Read Online Jane Haddam - Gregor Demarkian 12 - Fountain of Death by Jane Haddam - Free Book Online Page B

time. Stella Mortimer had no patience at all for the Fountain of Youth philosophy. She thought it was ridiculous to try to stay young when you weren’t young anymore. She thought it was positively evil to punish yourself just because your skin had started to sag. Her skin was sagging and her hair was gray and her solid little body showed the thickening of menopause without complaint—but she thought she was better off than Magda, who was crazy.
    The film that was running through her viewer was all wrong. It had shots of light in it and bursting air pockets on the edges. Half of it had been shot from the wrong angle. It was supposed to show a straight-on shot of Magda leading a class of instructors in a kick-jump dance. Instead, it showed feet and legs and seldom got much higher than that. When it did get higher, what tended to appear was Magda’s face, bloated and blue looking. Stella reached around the side of the viewer and found her pack of Merit cigarettes. She was the only person at Fountain of Youth who was allowed to smoke on the premises, and she always felt guilty when she did it. That was another reason she would like to be home. In her own living room, she could smoke cigarettes and drink wine at her own pace. She wouldn’t have to face a situation like this with nothing to take the edge off the frustration.
    Stella bent over the viewer again. There were still shots of light. There were still air bubbles. There were still odd shots taken from odder angles, telling her that Robbie Boulter, their cameraman, had not been paying attention. Stella sat back again and said,
    “Shit.”
    On the other side of the office, Faith Keller, Stella’s assistant, looked up from the table where she was pasting up dummy mechanicals for a new brochure.
    “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Having a bad night?”
    Like Stella, Faith was an older woman who had once led a more interesting life. You could read it in the lines on her face. Stella pushed herself away from the viewer and attacked her cigarette in earnest.
    “I keep telling Magda she shouldn’t hire young men,” Stella said. “Not for camera work. Not if she’s in a hurry. Their hormones get working and they forget about what they’re doing.”
    “Did he make a mess of it?”
    “Leg shots,” Stella said darkly. “Ass shots. It’s incredible.”
    “He’ll be all right by the end of the week, though,” Faith said. “It’s like working in an ice cream store when you really like ice cream. I did that once.”
    Stella tried to imagine Faith working in an ice cream store. She couldn’t. Faith was one of those tall, thin, wispy women who seemed to have been born to float.
    “I know he’ll get better,” Stella said, “but in the meantime we’re in a hurry, and this film is unusable, and we’re going to have to shoot this dance all over again. I think Simon’s being very shortsighted to put all the money around here into advertising. Advertising isn’t going to help him any if he puts out a shoddy product.”
    “You’re the one who’s putting out the product around here,” Faith said. “You and Magda. Neither one of you ever does anything shoddy.”
    “Neither one of us is getting any sleep lately, either,” Stella said. “If you want to know what I really think is stupid, it’s having Magda lead the dances on this tape and front the tour at all. She’s over fifty, I don’t care what kind of shape she’s in. She’s going to get out to Omaha or Kansas City and break an ankle, and then what are we going to do?”
    “She won’t break an ankle. She takes very good care of herself. And that’s the point, isn’t it? Bring your body to the Fountain of Youth. Eat right, do the right exercises, and you can stay young forever. Magda is certainly a great advertisement for it.”
    “If she’s lit right,” Stella said.
    Faith turned back to her mechanicals. “You shouldn’t spend so much of your time worrying about this kind of thing. Get