“Fornication pants!” Young shouted.
Sam froze, unsure he’d heard the man correctly, unsure whether he was witnessing some attempt at humor.
“He is a modern man, Señor Presidente,” the other man said. He was a heavy black man, completely bald and clean-shaven but for a little sharp spike of graying hair beneath his lower lip, and he wore a careful smile on his face.
“That doesn’t give him liberty to seduce my daughters,” Young barked, “no matter how convenient he, or they, might find the unbuttoning of his pants!”
“I… I…” Sam found himself stuttering, an affliction from which he hadn’t realized he suffered. He swallowed hard, to get rid of the fragmented sentences, and tried again. “I hadn’t realized that Mr. Levi-Strauss’s trousers were so potent,” he essayed a disarming joke. “Will it put you more at your ease if I remove them?”
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