Sidney Sheldon - A Stranger in the Mirror

She thought of the last time they had been together and of the hunger in him then and the promise and the dreams. She said, “All right, David.”

“The lake? Do you have a car?”

She nodded.

“I’ll meet you there in an hour.”

Cissy was standing in front of a mirror, naked, getting ready to dress for a dinner party when David arrived home. He walked into her bedroom and stood there watching her. He could judge his wife with complete dispassion, for he felt no emotion whatsoever toward her. She was beautiful. Cissy had taken care of her body, keeping it in shape with diet and exercise. It was her primary asset and David had reason to believe that she was liberal in sharing it with others, her golf coach, her ski teacher, her flight instructor. But David could not blame her. It had been a long time since he had gone to bed with Cissy.

In the beginning, he had really believed that she would give him a divorce when Mama Kenyon died. But David’s mother was still alive and flourishing. David had no way of knowing whether he had been tricked or whether a miracle had taken place. A year after their marriage, David had said to Cissy, “I think it’s time we talked about that divorce.”

Cissy had said, “What divorce?” And when she saw the astonished look on his face she laughed. “I like being Mrs. David Kenyon, darling. Did you really think I was going to give you up for that little Polish whore?”

He had slapped her.

The following day he had gone to see his attorney. When David was finished talking, the attorney said, “I can get you the divorce. But if Cissy is set on hanging on to you, David, it’s going to be bloody expensive.”

“Get it.”

When Cissy had been served the divorce papers, she had locked herself in David’s bathroom and had swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills. It had taken David and two servants to smash the heavy door. Cissy had hovered on the brink of death for two days. David had visited her in the private hospital where she had been taken.

“I’m sorry, David,” she had said. “I don’t want to live without you. It’s as simple as that.”

The following morning, he had dropped the divorce suit.

That had been almost ten years ago, and David’s marriage had become an uneasy truce. He had completely taken over the Kenyon empire and he devoted all of his energies to running it. He found physical solace in the strings of girls he kept in the various cities around the world to which his business carried him. But he had never forgotten Josephine.

David had no idea how she felt about him. He wanted to know, and yet he was afraid to find out. She had every reason to hate him. When he had heard the news about Josephine’s mother, David had gone to the funeral parlor just to look at Josephine. The moment he saw her, he knew that nothing had changed. Not for him. The years had been swept away in an instant, and he was as much in love with her as ever.

I have to talk to you…. meet me tonight….

All right, David….

The lake .

Cissy turned around as she saw David watching her in the pier glass. “You’d better hurry and change, David. We’ll be late.”

“I’m going to meet Josephine. If she’ll have me, I’m going to marry her. I think it’s time this farce ended, don’t you?”

She stood there, staring at David, her naked image reflected in the mirror.

“Let me get dressed,” she said.

David nodded and left the room. He walked into the large drawing room, pacing up and down, preparing for the confrontation. Surely after all these years, Cissy would not want to hang onto a marriage that was a hollow shell. He would give her anything she—

He heard the sound of Cissy’s car starting and then the scream of tires as it careened down the driveway. David raced to the front door and looked out. Cissy’s Maserati was racing toward the highway. Quickly, David got into his car, started the engine and gunned down the driveway after Cissy.

As he reached the highway, her car was just disappearing in the distance. He stepped down hard on the accelerator. The Maserati was a faster car than David’s Rolls. He pressed down harder on the gas pedal: 70…80…90. Her car was no longer in sight.

100…110…still no sign of her.

He reached the top of a small rise, and there he saw the car, like a distant toy, careening around a curve. The torque was pulling the car to one side, the tires fighting to hold their traction on the road. The Maserati swayed back and forth, yawing across the highway. Then it leveled off and made it past the curve. And suddenly the car hit the shoulder of the road and shot into the air like a catapult and rolled over and over across the fields.

David pulled Cissy’s unconscious body out of the car moments before the ruptured gas tank exploded.

It was six o’clock the next morning before the chief surgeon came out of the operating room and said to David, “She’s going to live.”

Jill arrived at the lake just before sunset. She drove to the edge of the water. Turning off the motor, she gave herself up to the sounds of the wind and the air. I don’t know when I’ve ever been so happy , she thought. And then she corrected herself. Yes, I do. Here. With David . And she remembered how his body had felt on hers and she grew faint with wanting. Whatever had spoiled their happiness was over. She had felt it the moment she had seen David. He was still in love with her. She knew it.

She watched the blood-red sun slowly drown in the distant water, and darkness fell. She wished that David would hurry.

An hour passed, then two, and the air became chilled. She sat in the car, still and quiet. She watched the huge dead-white moon float into the sky. She listened to the night sounds all around her and she said to herself, David is coming .

Jill sat there all night and, in the morning, when the sun began to stain the horizon, she started the car and drove home to Hollywood.

24

Jill sat in front of her dressing table and studied her face in the mirror. She saw a barely perceptible wrinkle at the corner of her eye and frowned. It’s unfair , she thought. A man can completely let himself go. He can have gray hair, a pot-belly and a face like a road map, and no one thinks anything of it. But let a woman get one tiny wrinkle… She began to apply her makeup. Bob Schiffer, Hollywood’s top makeup artist had taught her some of his techniques. Jill put on a pan-stick base instead of the powder base that she had once used. Powder dried the skin, while the pan stick kept it moist. Next, she concentrated on her eyes, the makeup under the lower lids three or four shades lighter than her other makeup, so that the shadows were softened. She rubbed in a small amount of eye shadow to give her eyes more color, then carefully applied false eyelashes over her own lashes, tilting them at the outer edges at a forty-five-degree angle. She brushed some Duo adhesive on her own outer lashes and joined them with the false lashes, making the eyes look larger. To give the lashes a fuller look, she drew fine dots on her lower eyelid beneath her own lashes. After that, Jill applied her lipstick, then powdered her lips before applying a second coat of lipstick. She applied a blusher to her cheeks and dusted her face with powder, avoiding the areas around her eyes where the powder would accentuate the faint wrinkles.

Jill sat back in her chair and studied the effect in the mirror. She looked beautiful. Someday, she would have to resort to the tape trick, but thank God that was still years away. Jill knew of older actresses who used the trick. They fastened tiny pieces of Scotch tape to their skin just below the hairline. Attached to these tapes were threads which they tied around their heads and concealed beneath their hair. The result was to pull the slackened skin of their faces taut, giving the effect of a face lift without the expense and pain of surgery. A variation was also used to disguise their sagging breasts. A piece of tape attached to the breast on one end and to the firmer flesh higher on the chest on the other provided a simple temporary solution to the problem. Jill’s breasts were still firm.