Double Jeopardy

by Bobby Hutchinson

  She could remember the throbbing headache, the nausea in her belly, the feeling of being in a fog that morning.

  Accepting blame didn’t stop the bitterness and anger that welled up inside her, though. Sure, she’d been careless, but the extent of the punishment for that second of carelessness was out of all proportion. Instead of thanking God for her life, which Mama and Papa went on and on about, Gemma hated God for doing this to her. She was furious with Him, and she didn’t hesitate to tell Him so, but as usual, He didn’t pay any attention to her griping.

  So more often than not these days, she transferred that feeling of frustration and pent-up rage to Jack Kilgallin, just because he was around so frequently. It irritated her beyond measure that he didn’t fight back. Trying to see how far she could go before he lost his temper and walked out on her was a challenge. Afterward, she felt rotten, ashamed of herself. Maybe she acted the way she did with him because of the bitter knowledge that whatever passion had existed between them was gone for good. Who could look at her now and want to do anything other than vomit?

  Who could see her now and, even if the operation worked, be with her in the future without remembering her like this? She didn’t want to be with anyone who had memories of her looking so bad.

  Jack picked up a fashion magazine and held it up. “You want me to read to you, Gemma?”

  He’d done that when her eyes were still too swollen to focus, reading newspaper articles and magazines. He read well, which surprised her. Reading out loud wasn’t an easy thing to do. Some of her teachers at school had driven her nuts, they were so bad at it. She’d enjoyed having Jack read to her.

  Tonight, though, she refused. Today had been harder than usual to get through. A group of medical students had come by that morning, some of them young and male and attractive. She’d been asleep, and just for a split second as she awoke, she’d forgotten what she looked like. She’d assessed them the way she used to do men; which one would she flirt with first?

  And then, like an anvil crashing down, she’d recognized the expression in their eyes, the impassive gazes that classified her as an unfortunate woman with a destroyed face. They didn’t know that only a few short weeks ago, she could have chosen any of them, and with her smile and her smart mouth and a certain provocative glance she’d perfected in adolescence, she’d have had them at her beck and call.

  Tonight she hated what she’d become, and instead of anger, tears were close.

  “Did you get a chance to play that new CD? Want me to put it on for you now?”

  She couldn’t even shake her head. She snatched up the pen and the pad. Get the hell out. Leave me alone.

  “Sure, if that’s what you want.” Even tempered as always, he headed for the door just as the nurse arrived to give her medication. “See you to- morrow, Gemma. You need anything, just have the nurses let me know,” he said just before the door sighed shut behind him.

  “That’s a great guy you’ve got there,” the perky nurse commented in such a cheerful tone Gemma wanted to smack her. “He’s good looking, too. Tell me where you caught him and I’ll go fishing in the same place.”

  With the nurse’s help, Gemma climbed stiffly up onto the bed and lay back on the pillows carefully, so carefully; her head and neck were agony. Clumsily, aware of the trach tube in her throat, she turned on her side, making it easy for the nurse to give her the shot.

  She felt the prick of the needle, the ache as the medication began to diffuse through her muscle. She wanted to tell the nurse Kilgallin wasn’t hers; he was available. The nurse could do her best to attract him if she wanted.

  Self-pity and weariness overwhelmed Gemma as the drug began to do its job. The last clear thought before oblivion claimed her was rebellious. She didn’t want any man who stuck around her just out of pity, the way Jack was doing.

  What was the old saying? She wouldn’t want to belong to any club in which she was a member.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “So how does she look?” Maisie Jones leaned across the table and squinted at Sera. “I guess it’s too soon to really tell, she’s bound to be swollen. But d’ya think the operation was a success?”

  Yesterday’s reconstruction of Gemma’s features had taken twelve and a half hours, and Sera had been absolutely terrified for her sister. Being under anesthetic that long had to be dangerous, plus there’d been the terrible uncertainty about the outcome.

  “It’s hard to believe, but you can already tell that she’s going to look like herself again. She can go home in a couple days. The swelling and bruising are pretty bad, but it’s obvious that when she heals she’ll look the way she always has. Like me.”

  “He’s gotta be a genius, your Dr. Halsey.” Maisie gave Sera a sly glance. “So now let me get this straight, luv.” She tipped her mug of beer and took a hearty swig, her cornflower blue eyes dancing with mischief.

  “You picked out chairs for his office and you’re decorating the hunky doctor’s loft out of the goodness of your generous heart, in your spare time—” she rolled her eyes and blew a raspberry “—which everybody knows we don’t have any of in this job, to say nothing of visiting your sister and having dinner three times a week with one of your gazillion aunts. But you don’t have any fantasies, you claim, about taking him to bed in his loverly newly refurbished bedroom?” She snorted again and took another drink. “What d’ya think, I’ve spent the past ten years masquerading as a vestal virgin?”

  Sera laughed. The idea of rowdy, outspoken Maisie as a vestal virgin stretched her imagination to its limit. She was glad the little pub where they were having dinner wasn’t full of people, so they could talk in relative privacy. Not that Maisie cared; she was prone to saying whatever was on her mind at the very moment it came to her, in a voice that carried.

  “I haven’t done anything about his loft yet except check some paint samples. And I didn’t exactly say I don’t have fantasies about him.” She felt her skin grow hot and wouldn’t look at her friend.

  She’d had more dreams, waking and sleeping, about Ben Halsey in the past week than she cared to admit. "Any female between eighteen and eighty would. I said that I wasn’t sure I wanted to get involved with him.”

  “Going to bed is pretty involved, honey.” Maisie could and did switch from teasing to dead serious in a heartbeat. “Unless you’re one of those people whose heart and lower extremities aren’t on the same circuit, having sex is playing with matches. Sex for the sake of sex, that’s a testosterone game guys pretend to play. It’s not about affection or love. It’s about power. And it backfires on them as often as not.”

  She narrowed her eyes at Sera. “I was a teenage kid back in the free love hippie days in the Haight in San Francisco, don’t forget. I gave the polygamous approach a damned fair try.” She shook her auburn head, and feathery strands of hair floated and settled again around her pretty, heart shaped face. “Didn’t work for me. I fell in love with the director who was making out with me and the lead actress and the understudy, and it broke my heart. This was before the big AIDS crisis, of course. I was liberated. I did the same as he did, went to bed with whoever was available. It was what you did at that time. God, it’s a wonder we didn’t all die of venereal disease, never mind a broken heart.”

  She leaned over the table, her lavish breasts spilling out of the low neck of her flowing dress. She spoke slowly and clearly. “It was the loneliest I’ve ever been in my fife. And I learned a hard lesson about myself. I’m monogamous by nature. Granted, it’s been serial monogamy, three marriages and a couple affairs along the way, but never more than one relationship at a time, and that one with somebody I cared for deeply. While it lasted. Unfortunately things change. I change.” She frowned. “Now I’ve lost my place. Where were we before I got on the subject of my misspent youth?” She dipped her spoon into her bowl of maple walnut ice cream and slowly licked it, her plump face screwed into a grimace of ecstasy as she followed the ice cream with a sip of beer. “Man, this is living.”


  “How can you eat ice cream and chase it down with beer?” Sera was drinking bottled water. Beer gave her a hangover, and ice cream a headache. “The chocolate cake’s good, though. For a pub, this place has great food.” She was making an effort to get Maisie off the subject of Ben.

  It didn’t work.

  “Just don’t get your heart broken, okay, luv? The rumor mill has it that your hunk of a doctor is nothing if not fickle when it comes to women. He deals in multiples, one after the other after the other. Serial monogamy, like me, but way out of my league when it comes to sheer quantity.”

  Now why, Sera wondered, did she instantly feel alarmed and defensive? She hid her reaction and kept her voice light. “He pretty much told me that. He said he’d been married, and that he wasn’t good at it. He said he’d had a relationship until a couple months ago. He’s honest, which is all you can ask. And who the heck have you been talking to about him anyway?”

  What if it got back to Ben that somebody from the television crew was asking personal questions? She’d be humiliated. He’d naturally think it was her.

  “That local guy who’s working with Irby on lighting, Kenny what’s-his-name? Well, he has a sister who’s a radiologist at St. Joe’s.”

  “And she used to date Ben? She is dating Ben? She’s planning on dating Ben?” Sera tried to keep her voice steady. There was a peculiar tightness in her belly.

  “Nope. She’s fifty something and married. She just told Kenny what apparently is common knowledge at the hospital.”

  “Maisie. You asked Kenny to find out about Ben.” Sera shot her friend a reproachful look.

  “Well, better to have all the facts. Or fiction, depending on how accurate hospital gossip is.” Maisie reached across the table and took Sera’s hand, and her voice softened.

  “The word on the street is, Dr. Halsey’s a love- ’em-and-leave-’em guy, and I just don’t want you getting hurt, okay? Having sex with the Ben Halseys of this world is like playing with nitroglycerin. It’s spectacular if you’re prepared for the explosion, but I’m not sure you are.”

  Her beautiful eyes were kind and concerned. “I’ve known you, what? Two years now, two and a half? And in all that time you’ve never really fallen for anyone, never even shown a whole lot of interest in the entire male gene pool when it comes down to it. And some of the guys who were hot for you were totally studly. You do attract men, in case you didn’t know it. Probably because you’re such a challenge.” She cocked her head and studied Sera. “Maybe it’s that wild hair combined with the dose of cool attitude. That camera guy with the ponytail, for instance. Now he was a specimen.”

  “Jeff. Yeah, he was nice.” She’d dated him half a dozen times. It had been nice. Comfortable. No sense of drowning, no blood pooling in her abdomen, no urge to tear off her clothes and let herself slide down his body to the floor the way she’d felt the night Ben kissed her. Just remembering that kiss brought goose bumps out on her arms.

  “You don’t have to worry about me, Maisie. I’m twenty-eight. I’ve been around enough to be able to take care of myself. Besides, neither Ben nor I is interested in a scenario that includes a cozy house and a nanny.” Too late, she realized she’d revealed more than she’d intended to.

  Maisie gave a satisfied grin. ‘ ‘So you talked over the pros and cons, huh? Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “I think we agreed we were alike in not forming lasting relationships, that’s all.” Was that what each of them had meant? Sera wasn’t certain now.

  Maisie shot her a knowing look.

  “It just happened to come up in conversation,” Sera said defensively.

  “Okay. So when are you seeing him again?”

  “I’m not sure. I thought maybe I’d get him to choose some paint samples tomorrow, if he has time. Or I do. It’ll depend on whether or not they finish shooting in the morning.”

  It was Friday night, and it’d been a long day. The director and the writers had suddenly decided to change the setting of an upcoming scene from Dinah’s living room to the apartment of one of her new friends, for which no set had been built.

  There was a set now. It was nine forty-five in the evening, and Maisie and Sera had started at seven that morning. The carpenters and painters had finished an hour ago, and there were still the props to put in place before the set was ready for tomorrow morning’s early shoot.

  “Guess we’d better get back at it, or there won’t be much point in going home tonight.” Maisie yawned as they paid the bill and walked out into the balmy summer night.

  People thronged the street. A busker sitting on the sidewalk strummed a guitar and sang a Spanish love song. Maisie tossed a handful of change into his hat, and he bowed to her.

  “I really like this city. I wouldn’t mind living here,” she said as they made their way back to the studio. “In fact, I talked to a real estate agent the other day about buying an apartment. Real estate is high, but I figure it’s an investment.”

  “You’re really thinking of settling here in Vancouver?” Sera was astonished. Maisie had always said she was a free spirit; she didn’t want to be tied down; as a set designer she needed to be able to relocate at a moment’s notice. “What’s made you change your mind all of a sudden?”

  “Turning forty-eight, honey.” There was an unaccustomed note of weariness in Maisie’s raspy voice. “I’m getting tired of living like a vagabond. It’s time I put down roots somewhere, and this town appeals to me. The natives are friendly, the energy’s good, there’s lots happening in theater and film, plenty of flights every day if I need to get to L.A. or other points south.”

  They edged past a group of tourists having a loud argument in German.

  “Now, if I could just find an interesting, mature, sexually potent guy who liked fat women, I’d be set,” Maisie added. She sounded as if she were only half joking.

  “Do you think you’d ever get married again?”

  “Marry again?” Maisie shook her head. “I don’t think so. Three strikes are enough for me. I’m not good at marriage. I figure there’s some secret to it that I never learned. Some couples manage to stay together for their entire lives. Look at your mom and dad, for instance. From what you say they still care for each other, and they’ve been married forever.”

  “They’re old-fashioned Italian,” Sera said, as if that explained everything. “Family’s everything to them. I suppose my mother must have had times when she considered leaving, my father’s not the easiest man to live with.” Sera shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Even I’ve had times when I wanted to murder him. He’s overprotective, the typical Italian papa. He’s got a terrible temper and he’s so stubborn it makes you want to scream. He’s pretty controlling. But he adores Mama, and I’m pretty sure it’s mutual. We still catch them making out in the kitchen sometimes.”

  “That’s so sweet.”

  Sera knew what was coming next, and she wished Maisie wouldn’t ask.

  “How about you, Sera? Think you’ll ever get married?”

  “I don’t know.” Sera had dreams just as every woman had, but they’d become shopworn in the past few years. “I’d like to have kids someday,” she confessed. “But that’s not a good reason to get married. And he’d have to be somebody I could absolutely trust.”

  She thought of her sister. Thanks to Gemma, Sera had learned the hard way that trust was a rare commodity.

  “You gonna tell Gemma about Ben, that you’re decorating his apartment, et cetera, et cetera?”

  “No. Absolutely not.” Sera’s reaction was powerful and instinctive. Even to consider telling Gemma made her uneasy. “She doesn’t feel very attractive at the moment. I don’t want to make her feel worse than she already does,” she said, knowing that wasn’t the real reason. “Besides, she may have a bit of a thing for Ben.” She did suspect that.

  Be honest, Sera, she chided herself. You don’t want Gemma to know because you don’t trust her. But she couldn’t tell Maisie that,
could she?

  “Apparently women do fall for their doctors, although it’s never happened to me. Are you two usually attracted to the same guys?”

  “Sometimes. When we were younger. Men certainly were attracted to both of us. For some guys, twins are a challenge they just can’t resist. They have fantasies about being in bed with both of us.”

  “Sick.” Maisie was disgusted.

  “I agree, but it’s a fact of life.” Old grievances stirred in Sera and threatened to surface. “It’s as if we weren’t separate people.”

  “Any idiot ever succeed in dating you both?”

  “Once, in high school. And once was enough. I never got into a situation again where that was even possible.”

  “I can see where having somebody who resembles you so much could make it tough when you first meet a guy you go for,” Maisie said thoughtfully. “Every woman likes to feel her particular look is unique, whatever it is. When there’re two of you, the guy would have to see beneath the surface right away, find your differences. Which of course is what all us females want anyhow, but the reality is that guys go on appearance a lot of the time. It usually takes them a while to get beyond that. Like forty years or thereabouts.”

  They laughed, but Sera was glad that they’d reached the studio. Maisie’s remarks had brought up disturbing memories of being “one of the twins” instead of an individual in her own right. In college, far away from Gemma, she’d never admitted to being a twin when she dated. She’d had several affairs, but whenever they threatened to become serious, Sera had ended them, using the excuse that her career demanded far too much of her emotional energy to allow for long-term commitment.

  That was true, but it wasn’t the whole story. The real truth was that she was a coward, and she knew it.

  When anyone got too close, she ran. And if she kept on doing that, there was a better than even chance that she’d end up old and alone.

  It wasn’t a future she wanted to contemplate. As she hung pictures on the walls of the set, found a clock, arranged bric-a-brac so it seemed to have been in place for years, Sera thought about the conversation with Maisie and the surprising revelation that her friend was actually considering buying an apartment here in Vancouver.