Slide by Gerald A Browne Read Free Book Online Page B

slide being ejected from a projector.
    After the phone call Gloria felt heavy, fixed in place. A fragment of Stuart’s laughter struck her. She brushed it off and went to the hall closet for a tan trenchcoat that she put on, stuffed some money into a pocket and went out the back way, avoiding.
    Across the patio, through the rear gate, around to the road with the happy name: Bluebird Canyon.
    It was a winding, downhill mile to the Coast Highway and the Seaside Supermarket, where Gloria usually shopped. Sometimes, when she didn’t intend to buy too many things, she made the walk. Today it was welcome therapy.
    The rain.
    She raised her face to it, thought of it as a beneficial drink for her skin. She took to the rain for the opposite reason she shunned the sun. The sun was a robber that could steal years from a face.
    She’d heard it said that English girls owed the lovely quality of their complexions to English weather. A pretty thought — girls absorbing, deriving from something so commonplace and natural. As for herself, the only drawback to such prolonged damp weather was that it made her nose ache where it had been purposely broken, and also it caused arthritic pains in both her knees.
    Gloria would be fifty-one her next birthday.
    Seven years ago last February, when she was battling awfully with menopause, her husband made it worse by leaving her for a woman of twenty. Ego depleted, depression pouring in, Gloria tried suicide. She was methodical about it, to the point of making a list of the various ways and then eliminating those she found impossible. Oddly enough, what she left herself with were extremes — the most violent and the most passive: in the car at top speed on a high road to not match a turn with a turn, or in bed with a double prescription of Tuinals, taking one and purposely not remembering she had, so to take another, pretend not to remember, and another.
    Her housekeeper found her — too early. Gloria was pumped, had a twenty-eight-hour sleep and awoke saved.
    Having gotten that out of her system, she took a more optimistic view. There were blessings to count: plenty of money from the generous settlement her ex-husband’s conscience had provided, her good health, and, perhaps most important, she had a few ties but no strings.
    Her only adversary was time. She decided to make a fight for it.
    To start, she spent eight weeks at Elizabeth Arden’s ranch in Arizona. Getting her breath, losing pounds and gaining courage for what lay ahead.
    Then aesthetic surgery.
    That was what they called it now instead of plastic, which had become almost everything else.
    She had it done in New York City. By the best.
    Her chin, which had always been a weak feature, was corrected by the addition of a small piece of properly shaped bonelike substance. Her brow line, too prominent, was precisely deridged. Her nose was fractured, reshaped, planed down, given a perfect bridge, tilt and tip. The loose flesh and circles beneath her eyes were removed and so was the puffiness of her lids.
    The work was done in phases. Gloria called them projects. As soon as one project was healed she went in for the next. Not allowing time for time to discourage or affect her in any way — fighting time. Often it seemed she was winning.
    Silicone sponges were implanted in her breasts. She resisted the idea of having exceptionally large, firm breasts. Actually, that would have been easier for the surgeon. She chose to have more believable, average-size ones. It required repositioning her nipples and aureoles and entirely sacrificing their sensation. The silicone was not detectable, pliant to the touch, and her breasts had a nice natural jounce to them.
    Stretch marks and cellulite on her buttocks and upper thighs. That went. They pared her down. It was fortunate that she had abundant rather than too little flesh to work with, the surgeon told her. It seemed they could accomplish almost anything, if she would