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Stuart leaped high.

He made an amazing fingertip grab of the red Frisbee. His smile congratulated himself. He glanced over to Gloria.

She responded with: “Dynamite!”

Gloria appeared older than Stuart. About thirty, perhaps, maybe another year or two.

She had auburn hair, straight falling, long, worn middleparted to form an arch that nicely contained her face. Her face could scarcely be improved. Narrow nose, ideally tipped, eyes wide set, deep and brown. Her complexion flawless and pale — creamy pale, not sickly. Perhaps it was the paleness that gave the impression that she was pampered, that she overcared for herself. She conveyed that no matter how casual her attitude or dress — such as now, sitting with her legs drawn up, hugging her legs, wearing pleated, straight-legged jeans, espadrilles and a light cotton shirt unbuttoned three down to show she wasn't wearing, didn't need to wear, a bra.

The telephone rang.

Gloria answered it, got up and carried the phone inside.

“Shall I come there? … If you need me I'll come … Are you sure? I could catch a plane tonight … I suppose you're right … I'm fine,” she said, changing to sound as though that were so. “I'm just fine. If only we'd get some sun here … No, I don't, but still it's nice to have sunshine … Day before yesterday, it occurred to me that the sun is up there going across the sky same as always and all this rainy mess is just in between and it seemed such a ridiculous idea, something I'd never thought about before, that it seemed I'd made it up. But then I realized that's how it really is.” She paused. “I'm babbling … No, it's not okay, I shouldn't babble. It's a giveaway.”

Stuart appeared just outside the front door, having to retrieve a bad throw of the Frisbee. He asked Gloria whom she was talking to.

Gloria covered the mouthpiece while she told him it was long distance, her younger, married sister Pam from Richmond, Virginia. Pam's eight-year-old, Daniel, was in the hospital with a concussion, a fall from a bike.

Stuart didn't hear the last part. He disappeared from the doorway like a slide being ejected from a projector.

After the phone call Gloria felt heavy, fixed in place. A fragment of Stuart's laughter struck her. She brushed it off and went to the hall closet for a tan trenchcoat that she put on, stuffed some money into a pocket and went out the back way, avoiding.

Across the patio, through the rear gate, around to the road with the happy name: Bluebird Canyon.

It was a winding, downhill mile to the Coast Highway and the Seaside Supermarket, where Gloria usually shopped. Sometimes, when she didn't intend to buy too many things, she made the walk. Today it was welcome therapy.

The rain.

She raised her face to it, thought of it as a beneficial drink for her skin. She took to the rain for the opposite reason she shunned the sun. The sun was a robber that could steal years from a face.

She'd heard it said that English girls owed the lovely quality of their complexions to English weather. A pretty thought — girls absorbing, deriving from something so commonplace and natural. As for herself, the only drawback to such prolonged damp weather was that it made her nose ache where it had been purposely broken, and also it caused arthritic pains in both her knees.

Gloria would be fifty-one her next birthday.

Seven years ago last February, when she was battling awfully with menopause, her husband made it worse by leaving her for a woman of twenty. Ego depleted, depression pouring in, Gloria tried suicide. She was methodical about it, to the point of making a list of the various ways and then eliminating those she found impossible. Oddly enough, what she left herself with were extremes — the most violent and the most passive: in the car at top speed on a high road to not match a turn with a turn, or in bed with a double prescription of Tuinals, taking one and purposely not remembering she had, so to take another, pretend not to remember, and another.

Her housekeeper found her — too early. Gloria was pumped, had a twenty-eight-hour sleep and awoke saved.

Having gotten that out of her system, she took a more optimistic view. There were blessings to count: plenty of money from the generous settlement her ex-husband's conscience had provided, her good health, and, perhaps most important, she had a few ties but no strings.

Her only adversary was time. She decided to make a fight for it.

To start, she spent eight weeks at Elizabeth Arden's ranch in Arizona. Getting her breath, losing pounds and gaining courage for what lay ahead.

Then aesthetic surgery.

That was what they called it now instead of plastic, which had become almost everything else.

She had it done in New York City. By the best.

Her chin, which had always been a weak feature, was corrected by the addition of a small piece of properly shaped bonelike substance. Her brow line, too prominent, was precisely deridged. Her nose was fractured, reshaped, planed down, given a perfect bridge, tilt and tip. The loose flesh and circles beneath her eyes were removed and so was the puffiness of her lids.

The work was done in phases. Gloria called them projects. As soon as one project was healed she went in for the next. Not allowing time for time to discourage or affect her in any way — fighting time. Often it seemed she was winning.

Silicone sponges were implanted in her breasts. She resisted the idea of having exceptionally large, firm breasts. Actually, that would have been easier for the surgeon. She chose to have more believable, average-size ones. It required repositioning her nipples and aureoles and entirely sacrificing their sensation. The silicone was not detectable, pliant to the touch, and her breasts had a nice natural jounce to them.

Stretch marks and cellulite on her buttocks and upper thighs. That went. They pared her down. It was fortunate that she had abundant rather than too little flesh to work with, the surgeon told her. It seemed they could accomplish almost anything, if she would permit and pay.

Final project: her face was given a lift. By no means was it an ordinary superficial lift. Gloria willing, the surgeon did a more thorough, lasting job by working on the underlying facial and neck muscles.

Excellent results. The surgeon was very pleased.

Gloria was glad to hear that now it would be impossible for her to ever have a frown line.

After a year and three months there was nothing more the aesthetic surgeons could do.

Still, no time to waste.

Looking younger wasn't enough.

She flew to Geneva, and went on to the famous Niehans clinic for cellular therapy.

There she was first given the Abderholden Test, a urine enzyme test that in some secret way revealed any dysfunctioning of her body's internal organs. It turned out Gloria had a pituitary imbalance, probably a result of menopause, she was told. She also had a normal degree of cell and tissue deterioration for her age. A slight hyperfunctioning of some organs, a hypofunctioning of others. She was assured that the Niehans approach could revitalize her. It would cost ten thousand dollars. In advance.

Gloria paid.

The following day a pregnant ewe was selected from a special flock. It was slaughtered to obtain its unborn lamb. It was all done in the Niehans laboratory under the most antiseptic conditions and as swiftly as possible to maintain freshness. The various internal organs of the fetus, including its sexual ones, were separately cut into tiny morsels and placed in sterile dishes containing 20 cc. of normal saline solution. Each portion of tissue was minced, then forced through an extremely fine sieve and drawn up into individual 5-cc. syringes.

They were rushed to Gloria's bedside. With what seemed to her a flourish, the doctor removed the white towel that covered the tray. Gloria gasped when she saw the twelve syringes tipped with huge 14-gauge hypodermic needles. She glanced at the nurse, who wasn't at all pretty, and she wondered if behind that professional expression was the thought that this American woman was a gullible fool. She glanced at the rubber gloves the doctor was wearing, transparent blue, increasing the unreality.

For a moment Gloria felt helplessly a captive, like a passenger on a jumbo jet that was roaring down a runway for takeoff. She refocused her mind on the possible rewards, rolled over on her stomach, buried her face in the pillow, bit the pillow, clenched and counted. Six in one cheek, six in the other.

For a few days she had a reaction. Vertigo, nausea, diarrhea and a sense of depersonalization. Symptoms of mild shock from the foreign matter invading her system. It was frightening. She'd heard such injections had caused death in a few cases. No, she protested, not after all she'd been through.

The bad effects disappeared.

She waited for the good ones.

It was several weeks before she noticed the first major change. Her nervousness disappeared, a calm set in. She had the sensation that she was being refilled, made capable again in every sense. Her eyes as well as her urges seemed to verify it. Her eyes seemed more dimensional, deeper, brighter brown, definitely quicker. The change in her skin was amazing. It regained a youthful clarity — the skin of her face and all over.

Her menstrual cycle returned.

Gloria thought of those months as her renaissance. Could she live to be a hundred? Not just live but be active and enjoyably responsive? Her mirror and the way she felt replied by suggesting a hundred and fifty. Perhaps (she only allowed the point of the idea to barely prick her) she had found forever.

Every year she had cellular therapy, some years twice. Through arrangement with the Niehans people, a doctor in Beverly Hills gave her the injections using lyophilized fetal cells, freeze-dried like coffee. It was illegal. Against the FDA and the AMA. The substances had to be brought into the country
en contrebande
via Mexico. For Gloria it was more convenient, though more expensive, than going to Switzerland.…

Now, walking in the rain down Bluebird Canyon, her hair was soaked, matted to her head; the bottom of her jeans were heavy with wetness and her sandals squished with every step. Her mind was still on the phone call. She told herself it was an emotional waste to let a call from Pam get her down. She should be accustomed to it by now.

Exile.

She would never forget her last visit to Richmond over two years ago, when Pam had finally come straight out with it, said she was embarrassed because Gloria looked too young and, well, everything. Pam's inflection on the word everything made it quite specific. Son-in-law Cliff expressed what he called his gut reaction, said it was freaky, Gloria ought to act her age. And grandson Daniel — he had adored Gloria until then, always looked forward to her visits, had always run to her for arms around, snuggled and returned hug for hug. But they had set Daniel against her, intentionally or not, made him hold back, afraid, as though she were unclean or contagious.

She made fists in her coat pockets.

Not fair, she thought.

Why should she be penalized for not being a frump — made to feel guilty for prolonging, improving her sexual pleasure? There was no harm in fibbing about her age. She wasn't really tired of pretending.

For support she drew a mental picture of Stuart. How she would arouse him that night. And nourish herself.

She crossed over the highway and the parking area to the entrance of the Seaside Supermarket.

The market's electronic door swung sharply open as she approached it.

That unconsciously pleased her.

It was impartial, unjudging, dependable, somehow much better than a personal welcome.

6

Emory Swanson's undershorts were cutting him.

New kind of undershorts his wife Eleanor had bought for him at one of those swishy shops on La Cienega. She'd bought six pairs, made in France.

That morning, out of curiosity and against his masculine judgment, Emory had put on a pair. Powder blue, slick and skimpy as panties, they bunched and held his privates in a different, pleasant way — although being in a hurry was Emory's reason to himself for leaving them on.

Within a couple hours they started getting to his crotch creases. Especially when he sat, which, as usual, was most of the day.

Now he was tempted to pull over and get relief. It would require taking his trousers off first, and for a while he'd have to be bare-assed. That would be something, getting pinched for indecent exposure on the Coast Highway, Emory thought. He kept driving, one hand, using the other to undo his belt and trousers. He lifted himself to reach in and find a leg-hole hem of the undershorts. He pulled, tugged hard, but the material wouldn't give. What the hell were they made of, glass? Furious, he yanked sharply, hoping to rip them, but he only hurt himself more where he was already rubbed raw. To hell with it — he zipped, buttoned and buckled up — he'd be in El Niguel in half an hour.

El Niguel was where the Swansons had one of their places. A twelve-room Spanish-style house, with swimming pool, built-in water-swirling massager, cabana, sauna, lighted tennis court. It was set amidst the eucalyptus on the edge of the sixth hole of the El Niguel Country Club. The Swansons called it their play house. Where they lived officially was in Beverly Hills, up Coldwater. Also, they had another sort of place at Lake Arrowhead.

At one time Emory had lived in one rented room around where Franklin Avenue intersects with Sunset. In those days Monogram Studios was near there. Most of the “Dead End Kids” movies were shot at Monogram — and so many cheap monster pictures that the studio got to be called Monster-gram, the same as Republic Studios became known around as Repulsive.

Back then, Emory had owned only two suits. Bought at the annual sale at the London Shop. A dark gray and a navy gabardine. Always either one or the other was being pressed or cleaned at the neighborhood same-day-service cleaner's. That way Emory always appeared too neat to be poor. Another part of it was the shoes he bought, always top-grade Florsheims that he kept in shape by conscientiously treeing and polishing them.