Sidney Sheldon - A Stranger in the Mirror

Jill was walking through the lobby toward the exit when she heard a man’s voice call, “Josephine,” and even as she turned, she knew who it was, and in a split second the magic happened again.

David Kenyon was moving toward her, smiling and saying, “I’m so glad to see you,” and she felt as though her heart would stop. He’s the only man who has ever been able to do this to me , Jill thought.

“Will you have a drink with me?” David asked.

“Yes,” she said.

The hotel bar was large and crowded, but they found a comparatively quiet table in a corner where they could talk.

“What are you doing in Moscow?” Jill asked.

“Our government asked me to come over. We’re trying to work out an oil deal.”

A bored waiter strolled over to the table and took their order for drinks.

“How’s Cissy?”

David looked at her a moment, then said, “We got a divorce a few years ago.” He deliberately changed the subject. “I’ve followed everything that’s been happening to you. I’ve been a fan of Toby Temple’s since I was a kid.” Somehow, it made Toby sound very old. “I’m glad he’s well again. When I read about his stroke, I was concerned about you.” There was a look in his eyes that Jill remembered from long ago, a wanting, a needing.

“I thought Toby was great in Hollywood and London,” David was saying.

“Were you there?” Jill asked, in surprise.

“Yes.” Then he added quickly, “I had some business there.”

“Why didn’t you come backstage?”

He hesitated. “I didn’t want to intrude on you. I didn’t know if you would want to see me.”

Their drinks arrived in heavy, squat glasses.

“To you and Toby,” David said. And there was something in the way he said it, an undercurrent of sadness, a hunger…

“Do you always stay at the Metropole?” Jill asked.

“No. As a matter of fact, I had a hell of a time getting—” He saw the trap too late. He smiled wryly. “I knew you’d be there. I was supposed to have left Moscow five days ago. I’ve been waiting, hoping to run into you.”

“Why, David?”

It was a long time before he replied. When he spoke, he said, “It’s all too late now, but I want to tell you anyway, because I think you have a right to know.”

And he told her about his marriage to Cissy, how she had tricked him, about her attempted suicide, and about the night when he had asked Jill to meet him at the lake. It all came out in an outpouring of emotion that left Jill shaken.

“I’ve always been in love with you.”

She sat listening, a feeling of happiness flowing through her body like a warm wine. It was like a lovely dream come true, it was everything she had wanted, wished for. Jill studied the man sitting across from her, and she remembered his strong hands on her, and his hard demanding body, and she felt a stirring within herself. But Toby had become a part of her, he was her own flesh; and David…

A voice at her elbow said, “Mrs. Temple! We have been looking everywhere for you!” It was General Romanovitch.

Jill looked at David. “Call me in the morning.”

Toby’s last performance in the Bolshoi Theatre was more exciting than anything that had been seen there before. The spectators threw flowers and cheered and stamped their feet and refused to leave. It was a fitting climax to Toby’s other triumphs. A large party was scheduled for after the show, but Toby said to Jill, “I’m beat, goddess. Why don’t you go? I’ll return to the hotel and get some shut-eye.”

Jill went to the party alone, but it was as through David were at her side every moment. She carried on conversations with her hosts and danced and acknowledged the tributes they were paying to her, but all the time her mind was reliving her meeting with David. I married the wrong girl. Cissy and I are divorced. I’ve never stopped loving you .

At two o’clock in the morning, Jill’s escort dropped her at her hotel suite. She went inside and found Toby lying on the floor in the middle of the room, unconscious, his right hand stretched out toward the telephone.

Toby Temple was rushed in an ambulance to the Diplomatic Polyclinic at 3 Sverchkov Prospekt. Three top specialists were summoned in the middle of the night to examine him. Everyone was sympathetic toward Jill. The chief of the hospital escorted her to a private office, where she waited for news. It’s like a rerun , Jill thought. All this had happened before . It had a vague, unreal quality.

Hours later, the door to the office opened and a short, fat Russian waddled in. He was dressed in an ill-fitting suit and looked like an unsuccessful plumber. “I am Dr. Durov,” he said. “I am in charge of your husband’s case.”

“I want to know how he is.”

“Sit down, Mrs. Temple, please.”

Jill had not even been aware that she had stood up. “Tell me!”

“Your husband has suffered a stroke—technically called a cerebral venous thrombosis.”

“How bad is it?”

“It is the most—what do you say?—hard-hitting, dangerous. If your husband lives—and it is too soon to tell—he will never walk or speak again. His mind is clear but he is completely paralyzed.”

Before Jill left Moscow, David telephoned her.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he said. “I’ll be standing by. Anytime you need me, I’ll be there. Remember that.”

It was the only thing that helped Jill keep her sanity in the nightmare that was about to begin.

The journey home was a hellish déjà vu. The hospital litter in the plane, the ambulance from the airport to the house, the sickroom.

Except that this time it was not the same. Jill had known it the moment they had allowed her to see Toby. His heart was beating, his vital organs functioning; in every respect he was a living organism. And yet he was not. He was a breathing, pulsating corpse, a dead man in an oxygen tent, with tubes and needles running into his body like antennae, feeding him the vital fluids that were necessary to keep him alive. His face was twisted in a horrifying rictus that made him look as though he were grinning, his lips pulled up so that his gums were exposed. I am afraid I can offer you no hope , the Russian doctor had said.

That had been weeks ago. Now they were back home in Bel-Air. Jill had immediately called in Dr. Kaplan, and he had sent for specialists who had summoned more specialists, and the answer always came out the same: a massive stroke that had heavily damaged or destroyed the nerve centers, with very little chance of reversing the damage that had already been done.

There were nurses around the clock and a physiotherapist to work with Toby, but they were empty gestures.

The object of all this attention was grotesque. Toby’s skin had turned yellow, and his hair was falling out in large tufts. His paralyzed limbs were shriveled and stringy. On his face was the hideous grin that he could not control. He was monstrous to look at, a death’s head.

But his eyes were alive. And how alive! They blazed with the power and frustration of the mind trapped in that useless shell. Whenever Jill walked into his room, Toby’s eyes would follow her hungrily, frantically, pleading. For what? For her to make him walk again? Talk again? To turn him into a man again?

She would stare down at him, silent, thinking: A part of me is lying in that bed, suffering, trapped . They were bound together. She would have given anything to have saved Toby, to have saved herself. But she knew that there was no way. Not this time.

The phones rang constantly, and it was a replay of all those other phone calls, all those other offers of sympathy.

But there was one phone call that was different. David Kenyon telephoned. “I just want you to know that whatever I can do—anything at all—I’m waiting.”