into kotaom : a novel by david faylin | [home]
Dr. Dairine Birch. HoD Awaits You.
“You’re my guest. And I do know how to treat my guests.” She was unwashed, infection-reeking but entrancingly pretty underneath the stains. Her voice was chirpy and broken like an old chorister but she had the precise elocution of a gentlewoman. She led him into the hut. The smell of urine hung like moulds. Ten beds, plainly slept in, comprised the accommodation. A door had her nameplate on it: Dairine Birch – Director of Medical Services. “My office. Palatial-filthy one might say; dignified-insanitary like the hats atop greasy politicians.”
It was not the unappealing ambience of the room that made him judder so much as the unappealing déshabille of his host and her inexplicably high self-regard. Though her déshabille was almost the least of her unbecoming traits. Her hair was long but tangled and unwashed, and in front of him she fattened her lips with severe red and forced her cheeks with rouge like a wooden puppet.
[the above is an excerpt from Into Kotaom]
