The Clinic Everyone Whispers About

There exists, dear reader, a waiting room in Los Angeles — this author shall say only that it is west of a certain canon and east of good judgment — where the espresso is single-origin, the lighting is candle-warm, and the clientele is more carefully curated than most museum collections.

Entry is by referral. The referral is by whisper. And the whisper, naturally, begins here.

The clinic in question has no signage, no price list, and — most deliciously — no record of half its visitors, who arrive through a private entrance that has launched a thousand tinted-window photographs. The practitioners within are said to refuse more patients than they accept, a policy that has only made the desperate more desperate.

This author notes, with some amusement, that the truly fashionable no longer ask one another where they go. They ask who let them in. If you must ask, darling, the answer is no.