Olivia Goldsmith, RIP

"'I don't have any drugs here, not even grass!' the girl protested. Then she stepped from behind the door, though she was still in the shadow. All Sylvie could see was that she was wearing a tiny robe in some cheesy material that clung. It was white with little roses on itand showed a lot of leg. Sylvie could see her legs were good, even though her feet were stuffed into big terry cloth slippers. M. Molensky took a step and then another out of the comparative darkness of the corner by the door. Then Sylvie saw her face, while the girl, for the first time, lifted her head up and looked directly at Sylvie. For a long moment they stared at each other, face to face.

"'My god' Sylvie gasped. She was staring at her own face -- but not. It was her face as it looked a decade ago. The same wide forehead, the same even brows, the same blue eyes -- even though M. Molensky's might be a darker blue. But the shape was the same. The only difference was the ten years of wrinkles missing on the girl's face. Sylvie stared at M. Molensky's nose. It was Sylvie's nose, straight and long, narrowing in the middle just a little before the nostrils flared. But again, though the nose replicated her own, the girl was missing the line that, on Sylvie's own face, ran from the outside of each nostril to the outside of her mouth. 'Marionette lines' Sylvie suddenly remembered they were called.

"And their mouths! Sylvie felt hers pucker into an O of surprise as she watched M. Molensky's do the same. It was the eeriest feeling Sylvie ever experienced, like watching herself in a mirror -- but a mirror from ten years ago. They stared at one another, wordless and horrified. M. Molensky was seeing what she would become, and Sylvie was seeing what she had been. Sylvie stared at the girl's chin. Yes, she had once had a jaw that taut, a chin that smooth. It hadn't been so long ago. But time and gravity had softened everything. Instinctively, Sylvie had moved her hands to either side of her face and, resting them against her cheeks and temples, she stretched the sagging skin up, giving herself a momentary face-lift. At the same time, her twin opposite raised her own eyes and dragged her cheeks down. Bob, his betrayal and her rage flew out of her mind. All she could see was the work of Father Time. She looked not at what she had, but what she had lost.

"The younger woman's eyes mirrored her own horror. In their blue depths Sylvie could see a fear as acute as the one she was experiencing. Why? Here was a girl who still had her youth and beauty. A girl, Sylvie suddenly remembered, who also has my husband, at least part time. Yet, looking at her, it was obvious that she was a sshocked and horrified as Sylvie. 'I looked like you once,' Sylvie whispered. 'Just like you,'"

Switcheroo, by Olivia Goldsmith, who died yesterday night (via Gawker), after a facelift to remove skin under her neck went wrong.