“I don’t need artificial aids. I have Brine,” she said, pointing at a guy with a shaved head, bower boots, and studs in his nose, eyebrows, and lower lip, but I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at her extended arm, which had three wide gray armlets around it at wrist, mid-forearm, and just below the elbow. Duct tape.

Which explained her remark about it being a personal errand this afternoon. If this is the latest fad, I thought, I quit. “I have to go,” I said, scooping up my newspapers and purse, and looking frantically around for my waiter, who I couldn’t find since he was dressed like everybody else. I put down a twenty and practically ran for the exit.

“She doesn’t appreciate me at all,” I heard Flip telling Brine as I fled. “She could at least have thanked me for cleaning up her office.”

I had locked my car, and, driving home, I began to feel almost cheerful about the duct tape armbands. Flip would, after all, have to take them off. I also thought about Brine and about Billy Ray, who wears a Stetson and boot-cut jeans and a pager, and about what an accomplishment Dr. O’Reilly’s unstylishness really was.

Almost everything is in style for men these days: bomber jackets, bicycle pants, dashikis, GQ suits, jeans that are too big, tank shirts that are too small, deck shoes, hiking boots, Birkenstocks. And now with the addition of grunge’s faded flannel shirts and thermal underwear, it’s hard to find anything that looks bad enough to not be in style. But Dr. O’Reilly had managed it.

His hair was too long and his pants were too short, but it was more than that. One of the garage bands has a drummer who wears pedal pushers and braids onstage, and he looks like the ultimate in trendiness. And it wasn’t his glasses. Look at Elton John. Look at Buddy Holly.

It was something else, something that had been nagging at me all evening. Maybe I should go back down to Bio and ask him if I could study him.