I tried to smile. But at the last moment the full impact of what I was doing socked me right between the eyes.

If the veneers were on the 59th Street Bridge and I was in a waiting room on Central Park South, well, then, they couldn't really be my teeth, could they? It was the simplest, most obvious truth but one I'd somehow avoided when I'd gushed to friends about how one of Lituchy's patients started weeping with joy on that reclining chair when she first saw her veneers in the mirror. And how people who for years pursed their lips in sealed grins were suddenly liberated to smile with gusto. And how others suddenly walked into job interviews with cosmic assurance.

But all freedom has consequences, and I hadn't stopped to consider what drawbacks my veneers might have. If people saw them as false? Would strangers reach to protect their wallets when I opened my mouth to speak? Would friends who had heard me rant about the lunacy of hairpieces and lengthened penises and liposuction and laser-removed freckles take me for an empty windbag?

Somehow, I realized, I had unconsciously separated a tooth overhaul from a face-lift or a tummy tuck. And now that a traffic jam on the 59th Street Bridge had broken clear through my moral veneer, I had nothing to do but sit in Lituchy's chair and stare at my reflection in the overhead light, wondering where my choppers were taking me.