“Harry, you’re healthy as a horse.”
That’s what my doctor was saying as I buttoned my shirt and climbed off the table. “But I’m glad you came in. Your ticker’s sound as a dollar but I’m worried about your testosterone level. That sudden growth a hair on your back and chest, I mean. Have you been taking something?”
“You mean like roids? Not deliberately, but I’ve been worrying about artificial ingredients. You know, the hormones they put in food these days. That stuff can’t be good for you.”
“Well, that’s true, but you’d have to eat the equivalent of an entire adult human to ingest enough hormones to make you really sick, at one sitting that is. The long-term effects aren’t something they’ve studied conclusively but I suppose you’re right to be concerned. These days…”
“Anything could happen, right, doc?”
The old codger laughed, but it was funny him using the analogy of eating somebody. I wondered what brought that on. Still, he was a doctor, not a barber. His nurse however was a beautiful young Indian woman who stared at me on the way in and whose eyes now followed me as I walked past her out through the waiting room.
“Mister Mills, would you like to make another appointment?”
I stopped and turned. The voice had the southern Asian lilt that sounded like singing, a beautiful female tenor that caught your ear and stuck with you long afterwards, like the melody of a pleasant tune.
“No, Avinda. Doc said I’m as right as rain. A real stallion, so I guess I won’t have to come back for a while.”
I went to the desk and looked into her piercing brown eyes as she gazed up at me from the desk.
“Than I suppose I shant see you for a while.”
I shrugged, “Guess not.”
Avinda was the kind of girl it was easy to get a crush on, but rather than add my name to what was certainly a very long list of *******, I preferred to ignore my impulse and just left.
It was early enough for the day to be young and I strolled along rather casually, not troubling myself with disturbing thoughts. I was already disturbed. I’d established that, so there was no need to beat the angst into the ground. I did feel conspicuously freer. I didn’t care if others around me saw me as a wild man. I picked up the New York Times and went into a coffee shop. I wanted meat, needless to say. The waitress was a plucky young Greek. She spoke good English but was clearly just off the boat.
The perfume of her body was a rancid smog of body odor and deodorizing chemicals. I could almost taste them in my mouth, the sweetness and the poison. She had probably bathed earlier but the summer heat made her sweat like a pig, or a Greek.
“Lemme get two orders of sausage and ham. No, make it three.”
She was only momentarily confused, a sharp cookie this one, and she picked up on my scent too. She sniffed around me like dog with its nose to the ground even as I felt the ground opening beneath me. I was sitting down and my head began to spin. I got dizzy and held back the nausea; keeping my seat but my eyes watered, pleading sickness. She ran and brought me a glass of water. Not good, I’m thinking, and lumber to my feet out the door, back onto the bright sunlit street. She came out behind me. “What is it?” she asked with genuine concern.
I whipped around to face her. I could see through her. I knew what she was.
“You’re like me.”
She looked puzzled like she hadn’t gotten that far in school.
“Do you know what I am?” she asked shyly.
“Yes, I think I do. What do you do when the moon comes up?”
“I—I hunt.”
“Yes. That’s what I do too. How did you get this way?”
Her eyes met the ground and her mother, or boss or whoever, her larger spitting image and fifty years older came out of the place looking angry and shooed an apron at the girl as if she were a pariah. I took offence and stepped between the old lady and the girl just as rudely.
“Look granny, the girl’s talkin’ to me. You got a problem with that, you take it up with me, see? Leave her alone.”
The old lady stood her ground, looking past me. “You! Fired!”
That was that. That’s how I met Gloria.