The Man With The Wine-Stained Face page 2

The Boston Fiction Festival

The Man With the Wine-Stained Face

Jeff Dougherty

About to burst with incredulous rage, he grilled the doctor: “What the hell went wrong? This cannot be permanent.” The man sat across the café table from his friend, a doctor, whose gym bag hung on the back of his wrought iron chair. The doctor didn’t realize it, but the top-of-the-line, cobalt-blue water bottle, he filled earlier with tap water, was now almost empty. He had carelessly tossed it into his gym bag as he fumbled with his keys while exiting his heavily-mortgaged duplex. The water was leaking into the leather bag that held his now dripping wet designer workout clothes that he charged at Nieman Marcus the day before.

A small puddle formed on the floor beneath the doctor, as he explained to the man with the wine-stained face how mystified he was by the strange reaction the experimental steroid induced. Several weeks before, when the stain first appeared, the doctor asked around and learned of an ointment that might diminish the ugly stain, but using it posed considerable risks: hair loss, substantial weight gain, and impotence, risks the man with the wine-stained face was unwilling to take.

“No other patient has experienced such a unfortunate side effect.” But then, that’s what drug trials are for, the doctor thought to himself. He conveniently forgot that this was his own informal drug trial based on a theory he’d once skimmed in a mens’ magazine.