Some CD in the player this morning, some heavy-duty band; me wondering just how loud will this thing go. Stereos used to go up to 10. This goes way past. 10 on this is barely audible. 10 is not good enough for us anymore. 15 is the default “mute”. The women in my life start making noises when I turn it past around 26, noises like, loud enough. Or, not that CD again. Nevertheless, 32 is minimum listening level. Just how high will it go, I wonder, now that the car is empty but for me? It goes way past 50 I’m sure. Maybe there is no end to the scale. An infinitely loud car stereo brought to you by Blaupunkt. The woofers start flapping and saying Uncle around 44, depending on how much bass the band is using. There is, surely, a sonic level beyond which one would need some sort of auxilliary amplification. A level beyond which so much energy would be drained from the car’s system that it would decelerate until it was ultimately just crawling along the freeway going THUNK-THUNK-THUNK with a long line of cars behind it. Maybe that’s what that senior citizen was doing this morning. Testing his stereo.

It’s the same with people. I dated a perfect woman for a while. She was a 10. A genius, for one thing, and a body like a Playboy Bunny for another thing. So, except for my wife, she was the closest thing to a 10 ever to whisper my name, until one began subtracting the hidden deficits, like her husband was getting out of prison soon, she smoked menthols and wore false eyelashes that resembled gothic centipedes. Also she thought a meal wasn’t a real meal unless it included Brussels sprouts, no offense Belgium. But she was what she was.

Now that is insufficient. Now one must inject various substances into the face to puff this up and paralyze that. Thread golden wires in here and so on until everyone eventually converges.

I thought I’d heard everything until I met Brandy. I was driving a diplomat somewhere and waiting outside a hotel she was just leaving. She asked me for a ride and I shook my head. “Sorry, I’m already waiting to pick up a guy,” I said.

She looked at her watch. “That’s okay. It’s too late now anyway.” She lit up a cigarette and leaned against my Mercedes and blew smoke straight up. She held her pack of menthols in my direction and I politely declined.

“They go in through the mouth now,” she said. “The advantage is it doesn’t leave any scars.”

I looked at her like, what?

“Of course you have a sore throat for a while. Worse than a tonsilectomy.”

“Who goes in through the mouth?” I said.

“You have to go to Brazil for it. It’s not approved anywhere else yet. But it works. Just look at me. I know you were looking. Does it work or does it work?” And right there in front of this posh hotel, just around the corner from one of Vienna’s busiest streets, she unbuttoned her ankle-length fur coat. She was stark naked underneath. Her hairless body reminded me of one of those smooth white grubs various natives roast, but it was perfect, like she said. Pointing out her features, she reminded me of a luxury car salesman. “Of course as long as they’re going in, I thought, I’ll have them do the rib reduction and not only the breast replacement.” She had a tiny waist. “I had them take out my appendix while they were at it, and correct my navel. Look, no scars anywhere. None in the armpits, none around the nipples, none underneath, see for yourself.”

“Do a lot of people do that?” I asked.

She was digging in her purse, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth and she just nodded. She removed her hand from her purse and waved something small and silver at me. “Come here and look for yourself.” She handed me what turned out to be a dental mirror and opened her mouth wide. I held the mirror inside her mouth and peered down her throat. Sure enough, there was a fine white scar.

“Endoscopic cosmetic surgery. If you could buy stock in it you could retire tomorrow, it’s the coming thing.”

“You run around with this in your purse all the time?” I returned her mirror.

“I’m a dental hygienist,” she said. “Look.” Her purse was full of sharp metal probes and scrapers, and fluoride foams in assorted flavors, tubes of flavored anaesthetic gels; she had various toothbrushes and rubber-tipped picks, latex gloves and plastic bibs.

I was about to ask her for her card, but then my diplomat came out and I had to go.