By then, the East River was edged with ice and smoking with mid-January cold. He surreptitiously examined Dr. Kim for signs of pregnancy, and was unable to detect any beneath the baggy lab coat. She reached out and touched the nearly invisible scar near his tear duct. “Snug,” she said. “Symmetrical.”

“Congratulations.”

“Did you massage?”

“Faithfully. But I notice now that the thin skin under that eye has a crease I don’t have on the other side. And both my upper lids are sagging. In the morning they feel like they’re resting on my eyelashes. In the mirror I can see them sitting there in more or less random folds, like pieces of wet laundry.”

She studied him intently, and rested her fingers on this skin, pressing through the lid onto his eyeball, so that his vision distorted and doubled. “You could do with a tuck,” she admitted, “but it is not strictly necessary. You still have undisturbed function.” She continued to finger his lids, so that he spoke in spaced accents, like a man under torture.

“It disturbs me,” he brought out, “that they are rumpling up like that. I want something that may be too difficult for you.”

Her touch changed quality, became tentative. “What would that be?”

“I want my lids to look like yours.”

Her fingertips, resting on the inner corners of his eyes, stayed there. He thought he detected a slight tremor. “With an epicanthus?” she asked.

“If possible.”

“It would be as you say difficult. The graft would have to come from a very sensitive area. The body has few sites where the skin is so delicate. The inside of the thigh, the—The color match is never perfect.”

“Couldn’t you somehow tug the skin that is there into a fold? I feel like a rhinoceros lately, with heaps of extra skin. When I bend over, I can feel my face fall away from the bone. And all that under the chin—couldn’t that be tightened up?”

Her fingers thoughtfully moved to his jaw, making delicate adjustments. “It is commonly done,” she said, “but it is not as easy as cutting cloth. There is musculature beneath, and nerves and capillaries. It would be a long and strenuous operation.” She settled back into a lotus pose, her hands folded, palm up, in her lap. He saw her face not only as a glowing oval but as a piece of seamless tailoring, layers of dermis precisely fitted to cheekbone and jaw-hinge and gelatinous eye-white.

“It could be several operations,” Anderson suggested.

Little frown lines flitted into the smooth space between her eyebrows, and were quickly erased. “It is better for you if it is done all at once. One session, one recovery.”

“I can take it if you can,” he said, in the lowered, virtually hostile tone in which, with another woman, in other circumstances, he would make a proposition.