It was my post-college girlfriend who introduced me to Avital. She was seeing Avital herself. From my apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I took the F train down to Midwood in south Brooklyn and walked past rows of low-slung homes until I reached hers. I used the below-ground entrance, as I’d been told.
Avital herself answered the door. (Most of the names here have been changed.) She wore sneakers, a below-the-knee skirt and a wig. She kept her right hand out of the way so I wouldn’t try to shake it. Behind her was a suburban-style basement converted into a kind of doctor’s office, with a treatment room off the main hallway. Inside, I removed my shirt and sat on a medical table laid with exam-table paper.
