A complex psychiatric condition affecting as many as
68 million American women over the age of
19 and characterized by
rapid a decline in thought, speech and behavioral patterns, with exacerbations and remissions occurring in close concert with sufferers' menstrual periods.
When Bill saw normally dignified
non-demonstrative Heloise screeching curses at the coterie of
shitty but otherwise harmless musicians gathered in the public sewer known as the Pearl Street Mall, he was dumbfounded.
"Her?" he said to
Ricardo.
Bill's friend leaned in close. "Twautism," he said in grave, conspiratorial tones. "Every goddamn month around this time, you'd swear she'd just eaten a box of thermometers."