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change her appearance right before her eyes. She watched in amazement as he moved the tiny squares called pixels around the screen. The changes were subtle and artistic; it was like sculpting with flesh instead of with clay. With pen in hand, he magically obliterated wrinkles, lifted sagging flesh, and ironed out the declivity between the nose and the mouth that he referred to as “the dread nasio-labial fold,” and which wasn’t, she was disappointed to hear, as readily correctable as the labio-mandibular fold between the mouth and the jaw, a.k.a. the jowl line.
    An hour after her arrival, Charlotte’s consultation was over. If she decided to go ahead with the surgery, the doctor informed her as he escorted her to the door, he could fit her into his schedule as soon as the end of next month. But if she wanted to reserve that time slot, she would have to let him know by the end of next week. He would be sending her a color proof of the “computer enhanced” image of her face to help her make up her mind.
    Her theoretical quandary was now complicated by the actual facts of the matter, she thought as she headed back out to her car. One of her concerns had been allayed: she had absolute faith in Dr. Louria’s capabilities and trusted him to turn the clock back without dramatically altering her appearance. But the image of her new, surgically improved face raised anew the question of whether she even wanted to turn the clock back. The face that had stared back at her from the computer screen was a face that looked more youthful, more polished, more glowing. But it wasn’t her face. Moreover, she doubted whether it was even appropriate for a woman of seventy-two to have unlined eyes, smooth cheeks, and a crisp jaw. It struck her as being undignified. Like a septuagenarian in a miniskirt.
    “To lift or not to lift” was not an easy question, she thought as she headed out toward the police station to meet her old friend.
    The Zion Hill police station was situated on the Albany Post Road just north of the traffic light at the Zion Hill Road intersection. It was located in a building that also housed a two-bay fire station. Like many of the houses she had noticed in her drive through Zion Hill, the police station was in the Tudor style, which struck Charlotte as being incongruously genteel for a public building. The timber-fronted facade looked more like the backdrop for a sleek advertisement than for the two fire trucks that stood out in front, their chrome fittings gleaming in the morning sun. Entering the station, she announced herself to the dispatcher who sat behind the front desk. No sooner had she done so than Jerry came down the stairs, and, after greeting her warmly, invited her up to his office.
    He looked older than when she had last seen him—his mat of tight black curls had turned gray and was receding from his temples, and, although he was still very fit, he was a little heavier. But he looked much happier than he used to. In fact, he glowed with excitement. She knew he was glad to be back in police work, but this had to be more than just that.
    “Are you hungry?” he asked peremptorily, as he closed his office door behind them. “I mean, would you mind putting off lunch for an hour or so?”
    “Not at all,” she replied. Dr. Louria’s surgical dissection of her face had put a damper on her appetite. Besides, it was still only eleven-thirty, and, like most New Yorkers, she wasn’t accustomed to eating lunch before one.
    He grinned. He had a wide grin which the dimples in his round cheeks and the slight gap between his front teeth couldn’t help but make appealing. “Good. I have something to show you.” With that, he opened a metal locker and removed a soccer ball-sized object wrapped in bubble wrap, which he carefully set down in the middle of his desk. As Charlotte looked on, he slowly unwound the bubble wrap, revealing a human skull.
    Charlotte raised a dark eyebrow in an expression that was one of