Switcheroo by Goldsmith Olivia

girl assured her, nodding her mane of blonde hair. “Anyway, you probably have Pisces rising.” She had more hair than Sylvie, and it was very blonde. Was it natural? Sylvie wondered. But the face…it was just unbelievable.
    The girl, meanwhile, was staring at her. Sylvie didn’t have to be a psychic to know what she felt or the tragedy that all women experience. Sylvie realized that her feelings of loss were decimating, but this girl’s feelings of dread were just as acute. We’re in a no-win in our relationship with old Father Time, Sylvie thought. And it was no accident that he was a man. A mother wouldn’t treat her daughters like this.
    Finally the girl stood up, turned her back, and walked through the room. Sylvie followed her, peeking at the apartment of a mistress. There was a little too much pink, too many knickknacks and figurines, not enough real furniture—a brown carton served as an end table—but there were two dozen long-stemmed roses in a vase. They made Sylvie wince. Meanwhile, the girl had disappeared down a short hallway. Sylvie followed her through the bedroom—the bedroom, Sylvie reminded herself, where her husband had cheated on her—and into the bathroom. M. Molensky was staring into the mirror, her face again pulled down, aged by her hands.
    Sylvie stood beside her. “The wrinkles just crept in, like an invisible hand that wiped across my face,” she said. “One day I stopped squinting when I looked in the mirror and saw what was really there.” She looked at the young woman’s perfect, dewy skin. “What moisturizer do you use?”
    “Quince cream and super-blue algae. I swear by it.” She reached for two jars and held them up.
    “I used to…I used to look in the mirror at you,” Sylvie said quietly.
    “And someday…someday I’ll be looking at…,” the girl continued softly, but glanced away and didn’t finish the sentence.
    Sylvie turned from the mirror and looked directly at her rival. The light here was strong and white. Everything was mercilessly exposed. The two women circled each other, getting closer and closer. They studied each other’s faces: eyes, wrinkles, skin, hair texture. Everything. The most important thing on their minds was this incredible twinship, how much they looked alike. Bob had been pushed right out of Sylvie’s head for the moment. Then, “Did he tell you we were doubles?” Sylvie asked.
    “No. He said I was one of a kind,” the girl wailed. “This is really spooking me out.”
    “I bet he doesn’t even see it.”
    “I bet you’re right. I know all about this because it’s my own personal nightmare. But backward. You know, sometimes your dreams can tell you what your future is. Like my cousin Ray, he used to have this dream about a chain saw. And he would have it, like, all the time. And in the dream he’d cut off his leg with the chain saw.”
    “And did he?” Sylvie asked, fascinated but revolted.
    “No,” M. Molensky admitted. “He just wouldn’t go near chain saws. I guess because of the dreams. It was kind of like a phobia with him. But I’ll bet if he did, he would have cut his leg off. Anyway, I’ve got this kind of, like, phobia too.”
    “You’re afraid of chain saws?” Sylvie asked.
    “No. That was my cousin. I’m always scared a man is going to discard me for somebody newer and shinier. I call it the John Derek syndrome.”
    Sylvie was dizzy, both with the shock and the endless spirals of this girl’s logic, or lack of it. “I thought he was an old actor, not a syndrome,” she said.
    “He’s both. Remember how he started with Ursula Andress, then traded her in for that…you know. The one with the shoulder pads…the one with the Greek boyfriend who won’t marry her…”
    “Linda Evans?” Sylvie asked.
    “Yeah! Anyway, she looked just like Ursula. And then he wound up with Ten. Afro braids. You know, Bo. They’re all the same, only younger and younger. Clint Eastwood’s women all looked just alike: