Portrait: the Saluki-faced Québecoise with the Marathe shrug

texture · STANDING

• When: STANDING physical/biographical profile across the Nov YDAU window.
• What: Poutrincourt arrives in the record already complete: "female prorector Thierry Poutrincourt, freshly showered, long-faced, a non-U.S. citizen, a tall Québecer former Satellite pro in rimless specs and a violetish ski cap." Up close the portrait sharpens — face "long and cavern-cheeked," a career's asymmetry ("Poutrincourt's right forearm was almost twice the size of her left."), specs "like a scary nun's," a "translucent mole" on the long cheek, "more male than anything, long and hard and breastless." Her age surfaces via Avril: the little red confusion-line Avril gets past fifty — "Ms. Poutrincourt gets the same little line, and she's twenty-eight." And her mannerisms carry a pointed resonance: "Her slight shrugs and way of looking elsewhere while speaking were not unlike Rémy Marathe's." — she "always nodded for a while before she replied to anything, as if things had to go through various translation-circuits," and slides among Québecois, textbook French, and a nearly accentless English she mostly keeps in reserve ("Your French is Parisian but possible. Me, mine is Québecois."). Elsewhere she is "Saluki-faced" and, to deLint, just "Terry."