The waiting room was filled with women who avoided looking at one another. They looked down at the dusty floor, at the tips of their shoes, at the dirty wall of undefinable color. (Why is it that these doctors who earn so much money always have such shabby offices? Maybe he won’t even wear a lab coat and he probably has dirty fingernails.) They were all so discreet and dressed so self-effacingly, they could slip in anywhere without anyone noticing them. Maybe they had received the same advice she had: He determines the price based on your clothing. Besides, the other women were no business of hers. Couldn’t she drop her habit of concerning herself with everyone and everything around her, just this once? No. She couldn’t bring the seriousness of the situation into focus. Was it all that serious after all? In any case it wasn’t any worse for her than for the others. Behind each of these women was the shadow of a man: a tired husband who toiled for a throng of children, and whose income couldn’t bear the strain of another child; a disloyal chap with pomaded hair who was already a thing of the past, an ephemeral, hasty tryst that had little to do with love; a student who was loved but too young, who was now pacing outside on the sidewalk, teetering between hope and fear; a carefree, superficial guy who had ‘found an address’ and bought a way out of the predicament he had gotten himself into; or one who had moved away from the city and left his difficult burden here like a piece of forgotten furniture; at any rate a man, a trap, a careless, costly experience, maybe the first one –

There was no rush to get inside the closed door, which every now and then was opened from the inside by a young woman, who, quickly and without looking at anyone, left the sad waiting room, relieved or not, to slip back into the afternoon’s noisy rush hour traffic, down below on the other side of the murky windows.