“It troubles you so? Cosmetically it is very minor, but the operation to change it would not be simple or certain of success.” Successs. It was as if her voice were not quite hers, ventriloquistically projected from an ideal world elsewhere.

Anderson edged forward in the examining chair, as when fitting himself to the metal chin rest. “I’d like to try it,” he said, “if you’re willing.”

“The insurance—”

“I have a very generous medical plan,” he assured her. He imagined the operation—the fitful pressure of her sheathed fingers, like dancing fairy shoes; the painless sizzle of the cauterizing instrument; the blithe topical chatter of the attending nurses; the rustle of the antiseptic paper on his face as he attempted to join in; the rub of her bulging stomach on his skull.

The experience, when it came on its scheduled day, was not quite as he had imagined it. She was not pregnant, the operating room was smaller, and there was only one nurse, who wandered in and out. The procedure this time involved more strenuous tugging and a series of stitches that extended to the verge of the anesthetic’s wearing off. But the intensity of the contact was undiluted. This time, he felt freer to use his eyes, and boldly watched her eyes, upside down in his vision. They appeared to brim from the chalices of her upper lids, underlined by the thin black smiles of her eyebrows. Elongate amber flecks like needles in an emulsion gave her irises a rayed, starry depth as her attention poured through the apertures of her contracted pupils, holes through which the world in all its brilliance passed. Whenever she blinked, the action seemed monstrous, like a crab’s mouth.

When it was over, and she lowered the pale-green paper mask, her mouth seemed pleased. She pulled off her mushroom-shaped scrub cap and shook her head so that her hair tumbled free, its thick body squirming with waxy gleams. “It went very well,” she said. “It is not easy, to persuade slack tissue to reconform.” Reconforrrmmm—the “r”s were so throaty and the “m”s so prolonged he wondered if she was teasing him. But the professional manner she resumed was impeccable and impervious; she provided solemn instructions to go with the prescriptions she wrote, and a carefully spelled-out prediction as to the course of his healing. “This time, be sure to massage.” She demonstrated little circles on the side of her own flawless, straight, taut, matte nose. As she moved, with her low-slung, hurried gait, through the motions of post-op routine, her unbound hair continued to hang and glisten down her back, still releasing, like muscles slowly relaxing, the shape of its coils. “These stitches will dissolve,” she said. “Come back in six months.”