The Gorgon Festival (19 page)

E-24 was stretched on the coverlet of her bed, reading by a 40-watt bedlamp. Her shortie nightgown was of pink chiffon much like the one Ester had modeled for him. At his entrance, E-24 lifted to one elbow to see over her breasts and asked, “
Oui?
”

“Ma’am, Miss Diana wants me to fix her some chocolate, and I was wondering if you’d be kind enough to show me where to find the makings.”

“
Ma robe de chambre, garçon
.” She pointed to the closet.

At her movement, her nightgown shifted slightly and he glimpsed a swash of chestnut amid the swirl of pink, colors that set him prancing. He tripped toward the closet, his nostrils catching fumes from his own tannin. Later he analyzed, memories of swamp water engendered by his musk must have thrown her into a fit of nostalgia, for when he turned to offer her the robe, he heard a thump, a wriggle, and a swish. She had dropped her book on the floor with her nightgown atop it and lay down before him
sans habillement
.

“
Allons, garçon
.”

Ward slipped, and fell into a velvet washing machine with a spin-dry attachment. A slow Kittibangi was spurred by her “Vite” into a Mambo Samba, but still she whispered, “Profonde.”

Ward had plumbed his rather conventional depth unless he could use the principle of the inclined plane, a literal screw, as it were, and the method for exerting such leverage was not in his repertoire. But now was the moment or never at all.

Crossing one arm over, he teetered in the bight, took the breast bounce cleanly, and flung himself counterclockwise to spin in the gyre. Before he had completed the first quadrant of the full circle, Ward knew he was launching himself into history with a flawlessly executed Springbok Spin.

He alone savored the moment in its fullness, but just before she fainted E-24 breathed, “
Merci, mon bête noir
.”

Now for the kitchen and Miss Diana’s chocolate.

Pouring and stirring to the recipe given him on Pinyon Verde Lane, Ward considered his night’s adventure from other than historical angles. Before he closed the door, he had glanced at the title, lettered in gold on white, of the book E-24 was reading,
The Queen of Palermo’s Ass—A Study of Female Sexual Aberrations
. If the little Cajun read such works, she could speak English better than she spoke French, and it was little wonder that Diana was keeping him out of the library. Whatever other elements Ruth-Diana’s experiment might include, something carnal was afoot.

As a handy man for the six days following his first interview, Ward learned much.

All the guests at the ranch were young, fit, and beautiful, unlikely candidates for a health and beauty spa. Mornings they took calisthenics and interpretive dancing to the piped music of Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach on the broad sweep of lawn before the ranch house. Afternoons were spent in charm classes, and evenings were spent in the study of erotica, to the subdued music of Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach. Most were superb cooks, he discovered, because meals were prepared by the guests working in shifts and served with a flair in five dining halls. Their housekeeping skills made his job as clean-up man hardly more than that of a room inspector and gave him an opportunity to make some unusual acquaintances. E-44 was not merely a stunning girl, she also shared an interest with Ward in Etruscan art.

His room inspections tipped him to their study of erotica. Beside each bed was a well-thumbed copy of the 1924 edition of
Psychopathia Sexualis
. Krafft-Ebing was to the Adorable U Beauty Ranch what Blackstone was to the Inns of Court.

Sweeping corridors was literally a joy ride for Ward, since he rode a self-propelled vacuum sweeper. Miss Diana made no attempts to economize on labor-saving devices, apparently to cut down on the cost of help. To expedite his response when she called, she equipped Ward with a walkie-talkie.

The high degree of professionalism in so many areas by women so young led Ward to postulate a theory which was confirmed on Wednesday with the arrival of the thirty-eights. They came in four mini-busses. Most walked with canes, a few were wheeled out to the elevator lift, and all were very old. On the side of each bus was lettered:

Ward counted the new arrivals as the elevator lifted them into the forbidden west wing. Inside, he knew, the last of his solution would be poured into bathtubs wired with electrodes and the random errors of the aging process would be erased.

He knew it was the last of his rejuvenation solution because there were thirty-six old ladies, not thirty-eight. But Ruth Gordon’s control group would be complete, the last section ready for indoctrination, and the first step would be taken toward the eventual extinction of the human species.

Unless he stopped her.

Meanwhile Ward was growing paler, his blackness merging into a rich dark tan which he kept uniform by local applications of tea leaves.

But it was not his color that betrayed him.

At ten p.m., Friday, he was vacuuming the carpet in the lower south corridor when his walkie-talkie buzzed.

“Al, prepare me a cup of chocolate without delay and bring it straight to the library without stopping en route.”

“Wilco, Miss Diana. Out.”

Her specific instructions regarding delays told him that this was not a casual call. He levered up the vacuum snout and gunned the sweeper down the corridor, full speed to the kitchen. In a matter of minutes, he was placing a cup of hot chocolate and a napkin before her.

His prescience was verified when she motioned for him to take a seat on the golden chair as she slowly sipped her chocolate. When he had seated himself, she placed the cup on the saucer, dabbed her lips with the napkin, and said, “The late Doctor Ruth Gordon would have loved the way you make chocolate.”

“Thank you, Miss Diana.”

“I called you here, Al, to discuss your position in relation to the library. Around us you see the second largest collection of erotica in the United States. The largest is owned by a housewife in Georgia.”

“They got pretty covers, Miss Diana.”

“You can learn a lot in a library,” she said reflectively, leaning back. “For instance, I use a form of the Dewey Decimal System in assigning rooms to my guests. Have you noticed how my system works?”

“No, Miss Diana.”

“To keep jealousy at a minimum and avoid cat fights, guests are grouped according to bust sizes. In the east wing, for instance, farthest down, I have two forty-fours, three forty-threes, five forty-twos. Then, there is E-24, merely a forty but otherwise so petite she would be, in proportion to a woman of normal height, at least a forty-four. So much for the guests.”

She paused and took another appreciative sip of chocolate before continuing.

“In this library are forty volumes relating to Africa.” She reached into her drawer and pulled out a stack of book cards. “They range from ceremonies, pubertal, through rites, fertility, and worship, phallic. It’s no coincidence when my eleven champions have checked out among them thirty-three of those forty volumes, particularly when only three volumes per guest are permitted out at one time.”

Suddenly she got up and walked around her desk toward him, flipping the edges of the cards with her thumb. She leaned back against the front of the desk, looking down at him.

“One needn’t be Sherlock Holmes to deduce there’s an African in the east wing.”

She tapped the cards into alignment and laid them on the corner of her desk. Half leaning toward him, she spoke, and the voice once so precise with authority had softened, become feminine, and was again slumberous with the sounds of summer.

“Al, I understand your needs, but, as a woman, I ask you to understand mine. I’m old, much older than you think. When I was young it seemed youth would last forever. Then, suddenly one day, my husband was gone, my friends had all left me, and my body had grown infirm.”

She reached out and stroked his cheek with the back of her hand in a movement so gentle he could not harden himself against her touch. He even enjoyed the caress.

“But there was a youth I knew when I was young and he was very young. He stayed beside me as we both grew older, and he was a bridge to my own youth. With a peculiar duality of the sacred and profane, we loved each other. But the boy adored huge breasts. All I could offer him was harmony of line, and that boy was no Euclid.”

Reaching out, she cupped his chin with her free hand, and despite his knowledge of her materialism and avarice he was touched by her tragedy. No matter how much wealth she might amass, she would never have enough.

“My young love,” she continued, “judged a woman’s character by the distance of her dug from her sternum. A horrible obsession, but so unique it marked him as surely as his fingerprints.”

On an upstroke of her hands, she had grasped his sideburns and pulled them back. Deftly she jerked off his Afro, snarling, “You dirty trickster… And I thought you were my old friend.”

Turning, she flung his wig into the wastepaper basket and leaned against the side of her desk, sobbing. Unseen, he slipped out his nostril expanders, shucked his brown contact lenses, and rising dropped them into the basket with his wig.

Having no defense against a weeping woman, Ward moved behind her as he had the first time in her kitchen, depending on the nostalgia factor to help him back into her graces, such as they were. But the pressure of his arms around her only made her sob harder.

“Tit for tat,” he said, “and I hope the expression doesn’t offend you. My old friend framed me, left me broke, homeless, and hounded by the police.”

“That’s not true.” She broke away from his embrace, flung herself around the corner of her desk, and sat down. Outraged innocence shone in her eyes, and vehemence rang in her voice. “You were under my protection from the moment you reported to Big John. I framed you to tear you away from your mother’s surrogate’s breasts, and I kept you under cover to keep your from mucking up my experiment with your theories… Did you know your hair was wavy?”

“My head’s dented,” he said.

She reached into her drawer and. pulled out a comb, tossing it across the desk. “Sit down and comb that mop. One of my rejuves was a man’s hair stylist. I’ll send her up to the penthouse in the morning to trim your hair.”

“Why the penthouse?” he asked, feeling absurd pleasure in combing his hair.

“You’re going under the covers again, but this time with me, until you can scrub off your tan.” Her tears were drying fast. “I don’t want the guests to think I’ve taken my houseboy as a business partner, especially a houseboy with your reputation… I’ll drive over to Westwood tomorrow and pick you up some decent clothes and an auburn wig. I prefer auburn-haired men.”

“What are we partners in?”

“The Al-Diana Rest Homes for Elderly Ladies. Alex, we can make millions.”

She was using the wrong approach on a man with over a hundred thousand dollars in his checking account and a Nobel Prize awaiting him in his middle age, but Ward merely said, “You can’t make millions in nursing home fees.”

Diana shook her head emphatically.

“Most of my patients are wealthy widows with expenses paid under estate endowment plans which take care of all their pre-need needs. As long as the widow survives, the nursing home is locked into her estate, in this case, indefinitely, for fifty dollars a day, plus expenses.”

“But won’t the next of kin get impatient at such longevity?”

“The relatives merely sit and wait while we take advantage of the ‘plus expenses’ clause. These beauty ranch courses cost $150 per day, plus expenses.” Her eyes glittered and her voice rose. “From this base, we establish an international organization. What Tiger Balm did in the Orient, what Hadacol did in Louisiana, Aphrodite’s Youth Juice will do in the world.”

Ward didn’t think the trade name very dignified, though it should be easy to remember. However, her plan posed another problem. “Estate trustees might object to beauty and fitness programs for very old ladies.”

“In three months it won’t matter,” she said, “because the secret will be out and there’s nothing illegal about rejuvenation. But this is not merely a beauty ranch. This is a staff college for the shock troops of love. We offer courses on the principles of applied romance within the framework of the free enterprise system. Practical erotic techniques are analyzed. Pelvic rhythms are developed through interpretive dancing.”

She leaned forward, her body tensing with zeal. “On Labor Day, I unleash my rejuves against the fertile nubiles, pitting skill and experience against mere enthusiasm. But I’m not ignoring cultural values. These most tender moments in the memories of young lovers will be forever linked, through the background music, with the art of Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach.”

“How are you arranging this classical orgy?”

“Surely I don’t detect a note of disapproval in a lad with this record.” She tapped the library cards on her desk.

Ward thought for a moment.

“I do disapprove of hard-core orgies, but not one with social, cultural, or artistic values.”

As he commented, Diana was drawing an artist’s layout from her center drawer to pass over to him. “One of my guests was an advertising agency artist, and she drew this up at my direction. It will run full-page in the underground newspapers.”

In a border of intertwined nudes were the headlines:

Ward considered the ad.

Love-ins were passé; now it was rock festivals. Girls were no longer called “beauts,” and Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach were out with the “in” generation. Diana had no knowledge of the young and apparently less empathy.

She needed several managers—an ad manager, a program manager, and a grounds foreman to prepare the pasture beneath the grove for the occasion—and all would have to be recruited long before Labor Day.

As he weighed the experiment, Ward felt the same inchoate striving toward form he had felt in his laboratory which had led him to the Theory of Universal Affinities. Ruth had an idea, here. With it, he could set up a rock festival historical in its scientific significance. And as a spin-off from the experiment he could blister Freddie for his dishonesty and burn the Patriots for their sadism.