It was a four hour drive down bleak turnpikes, turnpikes bleak because the night was still upon them; a four hour drive of uncomfortable phrases and strained laughs.

"Hope everything comes out allright," said he.

"Fuck you," said she.

"Not again, please."

"You can't laugh."

"If one doesn't laugh, one goes insane."

She was silent. The sun rose over the upstate hills.

MONSEY MEDICAL CLINIC stands, rough wood shingled, in a kosher neighborhood which was able to fight the building with principle but not with capital. It is an obscene building, obscene in its newness, obscene because even in its newness and wealth, it brought disgrace to the slum neighborhood. Inside, it smelled like a veterinarian's.

"If we park here, they may tow your car."

"Yes," said she, "they may."

The waiting room was small and from couch to couch, filled. There were ladies with nervous lovers; ladies with the makeup and hairstyles of streetwalkers, bored, as if this was but one weekly visit among many; ladies middle aged and unmarried, with sad eyes, perhaps realizing they were losing the strings which bound their lovers: young girls, just eighteen, loud and obnoxious, travelling in hordes, cheering the one in trouble and "we hitched from Boston, only took us four hours," said to no one in particular. There were ladies married, too old to bear the children, frightened, and ladies, twenty or twenty-one, trancelike, their emotion displaced. One by one, the ladies left, going into the small room to surrender the necessary data and pay the money.

"You pays your money and you takes your chances." he thought.

THE OPERATION took only eight minutes. Eight minutes to undo what twenty minutes did. "It's a fair price," thought he. The recovery took up to three hours.

He read the magazines, leafed through a photo history of the Clinic, "Monsey Medical Center was founded in...And here is our driver. He transports patients to and from LaGuardia Airport." The picture of the driver was missing. His bus was there, but he was gone. "Probably wrecked," thought he. There was a poster on the wall; it read, "Would you be more careful, if it happened to you?" It had a picture of a young man above the caption, his shirt stuffed with pillows. Thought he, "What can one expect from doctors who look between women's legs all day."

Time moved slowly. The young man across from him traded magazines. This man wanted to talk, but he couldn't bring himself to.