It is not a trifling question, Doctor. If she were one of those women who wrinkles her skirt up till it presses in on her like an old strait jacket, her panties locking one knee to the other, and then proceeds to loosen a gush as narrow and miserly as those faces you operate, if she were one of those who wants to protect herself from the drafts of air and the eyes in the wallpaper, if she had been one of those, I wanted nothing to do with her. I required openness: getting rid of her skirt with a kick, tossing the panties away as if she would never use them again, absolutely delighted with the fluids that were about to drop from her body. I required her without fear. To contemplate how a woman lets go on the toilet seat is one of the best ways, though not the only way, to avoid making a mistake with her. In Oriana’s case, destiny—or at least destiny with the sham name of Patricia—had offered me the perfect possibility of confirming that my intuition about her was correct. She had been banished to my own bathroom, no less, to await our decisions about her immediate future.
