Mona Samino

For months, I told people Mona Samino would fix my face. I learned her name at a party when a leather-clad woman with perfect bangs pointed at the mole on the tip of my nose and said, "You'll want to see Mona Samino about that." Mona Samino, she said, was the most skilled plastic surgeon in Chicago.

The woman next to her grinned and said, "Oh, yeah. Mona Samino is a genius. Mona Samino did my dimple."

"What dimple?" I asked, and the woman said, "Exactly."

No stranger had before then felt license to offer such a frank assessment of my face, much less suggest a solution. It was a time in my life when other women seemed to know everything, and I was desperate for a sliver of their wisdom. I went to the bathroom to press putty-colored concealer on the mole, which went on like chalk and seemed only to draw more attention to the thing. I left the bathroom to swallow three bourbons and take myself home.

After that, anywhere I went, if I sensed that people were staring at my nose, I would talk about Mona Samino as if she were a close personal friend. "I see you're looking at my mole," I'd say. "Don't worry. I'm going to see Mona. Mona's the best there is." They smiled. They were glad to know I had a plan.

The mole had appeared overnight when I was in college, at first no bigger than a poppy seed. I scratched it with my fingernail, then tried to make it pop. It scabbed; I left it alone. Gradually, it claimed more and more space on the tip of my nose, so that by the time the bangs woman recommended Mona Samino, it was the size of a chocolate chip.

This was in 1998, before a person could find a stranger with a few keystrokes. I was twenty-seven, a lowly analyst at a big bank, and had just broken up with my girlfriend, a forty-eight-year-old lawyer named Beatrice. Beatrice had spotless, luminous skin and kept her hair in a gray braid down her back. She had high standards for cocktails and wore sharp suits. When, on Lower Wacker, a man in a Volkswagen called us dykes and sped off laughing, Beatrice ran after the car, memorized the plates, and had the man cited for harassment. He had to go to court and pay a fine. Beatrice knew how to get things done.

When we were together, the mole was a matter of debate. Beatrice urged me to see her doctor, a man she visited every two weeks for fillers and peels. From his office, Beatrice brought me brochures; she was worried the mole was cancerous. I was worried it was cancerous, too, and secretly, I loved being worried about; it's how I could tell I was important. But I had a wicked way of dropkicking all Beatrice's well-intentioned concern and advice. She had a lot of opinions about how I might fix myself: take up boxing, learn to cook, go to therapy. I never knew why she dated someone whose every characteristic she wanted to refine, but if I had to guess, it had to do with the same reason people train show dogs.

But nonetheless, no woman had ever looked at me as Beatrice had: like I had potential. Like I could turn into something.

When we broke up, I decided she was wrong about the mole; the mole was fine — distinctive, even. It set my face apart. But then, a week later, in a room full of people I did not know, the bangs woman pointed at my nose.

________

Mona Samino wasn't listed in the Yellow Pages; neither was Mona Someno or Mona Summino or Mona Simino. I hadn't caught the name of the bangs woman, so I called my friend who hosted the party, Kay. She and I had gone to Northwestern together. In college and the years after, Kay and I rarely spoke unless we were drunk or about to be...