Gemma's Face

“You’re not even going to ask who she is?” I said as Dr. Dearborne studied the photograph I slid across the desk to him. His office was in the basement of the natural sciences building, which I had thought would be gloomy and perhaps even soggy. But the professor kept a homey space, lush with exotic plants in glass containers and leather-bound books in languages I did not recognize.

“It’s not in my business to ask,” he replied, pushing his round spectacles up his nose as he studied the photo of Gemma. It was the one I took of her on our beach trip. She hated it, but I always felt as if the sunlight lit up her face in such a radiant way– “And you said you wanted an identical replication?” Dr. Dearborne asked, interrupting my thoughts. “Including the scar above the left eyebrow?”

“Yes,” I said. “Flaws and all.” Though I hardly thought anything about Gemma’s appearance was flawed. But I knew that’s what the professor was asking.

“Most women want ageless beauty,” he said, glancing up from the photo to look at me and smile with coffee-stained teeth. “Most bring in photos of themselves as young girls. Seldom do I see a request such as this.”

“Are you able to do it?” I asked, nervously clutching my handbag.

“Of course I can,” he said, setting the photo on his desk. “I didn’t travel the world perfecting this procedure for nothing. I can change anyone’s face in any way they like. Though usually, only those attempting to escape the law want their face transformed into someone else entirely. But you don’t seem like the criminal type, Miss James.”

“No, I am not,” I said with an uncomfortable laugh. “I just… want to look like her.”

“But on the subject of criminality,” Dr. Dearborne said, pushing a paper and pen across the desk to me. “I require all of my patients to sign an NDA. The university is not strictly aware of this little operation that I am running out of their labs. You know how it is.”

“You mentioned that on the phone,” I replied, taking the paper and scanning it, but not really reading it. Truthfully, it didn’t matter what it said or what he had me sign. I just wanted my face to no longer be mine. I wanted Gemma’s face.

I signed the document and he leaned back in his chair. “And there is the matter of payment,” he said. “Cash only.”

“Right,” I said, dipping my hand into my purse to pull out my wallet. “Five thousand.”

After I handed him the money and he double checked the amount, he smiled and tucked the cash into one of his desk drawers and locked it. “Now then,” he said. “Any further questions before we begin the procedure? I’ve already gone over your medical history, allergies, whatnot. You’ll be awake, but completely pain free. It’s shockingly quick, all things considered.”

I knew his casual confidence was meant to instill ease in a potentially nervous patient. But I was not nervous. I was desperate. I didn’t care if it hurt. I didn’t care how long it took. I wanted to wake up every morning and look in the mirror and see Gemma staring at me. If I couldn’t be with her, this was the next best thing. If I couldn’t roll over in my bed and see her gazing back, I would find a way that her eyes and the scar above her left eyebrow would never leave me.

“I’m ready,” I said.

Dr. Dearborne prepped me as if I was going to have surgery, even though he’d told me the procedure was more like a mix of alchemy and old-world magic than modern medical marvel. He’d still drug me up with morphine, but there was no scalpel that would rend my skin from my skull and sculpt it into someone new. His lab was dimly lit after hours, the students all tucked safely into their dorms. He only took appointments like mine when the campus slept. He played music over the loudspeakers he’d installed in the lab, a playlist of classical orchestral pieces.

I laid down on the table wearing a cotton hospital gown, my hair tied back into a braid away from my face. He got an IV started in my arm, which immediately lulled me into a hazy bliss. He told me to close my eyes and when I opened them, I’d have her face.

I wondered what he would have thought that I was getting my lover’s face applied to my own. Not only my lover, but my ex-lover. It felt scandalous and crazy because it was. I was grateful he did not ask who Gemma was or why I was stealing her face. But as I lay there, my eyes closed and body floating weightlessly on the drugs as I felt an occasional strange tugging on my face, I thought about what had led me to this decision.

Gemma was the flirtatious, popular type. She always had a man or woman on her arm, ever since she was old enough for those kinds of relationships. It’s no wonder I fell for her. She was impossible not to love. And she knew it. She knew she could get anyone she wanted into her bed with ease. And for some reason, I was stupid enough to think that I would be enough for her. That my love and my presence alone would make her feel satisfied and no longer need to chase after other lovers. I was wrong.

She insisted that it was just who she was, a flirty girl with legs that couldn’t stay shut. She said I was narrow-minded and stuck in patriarchal views on relationships. “Relationship anarchy” she called it. She would never belong to one single person, but to as many lovers as she wanted. And no matter what I said or did, she would not change her mind.

At first, I tried to be okay with it. She’d tell me she was going out with so-and-so and that she’d be back later. Dates turned into one night stands turned into long-term dating. She’d try to introduce me to her other partners, begging us to all sit around the kitchen table and have brunch and play board games. But I loathed the thought of her other lovers. I didn’t want to know about them, hear about them, and especially not befriend them. It disgusted me. But I endured it for her. The torture of watching her love everyone who she encountered was worth it because I loved her.

I loved her.

And I wanted so badly for that to be enough. I fantasized that she’d come home and tell me she was done with dating, sleeping around, and keeping a harem of partners. I wished endlessly for the day that she’d tell me she’d be mine and mine alone. But that day never came. And eventually, whether it was my increasing unhappiness and discomfort or her annoyance with how I tried to hold her down, by anchor or by tether, she left me. She left me for partners who enjoyed her lifestyle and found it hot that entertained so many lovers at once.

But that didn’t stop me from loving her. I went insane without her. Sobbing, crying, mourning the loss of someone who was still alive but would never be with me. She was intoxicating, a special kind of drug that was more addictive than whatever Dr. Dearborne was pumping through my IV. And now, she would be with me forever, her face permanently plastered to my own. I would be able to gaze into her stormy sea eyes every time I looked in the mirror. I could run my finger over her scar like I used to every time after we had sex. She was finally mine, and only mine.

“Alright,” Dr. Dearborne said. “We’re all done.”

I sat up and touched my face. Not my face, but Gemma’s face. My skin was dewy and soft, like a baby. Gemma’s cheekbones were higher than my own, her nose perkier and cuter. And the scar felt exactly as it always felt. Dr. Dearborne handed me a mirror. It was perfect. She was mine. Forever and always, she was mine.

Dr. Dearborne gently removed the IV and gave me an instructions packet on procedure aftercare. It all seemed simple enough. He gave me a moment alone to get dressed again and gather myself before emerging into the world with a brand new face.

“For what it’s worth,” he said as he walked me to the door, “you made an excellent choice. It’s a beautiful face.”

“I know,” I said, my new cheeks warming with pride. “She is.”

“No,” he said. “You are.”

***

I noticed the effects of wearing Gemma’s face right away. Suddenly all the attention she got from strangers made sense. I was getting coffee from a local cafe one day when a woman stopped me.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes fixed on me, “but you are the most beautiful person I have ever seen.”

Fuck it, I thought to myself. What could the harm be? I was single after all. Painfully single. And more touch-starved than I wanted to admit. And I was sporting Gemma’s face. Why not pretend to be her for a day? It didn’t have to mean anything.

“You’re not bad yourself,” I said with a smile. “You don’t happen to be into women, are you?” She had a septum ring and bright pink hair. There was a rainbow pin on her messenger bag.

She blushed madly and we sat down together at a table by the window. We chatted and drank our coffees. I bought her a second flat white with vanilla. She asked me out to dinner.

Cosplaying as a woman that had scorned me, one thing led to another and the woman from the coffee shop, Sylvia, and I somehow ended up back at my place. Drunk on a woman’s touch and wanting to fill the ugly, gaping hole Gemma had left in my life, I stumbled into bed with her.

It didn’t have to mean anything, I told myself. I was single. Gemma had left me. There was no loyalty I was betraying by bedding Sylvia. But I knew deep down that I loved Gemma still, and there was no room in my heart for anyone but her. Sylvia didn’t have to know that though. I could discard her the next morning, just as Gemma had discarded me.

As I laid in bed with Sylvia afterwards, exhausted and satisfied, the woman who’d been a stranger just that morning ran her finger over the scar above my left eyebrow. She smiled giddily at me in the moonlight, her fingers tracing over the same features that my fingers once traced on Gemma. “You’re so beautiful,” she whispered.

Reality hit me in a crash, my blood running as cold as ice. I was horrified. Every lover I would ever take from the moment I stole Gemma’s face would be making love to her. Every time a person fell for me, they would be falling for her.

In my lovesick lesbian grief, I had unknowingly signed myself up to be a witness to the very thing that ruined my relationship with Gemma. The rage, the disgust, and the jealousy would follow me all of my days as people continued to fall in love with and fuck Gemma. But it wasn’t her peering out from behind these thick lashes.

It was me.