Among Lola Paring’s customers was the Doktora, renowned for her skill in the operating room as she was for her generosity. Eloy, then still young, impressionable, and interested in
people’s faces, was quite taken by the Doktora’s perfectly arched eyebrows, the beauty mark right below her right nostril, the tiny mole on her right cheek. Eloy was convinced that they
belonged to a fitted black dress, a polka-dot halter—clothes worn by the kontrabida in those black-and-white movies from LVN Studios and Sampaguita Pictures. The Doktora could be one of those
characters played by that consummate villainess, that painted woman Bella Flores: characters who lived the way they wanted, without compunction or apology. If only she stopped wearing Lola
Paring’s dowdy creations under her white coat, s
