Palindrome by Stuart Woods Read Free Book Online Page A

with half a dozen other people. As the remnants of a pâté were taken away and fat trout were served, the talk turned to work. “What do you do?” a man across the table asked Hamish.
    “Financial consulting.”
    “Who consults you?”
    “Right now, a merchant bank in London. Everybody’s getting ready for the big move in the Common Market in ‘ninety-two. What do you do?”
    “I’m a psychiatrist,” the man said. “So is Ann my wife. We practice in Savannah.”
    Hamish nodded, as if he had little interest in the subject.
    “I develop resort property,” Jimmy said, as if it were his turn.
    “Well,” the doctor said, “I hope you never get your hands on this place.”
    Hamish smiled slightly. “I wish I’d said that.”
    “Now, you’d be surprised what enlightened development could do for this island,” Jimmy said. “Make it available for a lot more people to enjoy. It would have to be done right, of course. Elegantly.”
    “Like Hilton Head?” the doctor said.
    “Beautiful development, Hilton Head,” Jimmy said, looking dreamy about it, missing the sarcasm.
    “Wall-to-wall development,” Germaine chipped in.
    The table fell silent.
    Liz turned to the psychiatrist. “What sort of practice do you and your wife have, Doctor?” She really didn’t want to know; she had seen enough of psychiatrists over the past few weeks, but she felt the need for a change of subject.
    “Well,” the man said, “I was teaching at Duke University Medical School, and I retired last year. We moved to Savannah, and we both felt the need for some activity, so we started a part-time practice.”
    “We’re working on a book, too,” the man’s wife said.
    “A book on psychiatry?” Germaine asked.
    “Not exactly,” the man replied. “We’re conducting a major study on identical twins, and the results will form a book on the subject.”
    “Hamish has a twin,” Jimmy chimed in. “You ought to study those boys.” There was something malicious in his tone.
    Hamish suddenly stood up. “Excuse me, please.” He left the table.
    There was a silence in his wake, and, again, Liz tried to keep the conversation going. “Are twins particularly interesting to study?” she asked the doctor.
    The doctor smiled. “Fascinating. Identical twins have the closest of all human relationships—closer than mother and child. They enjoy a high degree of empathy, often are telepathic, know what each other is thinking. Sometimes, during our work, I’ve had the eerie feeling that a pair of twins were the same person—or, rather, different halves of the same person.”
    “Is that just because they grow up together, spend so much time together? Or do you read something more into it?” Liz asked, interested.
    “Something more, though I’m not quite sure what. We’ve studied twins who were separated shortly after birth, who didn’t even know they had a twin, and there were remarkable similarities in how they had lived their lives, the choices they had made—even though they were brought up in families that were very different. I’ve interviewed one such pair who seemed to choose the same brands of clothes and even had identical haircuts. They both had had a fantasy twin for as long as they could remember, played with him, talked with him. Neither was much surprised when he discovered that he had an actual twin.”
    “Boy, that’s spooky,” Jimmy’s wife, Martha, said.
    “That’s not exactly a psychiatric term,” the doctor said, “but it’s properly descriptive.”
    “Do twins always get along with each other?” Martha asked. “Always,” the doctor said, “at least in our study. Their mothers seem to regard them as one person, so they don’t have to compete for her affection. In fact, generally speaking, they don’t compete with each other over anything; instead, they seem to form a unit and compete with others, as one person.”
    “I’ve always wondered why their mothers dress them alike,” Martha said.