Free Healthy Place to Die by Peter King

kick and struggle when a blond vision appeared. She and Marta heaved me out as if beaching a large and exhausted fish. I flopped on to the cool marble.
    The blond girl was strong and muscular. She half carried me into the shower cubicle, and fresh clear water had never felt so good. She handed me a plastic mug of sparkling water with slices of cucumber, chunks of lemon, and ice. It tasted wonderful, and she filled the mug again from a large pitcher. I dropped into the nearest chair.
    Marta was at my side, looking concerned. She was wearing a white terrycloth robe, spattered with mud from her attempts to pull me out. “Drink some more,” said the blond girl, filling my mug again. “It will replace the moisture. You must have lost a lot.”
    “You saved my life,” I said to both of them. “What’s your name?” I asked the blond girl. She wore only a bikini as brief as that of the previous girl.
    “Anita,” she replied. “Where is Celia?”
    “She went to adjust the temperature,” I said as normality crept back. “She must have misread the dial or got hold of the wrong handle.
    “Can you bring me one of those robes?” I asked. Now that I was feeling better, nudity seemed out of place.
    Anita brought me a robe. “I’ll have a look at the temperature control,” she said, and disappeared into the steam haze.
    Marta gave me a brief, reassuring smile. “It’s a good thing I came back. What happened to you?”
    “The pool got hotter. I got weaker. I passed out. I hope this never happened to you at the Gellert.”
    “Mud baths are supposed to be invigorating,” she said.
    “This one wasn’t,” I told her, and sat for a few minutes as my strength returned.
    “This must remind you of Shanghai Nights ,” I told her. “You ran an establishment with a very doubtful reputation. You fell in love with the chief of police, who had to put you out of business or the politicians would get him fired. He stood up to them, they had him hit on the head and thrown into the Pacific and you saved him—you had been standing on the pier where you were going to drown yourself.”
    “Ah yes, Josef—he was a great director. He fell in love with me during that picture.”
    “I thought your costar, Robert what’s his name, fell in love with you in that picture?”
    She smiled wistfully. “Yes, Robert too—but it was Lloyd I married.”
    “I thought that was Kent?”
    “He was next.”
    We laughed together. “I think you have recovered,” she said, “and at least the hot mud hasn’t softened your brain. Do you remember all my movies?”
    “Every single one,” I said—one of the rare occasions on which I think it permissible to lie is when talking to a beautiful woman.
    Anita came back frowning. “The temperature control is set for normal, but the thermometer reading is fifteen degrees higher.”
    “I would have been cooked like a goose in another few minutes,” I told her.
    She was still frowning. “I don’t understand. The control must have been running under a higher setting for a period of time. I must report this. It is a very serious matter.”
    “I agree. I’m glad you arrived when you did.”
    “I was not supposed to relieve Celia for another half hour,” she said. “You are lucky I came early.”
    Marta walked back to the main buildings with me. She could pass for twenty years younger, I thought. She was still a very beautiful woman—and not just because she had saved my life. That reminded me …
    “Thanks again for saving my life,” I said.
    “Anytime,” she said, then looked at me anxiously. “No, I didn’t mean that. I hope it doesn’t happen again.”
    The grass was soft and the air clean and pure. It was good to be alive.
    Marta said almost to herself, “I wonder how the temperature got up that high.”
    She surprised me. I had thought of her as being totally self-absorbed. I was glad to be wrong.
    It was a point that I had started to think about now that the shock had worn off. It