​

 

“Oh my God, Sam, will you look at this?”

​

“What are you talking about?”

​

“This headline: ‘NEW ACTRESS OR OLD? INGENUE SLATED TO WIN BEST ACTRESS’.”   

​

“So?”

​

“Just listen: ‘Twenty-three-year-old ingénue, Indira Adira, is favored to win the Oscar this evening for her role as Melanie Hamilton in the remake of the 1939 classic Gone with the Wind’.” 

​

“Come here, Ruthie,” murmured Sam as he cuddled his wife from behind and nibbled on the back of her neck.

“Let’s get back to what we were doing.”

​

Ruth pushed him away. “Stop, Sam. You’re mussing my hair.”

​

“Aw, come on—”

​

“No, wait a minute. ‘Speculations abound that Ms. Adira is, for all intents and purposes, Dame Olivia herself as she renders to pitch-perfect perfection the role that made—’”

​

“What nonsen—”

​

“Will you shut up? I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet. ‘But the good doctors at NYU Medical Center know better. In a slip I had to swear on my mother’s eyes I’d keep secret, a surgeon-in-the-know divulged that two years ago, at the time of the aging actress’s disappearance, her brain was transplanted into the body of that beauty queen killed in the midnight crash on FDR Drive just north of Battery Park—’ ”

​

“Please, Ruthie—”  

​

“I’m not done, Sam!” Ruth stamped her foot, but the sound was lost in the plush carpeting of their spacious Second Avenue penthouse. ‘Of course, anyone today with five million bucks can have that same procedure at any of our great teaching hospit—’"

​

“Oh, forget it. My breakfast is getting cold,” he muttered before retreating into a smoldering silence.