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one of the latest to be gentrified, Ben smoothed his clay covered fingers over the head of a child he’d just finished molding and then stood back to inspect his creation, nearly tripping over his dog, Grendel. The dog yelped a protest.
    “If you’d move away from under my feet, this wouldn’t happen,” Ben reminded him as he patted an apology.
    He smiled with satisfaction at his sculpture. It was the head of a full cheeked three year old boy whose overwhelming curiosity and irrepressible exuberance were clearly evident in the wide grin, the raised eyebrows, the smiling eyes, the thatch of impossible hair that insisted on standing on end despite the efforts of the city’s best children’s stylist.
    “Gotcha, Stanley Brulotte, you rascal.” He peered at the photographs he’d been working from and, as always, felt a surge of affection for his outrageous little godson.
    Greg and Lily had produced a child who challenged them at every turn, taxed them to their limits and made everyone laugh.
    Ben adored him, but limited his visits to two hours, max. The Brulotte household wasn’t exactly geared to peace and tranquility, and when Stanley’s new sister or brother arrived in a couple of months, the situation could only get worse.
    A glance at the old fashioned alarm clock he kept on the table surprised him. It was long after midnight, and he had a surgery at 7:00 A.M. Past time to clean up the clay, shower and head for bed.
    He covered his creation carefully with a wet cloth and, after washing his hands, dialed the surgical ward to check once again on Gemma Cardano. He was relieved to hear that she was still doing well. It seemed that the universe was smiling on him, he concluded as he and his dog headed up the stairs. If she made it through these first twenty-four hours without nasty complications, chances were good that the real danger was over. The reconstruction would be challenging, but certainly not life threatening.
    He yawned and thought of his patient’s sister, Sera Cardano. Twinning was a phenomenon that had always intrigued him, particularly from a medical standpoint. He’d recently read an article in a medical journal about identical twin males in their sixties who ended up in the same hospital on the same day with heart attacks and similar blockages of the coronary arteries. The chance of such a thing being coincidence was virtually nil.
    How would it feel to have someone have the same life experiences as you at the same time, to have a constant reminder of how you looked, talked, laughed? Most people, he knew, had little or no true concept of how they appeared to others. He could draw anyone, with uncanny accuracy, from memory; it was a gift he’d had since childhood. But he’d have a difficult time drawing his own face without looking in a mirror, Ben mused. There was something about living inside a body that made it difficult to envision how that body looked to someone else’s eyes...unless you were an identical twin.
    Ben opened the window wide, checked the alarm and set the clock back on the packing case that doubled as a bedside table, idly reminding himself that he should do something about furniture. He’d lived here over a year now and the only area he’d bought anything for was the studio. Why couldn’t he walk into a furniture store and purchase a couple roomfuls? Why did shopping always get put at the bottom of the list of things to attend to? Because life held so many other intriguing things to do, and buying furniture was not his idea of a good time.
    He climbed into bed and, after the usual tussle, Grendel settled on his dog mattress nearby. Every night without fail, the dog tried to climb in beside Ben.
    Figuring himself out was hard enough, Ben decided with a yawn as he began to slide into sleep, without there being two of him. The Cardano twins intrigued him, from a scientific standpoint, of course. Although he couldn’t help but be aware that his patient’s sister was an