A Stranger in the Mirror By Sidney Sheldon

Toby turned to look at her, his eyes narrowing. “What happened?”

Jill smiled. “Stupid innocent that I was, while I was reading, I felt her hand go up my thigh.” Jill threw back her head and laughed. “I was frightened out of my wits. I’ve never run so fast in my life.”

Ten days later, Rose Dunning’s agency license was permanently revoked by the City Licensing Commission.

 

The following weekend, Toby and Jill were at their house in Palm Springs. Toby was lying on a massage table in the patio, a heavy Turkish towel under him, while Jill gave him a long, relaxing massage. Toby was on his back, cotton pads protecting his eyes against the strong rays of the sun. Jill was working on his feet, using a soft creamy lotion.

“You sure opened my eyes about Cliff,” Toby said. “He was nothing but a parasite, milking me. I hear he’s going around town trying to get himself a partnership deal. No one wants him. He can’t get himself arrested without me.”

Jill paused a moment and said, “I feel sorry for Cliff.”

“That’s the goddamned trouble with you, sweetheart. You think with your heart instead of your head. You’ve got to learn to be tougher.”

Jill smiled quietly. “I can’t help it. I’m the way. I am.” She started to work on Toby’s legs, moving her hands slowly up toward his thighs with light, sensuous movements. He began to have an erection.

“Oh, Jesus,” he moaned.

Her hands were moving higher now, moving toward Toby’s groin, and the hardness increased. She slid her hands between his legs, underneath him, and slipped a creamy finger inside him. His enormous penis was rock hard.

“Quick, baby,” he said. “Get on top of me.”

 

They were at the marina, on the Jill, the large motor-sailer Toby had bought for her. Toby’s first television show of the new season was to tape the following day.

“This is the best vacation I’ve had in my whole life,” Toby said. “I hate to go back to work.”

“It’s such a wonderful show,” Jill said. “I had fun doing it. Everyone was so nice.” She paused a moment, then added lightly, “Almost everyone.”

“What do you mean?” Toby’s voice was sharp. “Who wasn’t nice to you?”

“No one, darling. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it.”

But she finally allowed Toby to worm it out of her, and the next day Eddie Berrigan, the casting director, was fired.

 

In the months that followed, Jill told Toby little fictions about other casting directors on her list, and one by one they disappeared. Everyone who had ever used her was going to pay. It was, she thought, like the rite of mating with the queen bee. They had all had their pleasure, and now they had to be destroyed.

 

She went after Sam Winters, the man who had told Toby she had no talent. She never said a word against him; on the contrary, she praised him to Toby. But she always praised other studio heads just a little bit more…. The other studios had properties better suited for Toby…directors who really understood him. Jill would add that she could not help thinking that Sam Winters did not really appreciate Toby’s talent. Before long, Toby began feeling the same way. With Clifton Lawrence gone, Toby had no one to talk to, no one he could trust, except Jill. When Toby decided to make his movies at another studio, he believed that it was his own idea. But Jill made certain that Sam Winters knew the truth.

Retribution.

 

There were those around Toby who felt that Jill could not last, that she was simply a temporary intruder, a passing fancy. So they tolerated her or treated her with a thinly veiled contempt. It was their mistake. One by one, Jill eliminated them. She wanted no one around who had been important in Toby’s life or who could influence him against her. She saw to it that Toby changed his lawyer and his public-relations firm and she hired people of her own choosing. She got rid of the three Macs and Toby’s entourage of stooges. She replaced all the servants. It was her house now and she was the mistress of it.