it in his pocket.
In the elevator going down, he shares the car with a woman and her two small children, but they get off on the sixth floor, where the building has a play area for children. Once he is alone, he takes his prize out of his pocket and devours the plump hamster in four quick bites. It is easily and without question the most delicious thing he has ever tasted.
It’s called shame for a reason. Despite having many friends, as well as her sister, Cynthia, back in San Francisco, her mother, dear cousins, and colleagues, there is no one to whom Leslie dares confide the anguish she is experiencing over her increasing and inexorable furriness.
Her obstetrician, Dr. William Yost, examining her routinely, seems stubbornly unwilling to admit that anything is out of the ordinary. Yost is a fleshy, nervous man who wears a toupee that looks as if he bought it at a yard sale. His breath is bright and minty with mouthwash, though beneath that smell is the smoky trace of the cigarette he sneaked right before limping into the examination room.
“Oh, these things happen,” Yost says as Leslie, in her paper gown, points out the swaths of fur inexorably growing everywhere on her body. “The important thing is…” He pats her stomach. “And everything is A-OK. We’re all about the babies here.”
Leslie squints at Yost. He is the second doctor she has seen at Turtle Bay Obstetrics and Wellness. The first, a woman named Dr. Eva Kosloff, an unusually tiny woman with mad blue eyes, was clear from the beginning that the eight doctors who shared this practice also shared the patients and that Dr. Kosloff herself might not be present at the delivery. Glancing down at her clipboard, she’d added, “So you come to us from the great Dr. Kis.” And after saying his name, she seemed to have difficulty making eye contact with Leslie. “Did Dr. K. mention to you that some of the women he works with deliver a bit ahead of schedule?”
“He mentioned nothing of the sort,” Leslie said. “But the sooner the better. Look. I need to do something about this.” She lifted her arm, showed her. “Can you take care of this for me?”
“Not really my field,” Kosloff said, quickly turning to take her leave.
Leslie, usually so good at coming up with solutions to life’s difficulties, is simply paralyzed with self-revulsion, and even finding a dermatologist who might help her is made difficult by her doing it in secret. She trolled the Internet and found a doctor down in Greenwich Village whose office she now sits in, taking her place in the waiting room with two wealthy-looking Indian women in gorgeous saris, both of them chatting amiably while their unibrows expressively rise and fall. Also there is a glum teenager, slim and tall, who could have been a model were it not for a noticeable mustache, and a demure woman in a pantsuit who sits with her knees pressed together and her purse in her lap and who has the sideburns of an Elvis impersonator.
Her cell phone chimes in her purse and she reads the message from her assistant Robert. Are you in the bldg? Jacket proofs are up and they look horrible!!
No, I am not in the building, Leslie thinks. My disgusting self is in the office of a hair-removal specialist, thank you very much.
At last, it is Leslie’s turn to see the doctor, Carole Ann Ryan, a lantern-jawed young woman with a pageboy haircut and oversize glasses with red frames that match her hair. She glances at her clipboard and asks, “So what seems to be the trouble?” though even with most of Leslie’s body covered it is obvious she is struggling with extreme hirsutism.
Leslie’s eyes blaze as she fixes the doctor with a long stare until finally she pulls the tails of her blouse out of her skirt and exposes a torso that is darker and thicker with hair than it was even the day before. Dr. Ryan, despite her extensive acquaintance with scars, boils, eczema, psoriasis, rashes, oozing acne, and cancerous growths,
In the elevator going down, he shares the car with a woman and her two small children, but they get off on the sixth floor, where the building has a play area for children. Once he is alone, he takes his prize out of his pocket and devours the plump hamster in four quick bites. It is easily and without question the most delicious thing he has ever tasted.
It’s called shame for a reason. Despite having many friends, as well as her sister, Cynthia, back in San Francisco, her mother, dear cousins, and colleagues, there is no one to whom Leslie dares confide the anguish she is experiencing over her increasing and inexorable furriness.
Her obstetrician, Dr. William Yost, examining her routinely, seems stubbornly unwilling to admit that anything is out of the ordinary. Yost is a fleshy, nervous man who wears a toupee that looks as if he bought it at a yard sale. His breath is bright and minty with mouthwash, though beneath that smell is the smoky trace of the cigarette he sneaked right before limping into the examination room.
“Oh, these things happen,” Yost says as Leslie, in her paper gown, points out the swaths of fur inexorably growing everywhere on her body. “The important thing is…” He pats her stomach. “And everything is A-OK. We’re all about the babies here.”
Leslie squints at Yost. He is the second doctor she has seen at Turtle Bay Obstetrics and Wellness. The first, a woman named Dr. Eva Kosloff, an unusually tiny woman with mad blue eyes, was clear from the beginning that the eight doctors who shared this practice also shared the patients and that Dr. Kosloff herself might not be present at the delivery. Glancing down at her clipboard, she’d added, “So you come to us from the great Dr. Kis.” And after saying his name, she seemed to have difficulty making eye contact with Leslie. “Did Dr. K. mention to you that some of the women he works with deliver a bit ahead of schedule?”
“He mentioned nothing of the sort,” Leslie said. “But the sooner the better. Look. I need to do something about this.” She lifted her arm, showed her. “Can you take care of this for me?”
“Not really my field,” Kosloff said, quickly turning to take her leave.
Leslie, usually so good at coming up with solutions to life’s difficulties, is simply paralyzed with self-revulsion, and even finding a dermatologist who might help her is made difficult by her doing it in secret. She trolled the Internet and found a doctor down in Greenwich Village whose office she now sits in, taking her place in the waiting room with two wealthy-looking Indian women in gorgeous saris, both of them chatting amiably while their unibrows expressively rise and fall. Also there is a glum teenager, slim and tall, who could have been a model were it not for a noticeable mustache, and a demure woman in a pantsuit who sits with her knees pressed together and her purse in her lap and who has the sideburns of an Elvis impersonator.
Her cell phone chimes in her purse and she reads the message from her assistant Robert. Are you in the bldg? Jacket proofs are up and they look horrible!!
No, I am not in the building, Leslie thinks. My disgusting self is in the office of a hair-removal specialist, thank you very much.
At last, it is Leslie’s turn to see the doctor, Carole Ann Ryan, a lantern-jawed young woman with a pageboy haircut and oversize glasses with red frames that match her hair. She glances at her clipboard and asks, “So what seems to be the trouble?” though even with most of Leslie’s body covered it is obvious she is struggling with extreme hirsutism.
Leslie’s eyes blaze as she fixes the doctor with a long stare until finally she pulls the tails of her blouse out of her skirt and exposes a torso that is darker and thicker with hair than it was even the day before. Dr. Ryan, despite her extensive acquaintance with scars, boils, eczema, psoriasis, rashes, oozing acne, and cancerous growths,
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