The canapes were as bad. "White man's food,"
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Chiun sneered. "A chicken's liver surrounded by pig fat and set atop a lump of green cheese on a cracker. No wonder you are all slothful and mindless. Look at what you eat."
"This is just a snack," Remo explained. "Dinner hasn't been served yet."
"I see. One eats before eating so as to be prepared for eating. The labyrinthine processes of the white mind."
"We'll skip the canapes," Remo told the waiter.
And then there was the blonde. One minute she was slinking through the crowd in her red-sequined spray-on gown, demurely eyeballing Remo, and the next minute they were upstairs in bed together, with the blonde purring and stroking and doing the knock-your-socks-off thing that she did. And Remo forgot all about the 52 idiot steps to a woman's ecstasy, since this one was ecstatic enough for an army, during the first bout of hand holding.
And then she dropped the bomb about being seventy freaking years old.
"What'd you have to say that for?" Remo asked miserably, sure in his secret heart that he would never enjoy himself in bed again.
"Quit acting so naive," she said. Then she stopped and looked at him with something like amusement. "Or is this your first time?"
"First time for what?"
"Let me see your arms."
"What?" He struggled, but she was on him again, and was holding the inside of his left arm up to the pink bedside lamp. "Not a mark," she said, apparently amazed. "Why, you're a virgin."
"To what?"
"The injections," she said. "Dr. Foxx's injections."
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She took his hands in hers. "I don't want to scare you or anything, but I hope you know what you're getting into here."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Remo said. "I don't know anything that's going on in this screwball place."
She held out her own arms. "This, for one thing." Beneath the pink spill of light, the inside of her arms looked like antique wood, tracked with so many holes you could sift flour through them.
"I know, the tracks are ugly, I have plastic surgery done to cover the marks every five years. But that's the least of it." Her voice was soft and faraway.
"Jesus," Remo said, aghast. "How long have you been shooting up that happy juice?"
"A long time," she said, looking levelly at Remo. "An awfully long time. I told you, I'm seventy years old. I've had the injections for most of those seventy years."
"Oh, knock it off," Remo said. "Whatever those marks mean, they don't mean you're an old lady."
"But I am. We're all old here."
"Look. Bobby Jay might look younger than fifty-five. Mrs. Spangler could pass for less than the fifty-eight her daughter claims. But if you're seventy, I'm Methuselah. Now, why are you handing me a line like that?"
"it's no line," she said. "What's your name?"
"Remo."
"I'm Posie Ponselle." Remo started. "You've heard of me?"
"I've heard the name," Remo said. "Some movie star in the thirties or something."
"They compared me with Garbo," she said wistfully. "The Love Goddess."
Remo looked at her askance. "Lady, if you ex-
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pect me to believe that you're Posie Ponseile-"
"You don't have to believe anything. I just want you to know what you're walking into if you take that first injection tomorrow."
"Okay," he sighed. She, not Remo, had broken the spell. But it was just as well, he thought. It was time to get back to business. "When did you meet Foxx?"
"Forty years ago," Posie said without a blink.
"Come on."
"You asked."
"All right," Remo waffled, if he had to listen to another crock from another nutcase before he could get a scrap of information, well, that was how it went in this assignment. There wasn't a sane person in the place. "Go ahead."
"It was in Geneva. You see, just before the war broke out, my movies weren't doing too well. I was getting too old, they said. I was twenty-eight." She took a cigarette from her beaded bag and lit it. "So I went to Switzerland for a series of age-retardant treatments at a new clinic I'd heard about. Foxx was there."
"The same Foxx?"
She nodded. "He never ages. And his patients don't either, as long as they keep up the treatments. But if they can't. . ." Her voice trailed off to a mumble.
"If they can't, what?"
She exhaled and ground out the fresh cigarette with trembling fingers. "Never mind. But you have to keep them up. You have to get the injections every day. That's what I want you to understand before you accept the first treatment."
"I thought you folks came here once a month," Remo said.
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"For a new supply. Foxx gives us exactly thirty days' worth of the formula. Every thirty days we have to show up with cash-no checks, no credit-or else he stops the treatments on the spot."
Her voice quavered. Dizzy dame, Remo thought. Most women, he supposed, worried about their looks. But this one acted like getting to be thirty days older was the end of the world.
"Okay," he said. "But the thing I can't understand is why Foxx keeps this place such a secret. If he really does have some kind of magic formula for keeping people young forever, he could make a fortune."