The Fountain of Age Read Online Free PDF Page A

wrong. After an hour of this, he had gone over two papers. A plane screamed overhead, taking off from the airport. Henry gave it up. He couldn’t concentrate.
    Outside the St. Sebastian infirmary yesterday, the horrible Evelyn Krenchnoted had said that she didn’t have a check-up appointment, but that the doctor was “squeezing her in” because “something strange happened yesterday.” She’d also mentioned that the aging-hippie beauty, Erin Whatever-Her-Name-Was, hadn’t had a scheduled appointment either.
    Once, at a mandatory ambulatory-residents’ meeting, Henry had seen Evelyn embroidering.
    Anna Chernov, St. Sebastian’s most famous resident, was a ballet dancer. Everyone knew that.
    He felt stupid even thinking along these lines. What was he hypothesizing here, some sort of telepathy? No respectable scientific study had ever validated such a hypothesis. Also, during Henry’s three years at St. Sebastian’s—years during which Evelyn and Miss Chernov had also been in residence—he had never felt the slightest connection with, or interest in, either of them.
    He tried to go back to correcting problem sets.
    The difficulty was, he had two data points, his own “incidents” and the sudden rash of unscheduled doctors’ appointments, and no way to either connect or eliminate either one. If he could at least satisfy himself that Evelyn’s and Erin’s doctor visits concerned something other than mental episodes, he would be down to one data point. One was an anomaly. Two were an indicator of . . . something.
    This wasn’t one of Henry’s days to have Carrie’s assistance. He pulled himself up on his walker, inched to the desk, and found the Resident Directory. Evelyn had no listings for either cell phone or email. That surprised him; you’d think such a yenta would want as many ways to bother people as possible. But some St. Sebastian residents were still, after all these decades, wary of any technology they hadn’t grown up with. Fools , thought Henry, who had once driven four hundred miles to buy one of the first, primitive, put-it-together-yourself kits for a personal computer. He noted Evelyn’s apartment number and hobbled toward the elevators.
    “Why, Henry Erdmann! Come in, come in!” Evelyn cried. She looked astonished, as well she might. And—oh, God—behind her sat a circle of women, their chairs jammed in like molecules under hydraulic compression, all sewing on bright pieces of cloth.
    “I don’t want to intrude on your—”
    “Oh, it’s just the Christmas Elves!” Evelyn cried. “We’re getting an early start on the holiday wall hanging for the lobby. The old one is getting so shabby.”
    Henry didn’t remember a holiday wall hanging in the lobby, unless she was referring to that garish lumpy blanket with Santa Claus handing out babies to guardian angels. The angels had had tight, cotton-wool hair that made them look like Q-tips. He said, “Never mind, it’s not important.”
    “Oh, come on in! We were just talking about—and maybe you have more information on it!—this fabulous necklace that Anna Chernov has in the office safe, the one the czar gave—”
    “No, no, I have no information. I’ll—”
    “But if you just—”
    Henry said desperately, “I’ll call you later.”
    To his horror, Evelyn lowered her eyes and said murmured demurely, “All right, Henry,” while the women behind her tittered. He backed away down the hall.
    He was pondering how to discover Erin’s last name when she emerged from an elevator. “Excuse me!” he called the length of the corridor. “May I speak to you a moment?”
    She came toward him, another book in her hand, her face curious but reserved. “Yes?”
    “My name is Henry Erdmann. I’d like to ask what will, I know, sound like a very strange question. Please forgive my intrusiveness, and believe that I have a good reason for asking. You had an unscheduled appointment with Dr. Felton yesterday?”
    Something moved behind