Rosanna Armendariz
 

 
            I bump into Harvey, my gynecologist, at El Paso Gourmet Foods, during lunch.  He’s wearing a baby carrier with his infant daughter strapped to his back.  “How’s the job search going?” he asks.

            During my last exam, I told him that I was looking to change careers, from acting to something else.  Since then, my job search hasn’t been going well and I’m about to tell him this when his cell phone rings.  He raises his pointer finger, signaling me to wait.  “No, darling,” he says, I imagine to his wife.  “Liddy Dole is most certainly a conservative.”  He looks at me and makes a face to suggest his wife is stupid.  “I don’t care if she wears pink stilettos,” he says.  “She’s still a conservative, just like her old man, an extension of him really—the appendage he lost in the war.”  He clicks his phone closed.  “She’s rather naïve about politics,” he explains. 

            I look at Harvey’s baby girl, watching us quietly from his back.  “She’s not at all fussy,” I say. 

            “I have a calming effect on women.”  He winks, implying that he can calm me down, too.  Then he reaches for me, tries to touch my arm, but I back away. 

I look at his daughter taking everything in with her big blue eyes.  Twenty years from now, she’ll still be riding Harvey’s back, jabbing him in the flanks with stilettos sharp as spurs.