A Stranger in the Mirror By Sidney Sheldon

“Thank you,” Jill replied. “There’s nothing.” And it was true. There was not one single thing that she needed that she did not have. She was the happiest person in the world.

There was a knock at the cabin door and a steward entered, carrying more flowers. Jill looked at the card. They were from the President of the United States. Memories. She pushed them out of her mind and began to unpack.

 

He was standing at the railing on the Main Deck, studying the passengers as they came aboard. Everyone was in a festive mood, preparing for a holiday or joining loved ones aboard. A few of them smiled at him, but the man paid no attention to them. He was watching the gangplank.

 

At eleven-forty A.M., twenty minutes before sailing time, a chauffeur-driven Silver Shadow raced up to Pier 90 and stopped. David Kenyon jumped out of the car, looked at his watch and said to the chauffeur, “Perfect timing, Otto.”

“Thank you, sir. And may I wish you and Mrs. Kenyon a very happy honeymoon.”

“Thanks.” David Kenyon hurried toward the gangplank, where he presented his ticket. He was escorted aboard by the ship’s officer who had taken care of Jill.

“Mrs. Temple is in your cabin, Mr. Kenyon.”

“Thank you.”

David could visualize her in the bridal suite, waiting for him, and his heart quickened. As David started to move away, a voice called, “Mr. Kenyon…”

David turned. The man who had been standing near the railing walked over to him, a smile on his face. David had never seen him before. David had the millionaire’s instinctive distrust of friendly strangers. Almost invariably, they wanted something.

The man held out his hand, and David shook it cautiously. “Do we know each other?” David asked.

“I’m an old friend of Jill’s,” the man said, and David relaxed. “My name is Lawrence. Clifton Lawrence.”

“How do you do, Mr. Lawrence.” He was impatient to leave.

“Jill asked me to come up and meet you,” Clifton said. “She’s planned a little surprise for you.”

David looked at him. “What kind of surprise?”

“Come along, and I’ll show you.”

David hesitated a moment. “All right. Will it take long?”

Clifton Lawrence looked up at him and smiled. “I don’t think so.”

They took an elevator down to C deck, moving past the throngs of embarking passengers and visitors. They walked down a corridor to a large set of double doors. Clifton opened them and ushered David in. David found himself in a large, empty theater. He looked around, puzzled. “In here?”

“In here.” Clifton smiled.

He turned and looked up at the projectionist in the booth and nodded. The projectionist was greedy. Clifton had had to give him two hundred dollars before he would agree to assist him. “If they ever found out, I would lose my job,” he had grumbled.

“No one will ever know,” Clifton had assured him. “It’s just a practical joke. All you have to do is lock the doors when I come in with my friend, and start running the film. We’ll be out of there in ten minutes.”

In the end, the projectionist had agreed.

Now David was looking at Clifton, puzzled. “Movies?” David asked.

“Just sit down, Mr. Kenyon.”

David took a seat on the aisle, his long legs stretched out. Clifton took a seat across from him. He was watching David’s face as the lights went down and the bright images started to flicker on the large screen.

 

It felt as though someone was pounding him in the solar plexus with iron hammers. David stared up at the obscene images on the screen and his brain refused to accept what his eyes were seeing. Jill, a young Jill, the way she had looked when he had first fallen in love with her, was naked on a bed. He could see every feature clearly. He watched, mute with disbelief, as a man got astride the girl on the screen and rammed his penis into her mouth. She began sucking it lovingly, caressingly, and another girl came into the scene and spread Jill’s legs apart and put her tongue deep inside her. David thought he was going to be sick. For one wild, hopeful instant, he thought that this might be trick photography, a fake, but the camera covered every movement that Jill made. Then the Mexican came into the scene and got on top of Jill, and a hazy red curtain descended in front of David’s eyes. He was fifteen years old again, and it was his sister Beth he was watching up there, his sister sitting on top of the naked Mexican gardener in her bed, saying, Oh, God, I love you, Juan. Keep fucking me. Don’t stop! and David standing in the doorway, unbelievingly, watching his beloved sister. He had been seized with a blind, overpowering rage, and had snatched up a steel letter opener from the desk and had run over to the bed and knocked his sister aside and plunged the opener into the gardener’s chest, again and again, until the walls were covered with blood, and Beth was screaming, Oh, God, no! Stop it, David! I love him. We’re going to be married! There was blood everywhere. David’s mother had come running into the room and had sent David away. But he learned later that his mother had telephoned the district attorney, a close friend of the Kenyon family. They had had a long talk in the study, and the Mexican’s body had been taken to the jail. The next morning, it was announced that he had committed suicide in his cell. Three weeks later, Beth had been placed in an institution for the insane.