I parked my vehicle and went forward to ring the door bell. Doston sach mein bataun meri dhadkan jor jor se dhadak raha tha, mann mein darr bhi tha, k...isi hogi, kaisi dikhti hogi, koi pakad ke pitega to nahin? Ese ese bure bure khayal aaye, par kisi tarah apne aap ko sambhala aur door bell bajaya. Koi jawab nahin aya. Mann main bahut question mark aate rahe ki budhu to nahin bana rahi thi, sahi address to diya hai na? My heart was beating with full sound. Ek aur bar door bell bajayi, this time. Each nail was lightlyrubbed with a nail file. I looked at my hands, the nails on all 10fingers looked like they were lightly frosted.Next, one-by-one on each fingertip she glued what I though were thelongest talons I had ever seen. After finishing my left hand with thetalon tips, she had me put it up under a warm lamp while she worked onthe other hand. Once both hands were done, she went back to the lefthand and asked ?how long? ? I turned to my girlfriend a few boothsaway, and asked, how long?. . How long had it been? Behind her, the elderly customer made some comment in a pleasant voice, but his words didn't register.The question came back to haunt her all through the morning, and she wondered distantly whether something was wrong. This was her job, her life. She came to work at five-thirty in the morning, waited tables, collected her tips, and went home to her tiny apartment at two-thirty in the afternoon. There she showered, changed clothes and watched television until it was time. Or maybe it was the possibility of stain spotting atop her inner thighs and along the denim's gusset.Torn for attention, my brain stopped functioning; words stuttering to a halt, eyes flicking between Celia and Betty/Beth's approach, my urethra muscles freed of mental constraint. And as Celia pronounces that indeed I am correct in my belief that I am descending into madness Betty/Beth reached a pause point directly before our bench, no more than a dozen strides from our coffee and cake.