Most of the patients asked especially for Dr. Graveline, whose reputation greatly exceeded his talents. While Rudy usually farmed the cases out to the eight other plastic surgeons on staff, many patients got the impression that Dr. Graveline himself had performed their surgery. This is because Rudy would often come in and pat their wrinkled hands until they nodded off, blissfully, under the nitrous or IV Valium. At that point Rudy would turn them over to one of his younger and more competent protege’s.

Dr. Graveline saved himself for the richest patients. The regulars got cut on every winter, and Rudy counted on their business. He reassured his surgical hypochondriacs that there was nothing abnormal about having a fifth, sixth, or seventh blepharoplasty in as many years. Does it make youfeel better about yourself? Rudy would ask them. Then it’s worth it, isn’t it? Of course it is.

Such a patient was Madeleine Margaret Wilhoit, age sixty-nine, of North Palm Beach. In the course of their acquaintance, there was scarcely a square inch of Madeleine’s substantial physique that Dr. Rudy Graveline had not altered. Whatever he did and whatever he charged, Madeleine was always delighted. And she always came back the next year for more. Though Madeleine’s face reminded Dr. Graveline in many ways of a camel, he was fond of her. She was the kind of steady patient that offshore trust funds are made of.

On January fourth, buoyed by the warm sunny drive to Whispering Palms, Rudy Graveline set about the task of repairing for the fifth, sixth, or seventh time (he couldn’t remember exactly) the upper eyelids of Madeleine Margaret Wilhoit. Given the dromedarian texture of the woman’s skin, the mission was doomed and Rudy knew it. Any cosmetic improvement would have to take place exclusively in Madeleine’s imagination, but Rudy (knowing she would be ecstatic) pressed on.