I sat at the kitchen counter, counting the puffs I was able to get out of each cigarette.  In the moonlight the smoke curled and swirled a metal-blue, and I wondered why it tended to stain everything death yellow.  A few more puffs and I had finished off the pack.  After the last crackles of the dying embers of the cigarette faded, I sat in near silence.  The drip-drip-drip from the faucet in the sink was noticeable, but not enough to annoy me into doing something about it.  Besides… doing something about it used to be Eldon’s job.
     I’m not the kind of guy to put a lot of stock into self-reliance.  The world is full of people who just want to help, and I’m usually happy to let them.  If I could have found the strength to shamble out of the Compound and into town I’m sure I would be swarmed with do-gooders eager to get their ticket to Heaven punched.  With my week-long growth of beard and sunk-in eyes, I’m sure I looked like just the puppy they’ve been longing to save.  But I couldn’t muster the energy, and I had more or less accepted that I was alone.
     She knocked on the main door of the Compound.  It was the kind of knock that said a lot about a gal.  Thump… Thump… Th-Thump.  She wanted my attention, but she wasn’t desperate.  Desperation was a game played by other chicks.  She was patient after the first knock, and I watched her close.  All black and white and painted in scan-lines on the security monitor.  On the screen her lips looked black as oil, but I knew that up close they’d be the kind of deep cherry red that they name candies after.  So cool, I thought.  So cool.
     She knocked again.  Th-Thump, Thump, Thump.  Still cool, and her head tilted up slightly so the corner of her eye caught the camera.  Those lips bent into a slight smile.  She knew I was watching.  And maybe that’s what made her smile.  For once she wasn’t the one doing the watching.  She liked being scattered puzzle pieces, and I was starting to look for the corners.
     As I opened the door I felt a puff of cold spring air that carried her perfume.  It was the scent of Jasmine and vanilla that made me think of ice cream.  She stood there; with lips as cherry red as I had hoped and piercing eyes that I had not anticipated from watching her on the monitor.  Her long black hair framed her soft face and occasionally rode the breeze like ocean waves.  Her black dress hugged her curves, melting down her frame before wrapping around a pair of legs that had a million-and-one uses, the least of which was standing.  She was propping herself up against the door with one arm, the other hand was holding onto a half-smoked cigarette.  I found myself mentally begging God to somehow transform me into the filter of that cigarette for one merciful moment.
     “Can I come in?”  She whispered, and I must have nodded ‘yes’ because she let herself in.  She walked past me with a strut that could sharpen knives.  I closed the door and waited a moment before turning around, wondering if she would really be there when I did.  Maybe I was hoping, just a little bit, that she wasn’t real.  A dame like this ain’t easy, and I wasn’t sure I was up for a challenge.  I took a deep breath and spun around, once again floored by how striking she was.
     “Hi.”  I smiled, confident that my innate handsomeness was shining through my disheveled appearance.
     “My name is Veronica,” she licked her lips, smiling, “Veronica Winslow.”
     “I’m Dr. Clive Boddicker.  But I suppose you already knew that.”
     “I’ll get to the point, Dr. Boddicker.”
     “Please, call me Clive.”  I motioned to the living room, and we sat across from each other separated by my coffee table that was piled high with weed.  I proceeded to roll a joint, offering her one with a slight motion that she dismissed with an equally slight motion.
     “Do you have a drug problem?”  She arched an eyebrow as I lit up.
     “Problem?  No.”
     “I’m to understand that you’re quite an accomplished surgeon.”
     “I am.”  I smiled.  “And I fuck on the first date.”
     “Excuse me?”  She was disappointingly shocked.  She would not be easy.  Not by a long shot.
     “Oh, sorry.  I thought we were getting right to the point.”
     “So we are.  Walter Winslow.  My husband.  He was a patient of yours.  Do you recall?”
     “I have lots of patients, honey.  You’ll have to be more specific.”
     “Portly gentleman.  Forty-six years of age.”
     “Nope.  Not ringing any bells.”
     “A birthmark that looks like a profile of Alfred Hitchcock on his right buttock?”
     “That narrows it down.”
     “He had a prehensile tail.”  She stared at me a moment and I shrugged.  “Seriously?  How many forty-something fat men with Hitchcock birthmarks and tails do you get coming through here?”
     “It’s rare, I’ll grant you that.”
     “In any case.  You had performed one of your… Baldwin-ilations on him…”
     “Baldwinization.”
     “Yes.  That.  You had done that to my husband.  You performed what I believe is known as the Stephen.”
     “Sounds about right.”
     “I want you to undo it.”
     I sat for a moment in stunned silence.  The words hung in the air like crisp firecracker echoes.   This gal was all lips and legs and eyes that sunk into my gut like hot lead, but she must have been missing a few slices from her brain-loaf if she wanted a Baldwinization undone.
     “Who said what to who?”  I stammered.
     “Undo it, Dr. Boddicker.  I want my old Walter back.”
     “Wait. Let me get this straight.  You want me to take the supple, pouting lips of Stephen Baldwin and change that into the dumpy mutant you described?  I’m sorry, sweet cheeks, but there’s no takesie-backsies  in the Baldwinization game.  I’m not so sure your husband would be willing to give up the penetrating, tender, kissable lips and blank, vacant Christ-loving stare of Stephen so easily.  He’s somebody now, Mrs. Winslow.  He matters. “
     “I can pay you.”
     “I’m listening.”
     She handed me a card with an address written on the back and asked me to meet her there in the morning.  There, she explained, I would be expected to help her talk her husband into a reversal of the procedure.  An intervention of ugly.  It went against my nature, but then again, so did turning down money.  There would always be other Baldwinization candidates.  There would be more Stephens.  More Daniels.  More Williams.  More Alecs.  But Mrs. Winslow’s cash was one of a kind: Not Mine.  And I wanted it.
     I swallowed hoarsely, trying to get past my own disgust at agreeing to such action, even with the promise of large cash.  To help mitigate my suffering, I suggested that she let me perform sex-like actions to her person.  This suggestion was promptly rejected.  I offered up several variations, each with a descriptive title and short explanation.  Despite a few brief pauses in which it seemed she was considering the option presented to her, she ultimately declined each of the two dozen or so requests.
     She slinked off of the couch, and I lamented having not once been presented with an opportunity to look up her dress.  After she refused to make me a roast beef sandwich with some horseradish and maybe some Doritos, I tossed her a slight wave and slurred “later, y’all” as she showed herself out.  As much as it pained me to see such a seductive woman leave without having made intimate acquaintance with her no-no parts, it was not an altogether displeasing sight as she did her siren walk toward the door.  So few in this life possess an ass as hard as an anvil yet round as a regulation beach volleyball, but she had it all.
     Before disappearing into the night beyond the flood lights of the Compound she gave me one last glance, and I knew that, much like the front door she had thoughtlessly left open, the door was also still open, ever so slightly, for a future sexual rendezvous.  And I was quite sure that once I convinced this loser husband of hers to forfeit his beauty she would find him so physically repugnant that she would see past what she commented were my glaringly obvious personality defects.    Defective personality or not, I am clearly handsome and my lovemaking has been described as worthy of being the last experience one would happily have before their plane collided with a mountain.
     By bright moonlight, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and dragged a razor across my gorgeous face, ever careful so as to not damage the soft, luscious skin beneath the slight growth of beard.  I felt reborn, given fresh purpose and a desire to once again be in the company of others.  As each strip of flesh was newly exposed from behind its veil of facial hair, it was as if I was shedding a cocoon that had been forming around me for so long.  It was a cocoon that had begun long before Eldon’s departure, long before the recent events which had forever changed the trajectory of my life.  I had always been lonely, but it took being alone to realize it.
     I spent the rest of the evening on the couch, freshly shaven and with a hand-mirror nearby so I could periodically check out my reflection.  I had even managed to make myself a sandwich, and as accomplished as I felt in doing so I still cursed Eldon for not being there to get my grub.  All was forgotten as I flipped the television over to “30 Rock”, and basked in the glory of Alec Baldwin.  Not even the news break where they mentioned the discovery of a headless and handless body in a ditch outside of Denver broke my high spirits.
     “Clive, you handsome bastard,” I addressed myself in the mirror, “you’re back, baby.  And it only gets better from here.”
     Indeed.
     It only gets better.