The Crystal Child (24 page)

Drinks were waiting for them.  Red wine blended with tropical fruit.  Eduardo filled their glasses and then retreated.  When Sylvana at last appeared Julia realized she need not have worried about how she dressed.  Apologizing that she had no idea when to expect them, she entered wrapped in a Turkish towel that she held in place with one hand at her bosom.  Her feet were bare and her head was turbaned.  Sylvana was, at a glance, a telling gauge of how far Peter DeLeon had strayed from whatever therapeutic principles he once honored.  Dealing with so many aging patients over the years, Julia had come to have a keen eye for traces of the surgeon’s blade.  During the days she spent at the DeLeon Institute, she had seen a great many synthetically beautified faces both male and female, but none that held a candle to Sylvana.  Julia could tell at once that there was hardly an inch of the woman that had not been expertly revamped. The face, the neck, the arms, the breast — but all of it done so exquisitely well that the physicians might have signed their work.  The effect was more unnerving than distasteful.  Sylvana seemed to be wearing a porcelain mask, olive-tinted and sumptuously crafted.

“The doctor who has conquered time,” Sylvana said as she stepped forward to greet Julia.  She delivered the greeting like a line memorized from a script.  Her voice was seductively soft, though with a slight lisp that Julia suspected had to do with her dentition.  “I am so sorry to keep you waiting.  I was having a massage.  I came as soon as I heard you were here.”

Julia did not bother to dispute the compliment; she had decided to let these people believe what they wished.  Reluctantly she allowed Sylvana to embrace her.  A tight warm hug, as if they were lifelong friends.  With her hands on Sylvana’s back and waist, Julia could feel the skeletal frailty of the frame beneath the towel.  She had a geriatric physician’s expert touch for a body like this; she could read the woman’s age in her bones. Easily over seventy. “I know how much you want to see Aaron,” Sylvana said.  “But first, you and I, the two women in his life, we must come to know each other, yes?”

Julia wondered if Sylvana intended to spend their time together struggling to keep the bulky towel in place.  It was doing an inadequate job of covering both her cleavage and her thighs.  But a few minutes later a young man entered holding the robe Sylvana must have left behind in her haste.  He was a handsome, dark-haired youth wearing a fixed, toothy smile, the sort of male escort Julia had seen many times at the DeLeon Institute.  Under his tee-shirt, his physique showed a hard-edged muscular definition.  “Florio,” Sylvana said by way of introduction.  “My masseur.”  Florio smiled still more broadly as Sylvana waved him into the room to deliver the robe.  As she drew the robe around her, she nodded toward Julia.  “Dr. Stein,” she said.  Florio took Julia’s hand, squeezed it, then almost shyly excused himself and drew off.

Sylvana was a problem Julia had not foreseen. 
What does she know about me?
Julia wondered. 
What does she know about Aaron and me?
The phrase about the “two women in his life” suggested she knew all there was to know.  It also suggested grounds for rivalry.  For the first few minutes of small talk, Julia found Sylvana’s exaggerated courtesy oppressive.  She wanted to cry out,
You know I’m a jail bird.  A child molester.  Stop pretending!
 Each time impatience was about to overwhelm her, Julia took another swallow of the fruity wine drink Eduardo had served her.  When it was gone, she quickly asked for more.  And then, when she thought she could hold out no longer, Sylvana leaned forward as if to speak in confidence.  “I have lived in countries where there are political prisoners.  I so admire your courage, my dear.  How did you manage it, so very much suffering?  I could never endure such torment.” She reached to pat Julia’s arm.  “Your secret is safe with us.  Our home is your home.”

To her surprise, Julia detected a note of sincerity in Sylvana’s voice.  Was it possible that her shabby clothes and wan look were working in her favor?  She had entered this elegant home bearing the marks of a victim, someone who had suffered too greatly to care about fashion.  No doubt that was how Sylvana saw a woman without make-up, with her hair a mess: someone deprived, down-trodden.  Julia suspected Sylvana had no idea what to make of her, this woman whom DeLeon had depicted as both heroine and genius.  With that much on her side, Julia felt free to keep silent.  Her answer was a knowing smile.  And at last Sylvana said, “Now, I know how much you wish to meet dear Aaron, so we will not keep you waiting.”

***

She had been following Eduardo for several minutes slowly making her way from corridor to corridor and up three flights of stairs.  The interior design of the house might as well have been a labyrinth; she would never remember her way back.  They were on their way to a distant wing, passing through parts of Tlaloc were still unfinished.  Several rooms along the way were bare; in others the furnishings were draped.

“I won’t be able to find my way on my own,” Julia said.

Eduardo, smiling benignly, told her not to fear.  “Simply ring.  I will find you.”

They stopped at the entrance to a corridor  “The first door,” Eduardo said, then stepped back. Julia knocked lightly.  When there was no answer, Eduardo motioned her to enter.  She turned the knob and opened the door.

Aaron had asked to see her alone in his quarters.  It was a comfortable set of rooms, spacious but simply furnished.  The curtains were half drawn, leaving the room dim, but Julia could make out shelves and tables stacked with books.  On a desk in one corner stood a computer, its darkened screen displaying a vista of drifting stars.  She took a chair near one of the windows and let her gaze wander over the mountains beyond.  Several moments passed before she heard a sound behind her, a door on the far side of the room softly shutting.  Someone entering.  She rose and turned.

Julia wondered if what she saw was colored by the months she and Aaron had spent apart.  Was she seeing him as he really was?  Even in the half light she could tell he had become more strikingly beautiful than the last time she had seen him, so much so that she did not wish him to speak or move at all.  His elegant presence needed nothing to complete it.  His eyes had become an icier blue, the contours of his face more delicately feminine.  His hair, a whitish-gold cascade, fell to his shoulders.  Small changes, none of them making him look a day older.  His build was the same, that of a willowy boy, but every feature now seemed tinged with a cool radiance, as if the artist who had created this image had spent days polishing it to perfection. 
Eros, fairest of the deathless gods.

Scores of times, she had rehearsed what she might say when they met. At last she said nothing but waited for him to come to her.  Gently, he stroked her hair back from her forehead, then held her close, brushing a light kiss to her cheek, no more than a gesture of friendship.  He was no taller than she remembered, reaching just above her chin.  Still a boy, but his embrace was confidently strong.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said.  “If you hadn’t, I would have understood.  I realize the risk you’re running.  I promised myself I’d tell you to feel free to leave, now, with no questions asked.  It isn’t too late for you to return.”

“It is too late.  Here,” she answered touching her breast, “it’s too late.  I have nothing to return to.”

If there was the least outward sign of greater maturity about him, it was his voice.  His tone was light and feminine, the sweet, high voice of a boy soprano that had not yet broken with adolescence.  But he spoke with the self-assurance of a man.  There was nothing left of the Aaron Lacey Julia had first met, nothing of the timidity that had once made him uncertain if he had the right to step out into life.  Where was that little boy?  Should his passing be mourned?  Certainly not by this Aaron, so gracefully accustomed to his new identity.  She could not detect a trace of self-consciousness, not a hint of the need to hide his extraordinary beauty.  She was not at all sure she liked the change; it left her feeling off-balance.

Aaron wanted to know about her time in prison. He asked with a perfunctory curiosity, as if that might be expected of him.  She told him a little, then begged off.  “The sooner I forget about it the better.  It’s just a vacant space in my life. I want to know how you found your way here.”

“By way of La Jolla.  DeLeon has a jumping-off place there for clients on their way to San Lazaro.  I used your name to get his attention.  That worked like a charm.  He knew about your misadventures from the newspapers.  As soon as we met, he couldn’t wait to get me away, as great as the risk was.  In the eyes of the law, I suppose he’s guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor — or maybe kidnapping.  He doesn’t seem to care.  I suspect he saw me as a walking gold mine. He flew me across the border with a number of his clients.  I could never have done that on my own.  I would have been seen as a runaway kid. “

“That’s what you are, aren’t you?”

He smiled back knowingly.  “Do you think so?”

“I’m sure your parents think so. I promised myself that if I saw you again, I’d advise you to go back to them.”

“And now I hope you intend to break that promise.”

“I know how I’d feel if my son ran off.”

“Not if you had a son like me.  I actually believe my parents are relieved to have me off their hands, not that they’d say so.  Things had become impossible between us.”

“What’s your situation here?  Are you working with Peter?”

He burst out laughing.  “Is that what he told you?”

“I gathered … ”

“Oh, please!  The man is more of a fraud than you ever suspected.”  He spoke with a knowledgeable contempt well beyond his years. “But where money is concerned, he has the cunning of a fox. I’ve found ways to string him along, but he’s not to be underestimated.  Greedy, yes.  Vulgar, yes.  But a pushover, no.   Look what he’s made of himself.  He’s turned the sad fantasies of people into a fortune.  He’s greedy as a pig, you know. Not just for money, but for acclaim.  Just wait until he shows you his dreadful repository, as he calls it.”

“Repository?”

“You may be lucky.  Maybe he’ll spare you the sight.”  He went on to tell of his first few weeks at San Lazaro after DeLeon had taken him in.  “As soon as he grasped who I was, you could almost see him salivating.  The boy who survived old age.  What a catch for the Lord of Longevity, eh?  That’s what I was counting on.  But in less than a week, I was going up the total wall at San Lazaro.  You know what the place is like, an institutionalized debauch.  The women!  I had women lying in wait for me at every turn, all wanting to mother me, of course.  I insisted on finding more privacy.  So we relocated to here.  DeLeon still keeps after me, one hare-brained idea after another.  Kombucha — remember?  The secret of eternal youth.  He’s moved on from that, but he’s still up to his old tricks, still living off the gullibility of his million-dollar clients.  His latest panacea is Chinese lotus seeds, eaten by the handful like pop corn.”

“Lotus seeds?  On what basis?”

“You must have missed it in the papers. Last year a couple of university botanists cultivated a dormant Chinese lotus seed estimated to be some 1200 years-old. True, the plant contains an extraordinary amount of L-isoaspartyl methyltransferase.  But what would our Dr. DeLeon know about that, in any case?  I doubt he knows the formula for water. And of course there’s no evidence that animals can metabolize the seeds.  Apparently they aren’t toxic.  Nobody has died of the treatment yet.  He has his clients gorging on them — or at least on something he tells them is made from lotus seeds.  Actually, I can’t understand why you ever took him seriously. The man is a clown, a crafty clown.”

L-isoaspartyl methyltransferase.  Julia was not at all certain she could identify the compound.  Aaron had made considerable progress.  “Then why did you come here, Aaron?” she asked.

“All you need do is look out the window for your answer.  Isn’t this ideal?  Remote, luxurious, secret.  It’s like escaping to Never-Never Land. The perfect refuge for Peter Pan Lacey.  The last place anybody would come looking.  What more could I ask?  I realized as soon as I went back to live with my parents that I could never make a normal life for myself.  What could I be but an outcast?  You saved my life by turning me into a beautiful monster.  I thought for a while about becoming some kind of hermit, living alone in the woods.  But my appearance works against me.  People think I’m a child.  Wherever I went, I’d be seen as a runaway.  After you were put in prison, the telephones never stopped ringing — media people wanting ‘my story.’  As if they had the ghost of a chance of understanding anything about me.  I couldn’t live like that, not once I began to experience the changes.  As for your colleague Kevin Forrester, he was never going to leave me alone.  But here, I’m Peter DeLeon’s honored guest.  He’s captivated by me.  He thinks I’m on to the secret of rejuvenation.”

“And why am I here?”

“Because where else do you have to go?  Did you have any plans?”

Other plans? There was only one plan in her life.  To find him, to be with him.  But she was not yet ready to admit that. “No.  But I would have survived.”

“I’m sure.  But I need you, Julia.”

“Why?”

“Have you met Sylvana?”

“Yes, just before I came here.”

“Well, can’t you see?  I’m living among dissolute fools.  The woman is so afraid of aging that she’s turned herself into a mummy.  And then there’s Horvath, the ambulatory skeleton.  Also a con-man with delusions of grandeur.   We’re in a hotbed of fads and superstitions.  I’d go completely mad without someone like you to talk with.”

“ ‘Someone
like
me.’  But not exactly and specifically me.”

“Yes, you.  Precisely you.”

“Why?  Why me?  Aren’t you finished with me?”

He took a moment to answer.  “There’s a sense in which you’re still responsible for me.  Don’t you want to complete my case history?  I have things to tell you, things I can’t entrust to anybody else.”