Step Right Up!

WE KNEW THEY'D come up with something. And sure enough, in true and honored sideshow tradition, the doctors handling the Aguirre Twins, having played out their first act as long as possible, have finally devised an Act Two.

The first act, of course, was the drawn-out, multi-operation procedure to separate the conjoined twins. It seemed to go on forever, with weekly updates and press conferences and news stories. They kept the tension and interest levels high by assuring us that each operation was more delicate and more dangerous than the last, until finally they had no more operations left to do.

The Aguirre Twins were stars, they were media darlings, they were worth millions in charitable donations to the hospital-and can you imagine the endorsement possibilities? The Doublemint contract alone could keep them comfortable for the rest of their lives.

And that's a problem. Once Siamese twins are separated, there goes the whole show. Everyone leaves the tent and starts looking for that next pair of as-yet-unseparated twins. The doctors and the hospital administrators needed something new in order to get a revitalized Aguirre Twins show back in the spotlight-sort of like teaching a pinhead how to juggle plates, or training a fire-eater to be a human pincushion.

And last week, four months after that last operation, there it was-skull reconstruction! Every paper and news program in town was there again. The tent went back up, the spotlights burned bright and the show was back on.

Oh, this is going to go on for a while, the doctors were already saying as they prepared the first skin grafts. Months and months. It's going to take several operations, see? And each one is going to be more delicate and dangerous than the last?