There`s a lot of energetic research going on now—perhaps a dozen very active labs in

this country and abroad. For unknown reasons the incidence of melanoma has risen,

almost doubled in the last ten years, and it`s a hot research area. It`s possible that

breakthroughs are close at hand.»

For the next week Julius lived in a daze. Evelyn, his daughter, a classics professor,

canceled her classes and drove up immediately to spend several days with him. He spoke

at length to her, his son, his sister and brother, and to intimate friends. He often woke in

terror at 3A.M. , crying out, and gasping for air. He canceled his hours with his individual

patients and with his therapy group for two weeks and spent hours pondering what and

how to tell them.

The mirror told him he didn`t look like a man who had reached the end of his life.

His three–mile daily jog had kept his body young and wiry, without an ounce of fat.

Around his eyes and mouth, a few wrinkles. Not many—his father had died with none at

all. He had green eyes; Julius had always been proud of that. Strong and sincere eyes.

Eyes that could be trusted, eyes that could hold anyone`s gaze. Young eyes, the eyes of

the sixteen–year–old Julius. The dying man and the sixteen–year–old gazed at each other

across the decades.

He looked at his lips. Full, friendly lips. Lips that, even now in his time of despair,

were on the edge of a warm grin. He had a full head of unruly black curly hair, graying

only in his sideburns. When he was a teenager in the Bronx, the old white–haired, red–faced, anti–Semitic barber, whose tiny shop was down his street between Meyer`s candy

store and Morris`s butcher shop, cursed his tough hair as he tugged at it with a steel comb

and cut it with thinning shears. And now Meyer, Morris, and the barber were all dead,