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vividness the various problems that could be causing her “condition.” Tumors, aneurisms, a long and horrifying panoply of ailments. And as he spoke he pointed at the big ugly picture on the wall, locating sources of trouble.
    After maybe five minutes of this he said, “Well, let’s have a look.”
    Punchy with fear, Molly repressed her impulse to run out of there, to find the nearest acupuncture clinic, or maybe just a friendly drugstore, with some over-the-counter, proven remedies, and a kindly druggist.
    He looked up her nose and down her throat and into her ears, with his small mirrors and long sharp steel instruments. For about three minutes.
    “Don’t see a thing,” he finished. “We may have to go in there and look.”
    “Go in there?”
    “Surgically. No big deal. I do it every day.”
    “But—”
    “Well, that’s my recommendation. Of course you can get a second opinion.”
    “Of course I will.”
    The nurse glared as Molly left. “Good-bye, Mrs. Steffins.”
    Dave Jacobs had taken to calling Molly every day, just to see how she was, he said. Thus, from the beginning, his roleas potential lover (Molly could not call anyone over fifty a boyfriend) and as doctor were confused. Since she was not feeling well she welcomed all that attention, and also she had to admit to the rise of other feelings about him. To put it most simply, he turned her on. She observed with a horny pleasure the very good shape of his body: tall and lean, broad-shouldered, slender-hipped.
    One day he called and asked if she wanted to take a walk; he had a free couple of hours, it would do her good, he said. They walked from Molly’s house up to Pacific Heights, and back. At every corner, in a protective (or dominating?) way, he took her arm, which led to their holding hands for the last few blocks of the walk. Molly recognized in herself the small rush of specific heat, which she had not felt for some time. Not since Paul. Dave had to get back to his office then, and she wished that he could have stayed. That they could at least have kissed.
    Once inside her house, though, alone, she castigated herself. Did she really want to involve herself with a man whom she did not much like, with whom even the most minor conversations included arguments? They had argued over everything from vitamin C to the Grand Canyon, where Molly had never been and did not much want to go.
    “You’re crazy!” Dave told her.
    “What a horrible person!” she told Dave on the phone, the night of her visit to Dr. Beckle. “Going out of his way to scare me. And keeping me waiting all that time with no apology, ever. I really hated him and so did his nurse. I think it’s an awful office. I think you can tell a lot about doctors from the tone of their offices, how their nurses are.”
    “Good Lord, Molly, I never heard anything so silly. How their girls feel is so totally irrelevant—”
    “Girls! Can’t you even call them nurses? Jesus, Dave. Anyway,why do they try to scare you? Does it have to do with malpractice suits? I just feel so much worse after seeing that guy, I’ll never go back to him.”
    “Whether or not you like the doctor has nothing to do with anything. He probably kept you waiting because he was in surgery.”
    “He could have said that, I’m not really unreasonable. If he’d said he was sorry it would have been okay. Or if he was in surgery the nurse didn’t have to put me in that room for all that time.”
    “Well, I always apologize to patients when I’m late. But its not all that important. You make such a point over manners. That Southern stuff. The point is his competence as a physician.”
    “I can’t stand short men.”
    “Oh for Christ’s sake.”
    Her conversation with Dr. Macklin, in his office, was considerably less heated. More rational and coherent.
    He said, “I’m sorry you had such a bad time. I probably shouldn’t have sent you there. He does overbook and I’ve heard from other patients who didn’t