The Crystal Child by Theodore Roszak

Author:Theodore Roszak [Roszak, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Argo-Navis

***

Back in her room she fell across the bed, fending off a spasm of nausea. Not from the food she had eaten, though it was rich enough to turn her stomach after a year-long prison diet. She was feeling pangs of moral revulsion. In DeLeon’s company she felt herself being sucked deeper into the muck that the tabloid press had heaped upon her. His easy acceptance of her transgression was worse than the whip of disapproval she had felt from others. It might have been a diabolical strategy intended to steal her soul. Even Stockton had not been the den of iniquity that San Lazaro had become. Look around at my clients, DeLeon had said. Look at how youthful they remain.

But she had looked around. The DeLeon Institute had become more prosperous, but Julia found it even less palatable than the spa she had visited nearly ten years before. She had heard the pleading undertone in DeLeon’s voice. He did so want her to admire what she saw. But she was experiencing the same contempt she had felt the last time she had been DeLeon’s guest. An inch beneath its scientistic veneer, San Lazaro was a playground no different from hundreds of others created for the spoiled elite of the world. And now even the veneer was wearing thin. Beyond offering its gullible customers this season’s elixir of immortality, the place was awash in recreational drugs and casual sex. Julia wondered what visitors paid for the joys of pretentious corruption. It must be a pretty penny. Even in Mexico an establishment of this opulence would cost a fortune to maintain. Conversations she overheard suggested that the Institute had a connection with some of the plush resorts to the north. A few days at San Lazaro came as part of a package deal with one of the pricier hotels. Every day she saw private planes arriving and departing from the air strip where she had landed, clients rushing in and out for a quick dose of rejuvenation. Weren’t there whorehouses that worked like that. Park, have a quicky, take off.

To her surprise, she realized that her year inside, living among the dregs of society, had nuanced her sensibility. She recalled the prostitutes and junkies she had lived among, women who had done nothing worse than the well-groomed ladies she saw each day sunning themselves on DeLeon’s beach or frolicking in his hot tubs. Except for the way the money changed hands, what was the difference between the prepaid promiscuity of the rich and the desperate fee-for-service sex of the downs-and-outs with whom she had shared prison space at Stockton? She wondered if DeLeon’s clients had any better chance of passing an HIV check. His assistants — the masseurs and physical therapists and locker room attendants — might very well be the international venereal express. She had seen no signs of caution on the premises. Perhaps the rich enjoyed some special sexual dispensation — or believed they did.

Yet, in a sense, was

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