We had a medical suite job going at the time. A two-story building tucked back off the highway under a grove of trees, which included the offices of two gynecologists, three internists and one urologist. Two of the doctors had served in the Peace Corps in Senegal and wanted African art incorporated into their décor. Fortunately, we had some African stuff in storage, including two of those sexy statues—one with an exaggerated penis and another with conical breasts.
“The phallic statues are excellent for the urologist,” I said.
Vera didn’t laugh. In fact, come to think of it, I hadn’t heard her laugh for a couple of days.
“What’s up with you?”
She shook her head. “Later,” she whispered.
“No one’s around. How about now?”
We were hanging blinds in the urologist’s office, so she shut the door.
“That spell works,” she whispered. She looked about to pop a gasket.
“You mean–”
“Yeah. I did it on a tree frog and after that a kitten.”
“You WHAT?”
“Keep it down,” she warned. “I didn’t hurt them or anything. They’re just female now, that’s all.”
“You could tell the frog was male to start with?”
“Chloe did a science project once and I got acquainted with tree frogs. For one thing, if the thumb is larger than the other digits, it’s a male. The females are larger. Anyway, already my newly female frog is growing and her thumb is shrinking. This morning, she measured two and a half inches. By tomorrow, she might be three!”
“Oh my God,” I said. I had to sit down in the doctor’s swivel chair.
“Where did you get the kitten?”
“It’s the neighbor’s. Hey, if they don’t want a female, I’ll take her.”
“I need a Xanax,” I said.
Vera’s face was flushed and her hair seemed to be flying about as if full of static electricity. “The materials aren’t hard to obtain, except maybe one. I finally found some of that in my mother’s old spice rack, though I did use it up. It’s mainly the combination and concentration thing. I already know how to really focus from that meditation class I took last year.”
“I don’t imagine that whoever taught you meditation had in mind your using it for evil spells,” I said.
“No one discipline owns any of the focusing talents,” she snapped. “And who’s to say what I did is evil?”
“What are the ingredients?” I asked; then remembered most of the list. I sat up straight. “Where did you get female hormones? You didn’t sneak into my apartment and steal mine, did you?”
“Oh no, no no,” she said. “You know those pharmaceutical guys that come in here? There’re two of them? I gave the red-haired one a little song and dance and he slipped me some samples of one, and the other one…..” She hesitated.
“No! You stole some out of his case!”
“Well, no biggie,” she said. “He hands them out to the docs like candy. No one missed anything.”
“Okay, not a Xanax,” I said. “I need a martini.”
“You’re being distracted by trivialities. The important thing is, the spell works! All I need to do next is try it long distance, though I did, in effect, do the kitten that way. It was playing in the yard, and…”
“I don’t think this is moral,” I said.
“Really?” she said piercingly. “Imagine how it could revolutionize sex changes! Get the job done without all that trauma and misery!”
“Well, yeah, as long as a person chooses to have one. But that kitten-”
“Oh, phhht, who cares? It’ll grow up female and never know the difference. I didn’t hurt it a bit.” She paused. “But there are certain people I would like…”
I was torn in half. Those old cartoons showing a little angel on someone’s right shoulder and a devil on his left….maybe that isn’t a totally imagined state of affairs. But then Vera had not been exaggerating about how things had been going politically for women and gays and I knew full well what people she was referring to.
“Wait a minute,” I said, brushing off the angel and devil. “I’m pretty sure Melanthe did not employ pharmaceutical hormones in her spells. Certainly not if she performed them all those years ago!”
Vera rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t matter what she used—yams, whatever. She suggested the ovaries of frogs or any small animal. You don’t apply them to the vic…subject; they serve symbolically! I just didn’t feel like killing my new girlie frog!”
“Wow,” I said. “I am so comforted by your high morality.”
Vera fixed me with a steady, hard stare. “Don’t go all holier-than-thou on me. I know perfectly well that you can see the potential of this spell as well as I do. And it’s not like we’d be murdering anyone!”
She had a point. But I worried about my karma. I am very into reincarnation and a sucker for reports from people under deep hypnosis about what happens between lives and our personal responsibility to address past-life karmic issues. Changing the gender of people I can’t stand…well, assuming that there is a spiritual dimension, I couldn’t imagine anyone up there approving of that kind of behavior.
Vera could read my mind.
“It would be for the greater good, Jess. People often have to do questionable things for the benefit of the masses. Look at revolutions, certain wars. I imagine whoever judges us takes the greater good into account.”
Just then the urologist opened his office door and walked in with what I would later learn was a nurse, though at the moment the middle-aged man dressed in navy blue scrubs brought to mind an eccentric surgeon. He was big, beefy and hairy and reminded me of a grizzly bear.
He stuck out his hand and I took it. “Trevor Uffelman,” he said. “And you are?”
I told him. I had the oddest sensation of already knowing him.
“Could you give us a moment?” he asked politely. “Dr. Winetraub and I need to discuss something. Won’t take long.”
I seemed to lose all ability to communicate. Vera stepped in. “Of course,” she said. “We’re just doing the window treatments. They can wait. It is the doctor’s office, after all.”
“I caught that,” she said, once we were in the hall.
“Yeah, I know. Hopeless, so I don’t know why I even let myself feel those things.”
“You never know,” she said.
I loved her for that. She had supported me in everything I’d done or felt for more than two decades. There wasn’t a single other person I could say the same about. Maybe I owed her equal devotion, even when what she wanted was definitely on the shady side. As long as it wasn’t murder, I assured myself.
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