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Authors: Jane Haddam
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up there, never mind what meals and room are going to run. And what for?”
“Maybe we just want to take some time out and bounce around for a while,” Michelle said resentfully. “Why do you have to make an issue about everything? You make fun of the Women’s Revolutionary Caucus, but you’re just as bad.”
“I’m not just as bad,” Tara said. “I’m just talking common sense.”
Christie got up off the beanbag chair and wandered over to the common room window. Like the window in her bedroom, this one looked out on the quad. The quad was deserted.
“It’s just talk anyway,” she said. “We haven’t actually done anything yet. Don’t get all worked up about it yet.”
“If I don’t get all worked up about it now,” Tara said, “it will be too late to get all worked up about it later.”
Christie put her hand up and rubbed it against her left breast. She couldn’t feel the lump through her sweater and her other clothes. It was as if it had dissolved, which was just what ought to happen to it. Maybe, if she went into her room and lay down on her bed and felt herself against her bare skin, it would be gone.
“I think we ought to do it,” she said firmly, and then she heard her voice slide into the mechanical singsong that had been the voice of her thoughts for a week. “I think we ought to take control of our lives and fight the good fight against fatigue, aging, disease, and early death.”
Michelle giggled.
Tara blew a raspberry. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said. “Give me a break.”
7
S TELLA MORTIMER HAD BEEN working when Tim Bradbury brought the new instructor in, and she was still working half an hour later, when there were sounds in the hallway to tell her that the new instructor was not having an easy time settling in. Stella did not find this surprising. She had been working at Fountain of Youth, on and off, for fifteen years now. She always found it very uncomfortable when she had to spend the night at the Fountain of Youth house, instead of going home to her own small apartment near the cemetery and the Yale Co-op. Of course, the house was not uncomfortable in a physical sense. Magda had been born poor and only become rich in middle age. Like everyone else Stella had ever known with that kind of history, Magda liked her luxuries. Somewhere along the line, the house where Magda lived and did her work had been gutted and completely remodeled. The bathrooms were large and tiled and color coordinated in pastels. The bedrooms were large and color coordinated, too, but for those Magda preferred deeper, more soothing hues. Then there was the kitchen, a high-tech fantasy. It had two conventional ovens and two convection ovens and three microwave ovens and a whole countertop lined with different kinds of food processors in different sizes, so that anyone who wanted to could make anything they wanted to without being inconvenienced by inadequate appliances.
In Stella’s own apartment out by the Co-op, the kitchen was a tiny galley space with only one conventional oven and no microwave at all. Her living room was smaller than the office she worked in at Fountain of Youth. Her bedroom was a loft space she was going to have to do something about soon, because now that she was in her sixties she was getting a touch of arthritis in her knees and having a hard time climbing the ladder. When the loft space went, she was going to mourn it. She had been sleeping there since she first decided to settle in New Haven, back in 1978. She’d had her first and only real love affair on the platform bed she had installed under the row of windows that looked out on her backyard. It wasn’t until the love affair was over that she had realized that her backyard was a mass of weeds and broken concrete. Beyond it, there were vacant lots and the listing hulks of wood buildings left to rot. Like the rest of New Haven, like Stella herself, this view had been getting old in secret, wearing out, giving in to
“Maybe we just want to take some time out and bounce around for a while,” Michelle said resentfully. “Why do you have to make an issue about everything? You make fun of the Women’s Revolutionary Caucus, but you’re just as bad.”
“I’m not just as bad,” Tara said. “I’m just talking common sense.”
Christie got up off the beanbag chair and wandered over to the common room window. Like the window in her bedroom, this one looked out on the quad. The quad was deserted.
“It’s just talk anyway,” she said. “We haven’t actually done anything yet. Don’t get all worked up about it yet.”
“If I don’t get all worked up about it now,” Tara said, “it will be too late to get all worked up about it later.”
Christie put her hand up and rubbed it against her left breast. She couldn’t feel the lump through her sweater and her other clothes. It was as if it had dissolved, which was just what ought to happen to it. Maybe, if she went into her room and lay down on her bed and felt herself against her bare skin, it would be gone.
“I think we ought to do it,” she said firmly, and then she heard her voice slide into the mechanical singsong that had been the voice of her thoughts for a week. “I think we ought to take control of our lives and fight the good fight against fatigue, aging, disease, and early death.”
Michelle giggled.
Tara blew a raspberry. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said. “Give me a break.”
7
S TELLA MORTIMER HAD BEEN working when Tim Bradbury brought the new instructor in, and she was still working half an hour later, when there were sounds in the hallway to tell her that the new instructor was not having an easy time settling in. Stella did not find this surprising. She had been working at Fountain of Youth, on and off, for fifteen years now. She always found it very uncomfortable when she had to spend the night at the Fountain of Youth house, instead of going home to her own small apartment near the cemetery and the Yale Co-op. Of course, the house was not uncomfortable in a physical sense. Magda had been born poor and only become rich in middle age. Like everyone else Stella had ever known with that kind of history, Magda liked her luxuries. Somewhere along the line, the house where Magda lived and did her work had been gutted and completely remodeled. The bathrooms were large and tiled and color coordinated in pastels. The bedrooms were large and color coordinated, too, but for those Magda preferred deeper, more soothing hues. Then there was the kitchen, a high-tech fantasy. It had two conventional ovens and two convection ovens and three microwave ovens and a whole countertop lined with different kinds of food processors in different sizes, so that anyone who wanted to could make anything they wanted to without being inconvenienced by inadequate appliances.
In Stella’s own apartment out by the Co-op, the kitchen was a tiny galley space with only one conventional oven and no microwave at all. Her living room was smaller than the office she worked in at Fountain of Youth. Her bedroom was a loft space she was going to have to do something about soon, because now that she was in her sixties she was getting a touch of arthritis in her knees and having a hard time climbing the ladder. When the loft space went, she was going to mourn it. She had been sleeping there since she first decided to settle in New Haven, back in 1978. She’d had her first and only real love affair on the platform bed she had installed under the row of windows that looked out on her backyard. It wasn’t until the love affair was over that she had realized that her backyard was a mass of weeds and broken concrete. Beyond it, there were vacant lots and the listing hulks of wood buildings left to rot. Like the rest of New Haven, like Stella herself, this view had been getting old in secret, wearing out, giving in to
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