Chapter 3
Dr. Grossman was furious when he phoned Rita the next morning:
"Miss Lyons, you faithfully promised to come up to my office yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that."
"Even when I feel good?"
"That is not the point, Miss Lyons. These pills ... this is all so experimental, and we have to know what is happening to you."
"Is something supposed to happen?"
He was losing his patience. "Miss Lyons, please understand. These pills could have some undesirable side effects. We don't know. But we have to run laboratory control checks, encephalograms."
Feeling too happy to take anything very seriously, Rita said:
"It sounds exciting."
"You don't understand what I'm trying to say, do you? You think this is a big joke...."
"Doctor...."
"Suppose toxemia arises. Suppose, as a result of these pills, we have an accumulation of toxic by-products. What then?"
"You drive a hard bargain, doctor."
"I am only asking for some co-operation, Miss Lyons. If we are to learn what the drug can do, we must be able to see the patient."
Rita wondered if Dr. Grossman wasn't dramatizing things a bit.
"Could this examination wait one more day? I've a million things to do today."
"I'd prefer not," he said.
She debated with herself briefly; then, because he was so persistent, because she felt no real animosity ' toward him, she agreed to be in his office within the hour.
She swallowed two of his pills; a few minutes later felt devilish and light-headed. She selected a bright-red dress to wear to his office. It was garishly tight and in a fit of mischief, she decided not wear any underclothes, the rationalization being: Why wear so many clothes to a doctor's office; the first thing he does is take them off!
Dr. Grossman's office was not as luxurious as one might have imagined; especially, since his trade, for the most part, was made up of Temple City's higher echelon: specifically, society's hypochondrical wives. Rita was the lone exception.
His office was on a lower floor of a less than impressive downtown mercantile building. The carpeting was adequate no more than that and his medical certificates, somewhat yellowed with age, hung from walls of an ambiguous green. His plain glass-topped desk showed the earmarks of a busy man, but not a neat one. Ledgers, paper work, an assortment of textbooks were everywhere.
Rita greeted him with a zestful smile when she crossed the threshold; and chivalry was not dead: Dr. Grossman was instantly up and out of his ancient swivel chair, smiling politely, gesturing to a place beside his desk.
"I'm glad you were finally able to come down," he said, creaking back to the swivel chair; and then his round rabbit-like eyes blinked rapidly: a tardy response to Rita's flaming-red dress and the fact that she wore nothing beneath it.
She wondered if he would scold her for not keeping the earlier appointments and she hoped not. She rather liked him, this pudgy little man with the rabbit-like eyes, but it was this amusing roundness and homey affable manner that made him so un-like the doctors she'd known;-likewise, so difficult to take seriously. He was, she imagined, much like some great old codger one would find sprawled, in front of a whistle stop railway junction, a peaceful loner dedicated to the passing of time and trains. Yet, in his field, they came no better.
And now, with a grain of mischief in her marvelous dark eyes, Rita said:
"Do I look sick?"
A sense of amusement reached the corners of his mouth. He blinked rapidly, not missing the spectacular silver shoes, nor the abbreviated hemline, and he said: "You couldn't possibly look better."
"And is that a clinical observation," she said mischievously, "or are you attaining the 'dangerous age?"
He pressed his fingertips together to form a church steeple. Meditation came as a wry smile, and he replied: "I'm beyond the 'dangerous age', as you put it, but...." He looked into her eyes. " ... the compliment still stands. You couldn't possibly look better."
"Thank you."
"Do you feel different?"
"Quite."
"In what way."
"All ways."
"And suppose you tell me."
"Well...." And there was so much to tell, so much to thank him for. No more depression or anxiety; fears she had none; life was rich with meaning. "...and if I sound like a religious fanatic, I don't mean to. But since I began taking those pills...."
"You'll make an excellent testimonial, Miss Lyons. You seem capable of fighting wild bulls and Bengal tigers."
"And wolves," she added with a cynical smile.
"Which brings us to another issue," he said, bending over his ledger. "How is your sex life? Any changes."
She felt the quick return of mischief. "My sex life is lousy. How's yours?"
He cleared his throat, a stall more than anything else, and he said:
"Shall we try to be serious?"
She apologized for her lightness, tried to match the sudden solemnity he wore, and told him she'd been too busy with plans for the new store to worry about sex.
"Would you welcome a sexual relationship."
"Welcome?"
"Yes. That is, do you look forward to it?"
"Well ... I don't know. I never thought of it."
"Think of it now. Suppose you were out on a date with someone you were especially fond of. If the situation warranted it, would you consent to having intercourse?"
The speed of her response surprised her. She said: "Why not?"
Dr. Grossman seemed pleased. He made a note in his ledger.
"Why did I say that?" she asked him, suddenly puzzled.
He smiled. "And why not? It's the change we've been seeking. Before...." And he looked up from the ledger. "...before, if you remember, you were deathly afraid of sex. You thought of it as something dirty. You were a prude to a degree that was actually abnormal."
"And now I'm a fallen woman?" she asked, rather than stated.
"Hardly." He reached to his desk for a crumpled pack of cigarettes. "In these times, premarital intercourse is no longer the bogey man it used to be. That isn't to say that I'd encourage indiscriminate love-making, but neither can we go against Nature. The human body has certain reproductive urges that occasionally require an outlet. And if you constantly stifle those outlets ... which is what you were doing ... then we're building toward an explosion. In layman's terminology, Miss Lyons, abstinence is sometimes a quick road to the nut farm."
Rita laughed. "Was I that bad?"
"You were on your way."
"And now?"
He set down his pencil, leaned back in his chair. His thick pudgy fingers formed a new church steeple, and he said:
"I don't know. It's too early. And the thing that worries me...." And, of course, Dr. Grossman would always worry about something, Rita thought. He was a born worrier. "...the thing that worries me," he went on, "is the possibility of reversal."
Rita didn't understand.
"Everything about you has been changed by the miracle of drugs. We have attained opposites. Before, you were weak; now you are strong. You have gone from introvert to extrovert, from a weak insecure woman to a voluble outward one. Exactly the opposite."
"But wasn't that the idea?"
"Yes. Yes, of course. But the thing that worries me ... and this is what I was getting at ... if chemo-therapeutics can reverse one's character traits, who is to say it cannot also reverse the polarity of one's sexual desires?"
Rita shot him a puzzled glance. She didn't understand what he was trying to say.
"Put it this way, Miss Lyons: A woman normally desires the opposite sex. However, since Hypothalmic-322 can apparently reverse character traits, how do we know that it won't reverse...."
"You're kidding!" Rita bolted upright in her chair. "You mean...."
"I didn't mean to alarm you. I was only advancing a hypothesis."
She laughed. "You don't alarm me, doctor. You amuse me." She smoothed down her dress. "Do I look like a queer?"
His rabbit-like eyes pounced on the contour of her thinly imprisoned breasts. "Not in the least. But I am not concerned with outward appearances. I'm more deeply concerned with your inner feelings."
"Well if you think...."
"I don't think anything ... not yet. Try to understand, though, that this drug, like all new drugs, has side-effects that we know nothing about. And if we are aware of such side-effects as the one I hinted about, then we can take preventative measures to offset it."
"And you think that might happen. You think I might get an itching for girls?"
Some of his cherubic good humor returned. He departed from the serious vein of the conversation, and said:
"At the moment, that appears most un-likely." His warm eyes took in an unethical appraisal of her exposed thighs.
"Any more questions?" Rita asked, making no effort to lower her dress.
"A few," he said. "We'll cover them after the tests." He nodded to the laboratory behind his office.
With a fit of sudden daring, Rita came to her feet and peeled off her dress. A warmth spread through her loins. Except for the silver high heeled shoes, she was naked.
"I'm ready for your testing, doctor."
It had all happened so fast that Dr. Grossman had no chance to protest. Professional composure was lost. He was speechless.
Rita wiggled toward his laboratory. Mischief flooded her body, her speech.
"...and don't forget your stethoscope, doctor. You may need it."