mind.
    ‘This
is serious,’ Bill says, pulling her roughly back into her seat. She laughs and
begins to eat.
    ‘Yin
and Yang are philosophies,’ he says. ‘Yin represents space. Its colour is
purple. Its element is water. It is external. That salami is Yin and those
olives are Yin. They are full of toxics. Have you ever heard of macrobiotic
food?’
    ‘No,
what is it?’ she says cutting into the open salami sandwich.
    ‘You’ve
got a lot to learn. Rice, unpolished rice is the basis of macrobiotics. I’m
going to start a centre in Naples next week. It is a cleansing diet.
Physically, mentally and spiritually.’
    ‘I hate
rice,’ she says.
    ‘No,
you only think you do. He who hath ears let him hear.’ He smiles widely towards
her, he breathes into her face and touches her knee. She eats on with
composure. ‘I’m an Enlightenment Leader in the movement,’ he says.
    The
stewardess comes with two long metal pots. ‘Tea or coffee?’ ‘Coffee,’ says
Lise, holding out her plastic cup, her arm stretched in front of Bill. When
this is done, ‘For you, sir?’ says the stewardess.
    Bill
places his hand over his cup and benignly shakes his head.
    ‘Don’t
you want anything to eat, sir?’ says the stewardess, regarding Bill’s
untouched tray.
    ‘No,
thank you,’ says Bill.
    Lise
says, ‘I’ll eat it. Or at least, some of it.’
    The
stewardess passes on to the next row, unconcerned.
    ‘Coffee
is Yin,’ says Bill.
    Lise
looks towards his tray. ‘Are you sure you don’t want that open sandwich? It’s
delicious. I’ll eat it if you don’t want it. After all, it’s paid for, isn’t
it?’
    ‘Help
yourself,’ he says. ‘You’ll soon change your eating habits, though, now that we’ve
got to know each other.’
    ‘Whatever
do you eat when you travel abroad?’ Lise says, exchanging his tray for hers,
retaining only her coffee.
    ‘I
carry my diet with me. I never eat in restaurants and hotels unless I have to.
And if I do, I choose very carefully. I go where I can get a little fish,
maybe, and rice, and perhaps a bit of goat’s cheese. Which are Yang. Cream
cheese — in fact butter, milk, anything that comes from the cow — is too Yin.
You become what you eat. Eat cow and you become cow.
    A hand,
fluttering a sheet of white paper, intervenes from behind them.
    They
turn to see what is being offered. Bill grasps the