Valentina didn’t sound enthused about it, but she agreed. She wanted to see Sasha too.
“See you at noon,” Sasha suggested, and Valentina said she’d be there.
Valentina was twenty minutes late, as Sasha sat eating a yogurt and a banana at a table, when her sister appeared. She was wearing a one-piece black stretch jumpsuit, a vintage Dior real leopard coat from the fifties that she’d found in a secondhand shop in Paris, and dizzying high heels. She created a sensation the minute she walked in, and headed for Sasha’s table, carrying the coat. She looked rail thin in the jumpsuit, and like the star she was.
“Someone is going to kill you for wearing that coat,” Sasha said in a low voice.
“Fuck them. It’s Dior couture. I paid a fortune for it.”
“Can’t you get arrested for that?” Sasha looked nervous, and Valentina laughed. Their faces were identical, and their bodies, and they both had long straight blond hair, but everything else was as different as it always was. And Sasha was wearing scrubs and clogs.
“They should arrest you for wearing those shoes. Can’t you wear decent shoes to work?” she asked, disgusted by her sister’s choice of footwear.
“Not when I’m on my feet eighteen hours a day.” But in spite of what she said, Sasha was happy to see her and gave her a warm hug. She had been gone for almost two weeks. “I missed you. How long will you be in Japan?”
“Three or four days. I’m going to meet Jean-Pierre in Dubai on the way back, for the weekend. He has business there.”
“What exactly does he do?” Sasha asked, sounding concerned, as Valentina helped herself to the banana and said it was all she wanted for lunch, with a sip of Sasha’s Diet Coke. She had to work in a few days, and she always ate very little before she did. “He’s not a drug dealer, is he?” There had been one or two in the past ten years, high-end ones, and one of them had gone to jail. Valentina had never been in trouble with the law, but the men in her life sometimes were.
“Of course not. He’s completely respectable. He’s a businessman. He doesn’t like to talk about his work.”
“That’s never a good sign,” Sasha reminded her, but Valentina brushed her off. She told her all about St. Bart’s, the movie stars and important people she’d met. It wasn’t new to Valentina, in her line of work, but she was always impressed. And she said Jean-Pierre had the biggest plane she’d ever seen. Sasha laughed, and said innocently, “I thought you were going to say the biggest something else.”
“That too,” Valentina said, looking far less innocent. She was a fiercely sexual being, and she liked her men a little kinky and on the edge, which had never appealed to Sasha.
Sasha got a text then from labor and delivery and said she had to go back to work. They had only had half an hour together, but it was better than nothing.
“When are you coming back?” Sasha asked her as they walked out of the cafeteria with Valentina in the leopard coat. All heads turned, not so much because of the protected species, since most people would think it was a fake, but because Valentina was a very striking woman and looked ten feet tall in the high heels.
“In about a week, depending on how long we stay in Dubai. I’ll introduce you to Jean-Pierre when we come home.” Sasha wasn’t sure she’d enjoy the meeting and doubted that she would, but she wanted to see who her sister was going out with, and what she thought of him. She had a more discerning and critical eye than her twin, who was willing to overlook almost anything once she was interested in a man. And she sounded besotted with Jean-Pierre.
They were hugging each other goodbye, when Alex came down the hall on his way to the cafeteria for lunch, and he smiled the minute he saw Sasha. But he was startled by the outfit and her scarlet lips, and she seemed to have grown about a foot.
“Sasha?”
“Hi, Alex,” the Sasha he knew responded, while his eyes were riveted to her twin, and they stood side by side, as he suddenly realized there were two of them.
“Holy shit!” was all he could say at first, staring from one to the other. It was the same face, the same green eyes and blond hair, but one of them looked like she was dressed for Halloween, or the cover of Vogue in 1956.
Sasha introduced them, and he scolded her for not telling him that her sister was an identical twin. Both girls laughed at what he said and at the stunned expression on his face. Valentina was vastly amused. He looked shocked. And admittedly, her outfit was a jolt, like an electric charge. For Valentina, it was tame.
“I forgot you didn’t know.” Sasha smiled at him. He had just gotten a full-on dose of her twin. One picture was worth a thousand words.
“How was I supposed to know?” he said to her and then turned to her twin. “Well, I’m very happy to meet you,” he said sincerely. “Maybe the three of us can have dinner sometime.”
“That would be nice,” Valentina said politely. She had no idea who he was or if he meant anything to her sister. Sasha hadn’t told her about him. “I’ll be in Tokyo and Dubai this week. Maybe when I get back.”
“Of course,” he said, impressed. Sasha had to go then, and the two women left Alex to eat his lunch and ponder the creature he had met. With their two very different styles, despite their identical faces and bodies, at least he couldn’t get them confused.
Sasha walked her through the lobby and kissed her again at the revolving door. “Take care of yourself,” she said to her, sounding like the older sister that she technically was, even if only by three minutes. But she had always been the sensible one. “And don’t get too deep into it with Jean-Pierre until you know more about him.”
“Don’t be such an old lady,” Valentina scoffed at her. “I know all I need to know. He’s a terrific guy. And a billionaire,” she added for good measure.
“Not everything is what it seems. You don’t know him yet.”
“Don’t be such a wiener,” she said to her sister, and Sasha laughed. Valentina was a little crazy and had always been wild, but they loved each other unconditionally. “See you in a week,” she called out to Sasha as she stepped into the revolving door, and then strode across the sidewalk to hail a cab and disappeared as it sped away. Sasha went back upstairs, and a few minutes later Alex came to find her, when she was outside a labor room checking a chart.
“How could you not tell me you have an identical twin?”
“Maybe I just assumed you knew. She’s a character, isn’t she? She used to drive me nuts when we were kids, and embarrass the hell out of me. She always used to get me into trouble with our parents. She blamed everything on me. She and my mom are still pretty close. My father is on to her, and they don’t get along. And she hates his wife and kids.”
“She’s a handful,” Alex said, still looking shocked. She had made a big impression on him with the leopard coat, the bright red lipstick, and the towering high heels. “At least I’ll be able to tell you apart, unless she puts on clogs and scrubs.”
“She does that too. She loves confusing people. She used to love driving my roommates nuts, pretending to be me. Claire is the only one who can tell us apart. No one else can, not even our parents, they never could. It was kind of fun being a twin, except when I was taking the rap for her. I’m glad you met her before she left town.”
“Me too,” he said, but was still a little rattled by it when they both went back to work. Valentina was definitely something else. There was no question in his mind which twin he was falling in love with, and it wasn’t the supermodel in the leopard coat.
—
After sending Claire another amazing bouquet of flowers, George started calling her. He was very smooth. He called her several times, just to say hello and see how she was, before he asked her out. And then finally after a week of calls and flowers, he invited her to dinner and she gently explained to him that she had to work. His pursuit of her was so determined that she was scared. He was a force to be reckoned with when he wanted something. It was written all over him, and he wasn’t willing to take no for an answer. He just tried again.