by James Gunn
Would he ever have another opportunity like this? he wondered. Or would the fear of catastrophic change stop him again as it had before? He was getting old, and that was catastrophic too.
But he shouldn't have been surprised: This was the year of the catastrophe. All his equations said so.
[NOTE: THERE IS NO PAGE 82.]
CHAPTER SIX
June 3, 2000
Barbara Shepherd
Something extraordinary happened to Barbara Shepherd as she was approaching orgasm: She had a moment of transcendence. The experience had nothing to do with sex, but it was, like sex, a simultaneous focusing and expansion of consciousness. Like sex, the sensation left her supremely aware of her self and its position at the very center of the universe, at the same time that she felt detached from it, a part of the observing universe and the part being observed, simultaneously hearing and making the sounds of skin sliding against skin and of sighs and moans and muffled words, smelling and releasing the pheromones....
A few hours before, her companion had been a stranger when they had met at a party given by Randolph and Alexandra and Daniel Williston. Randy, Sandy, and Dandy were what they called themselves, and, as if their taste in names and their own marital arrangement weren't odd enough, they liked to offer revels in their Manhattan townhouse in the Roman tradition: delicacies, drugs, and nudity. As a rule they invited people to their parties only once, and preferred guests who had never met. “Intimate strangers,” they called them, and tried to shock the uninitiated with decadence, and if the guests were innocent—there still were a few in these degenerate times—to watch their hesitating but inevitable descent into depravity.
The guests were always young and beautiful, but not always strangers. Sometimes the Willistons ran out of new guests and had to invite people who had attended one of their parties before. If they couldn't get inexperience they settled for fame or notoriety. Many guests, however, refused to return, and some could not, for the parties sometimes got out of hand; at least one guest was rumored to have died during some kind of perverse play and several had been injured.
Shepherd had been there once before, so she had no illusions about the party or why she had been invited to return. She was famous for winning a gold medal at the Olympics when she was sixteen, for earning a Ph.D. in philosophy at the age of twenty-eight, and for making it to the final selection process to become an astronaut before she was disqualified because of her fear of heights. And she was notorious as an actress who had become an overnight sensation in two hit Broadway dramas and a musical, and an overnight failure in three films in succession. She was good looking enough, she knew, and her figure, in spite of abuse, was still firm enough to move naked without embarrassment among people bare and clothed. But the other female guests had been chosen for beauty alone. Shepherd would have declined the invitation, but she was bored. She was so bored with men, with sex, with food and drugs, with life itself, that she could die.
She didn't expect to die at the Willistons', though it didn't matter to her much, one way or another, because she had had about enough of everything she could think of. She wasn't concerned about taking care of herself, however: Muscles that had been trained for years and coordination that had been fine-tuned for competition did not disappear with the reasons for them; and every now and then a craving for physical fitness came over her, and she punished her body for a few weeks just to prove to herself that she could still do it. Still, the element of danger, the risk of death or injury, was an attraction.
It hadn't even been that the Willistons’ parties were unusual. They may have been a little wilder than most, perhaps because the Willistons were richer than most and more decadent than most, but almost everybody did it now. At least everybody who didn't have to work for a living. Maybe they did it too, Shepherd sometimes thought, but less ostentatiously. Statistics indicated that alcohol and drug consumption were epidemic, as well as crimes of violence and passion; in fact, both were so common that they weren't news any more. Everybody was bored and at the same time lived with the omnipresence of unnamed disaster. Military service had been described, she had thought, as long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of terror, but today boredom and terror coexisted.
By the time she had arrived at the party in an armored taxi, the revels had already reached the point at which the most attractive women and the better muscled men had already begun stripping down to undergarments, and some had been nakedly parboiling themselves in the hot tub or swimming in the chilled pool or lolling around one of the low banquet tables, nibbling at exotic delicacies or each other. As a wave of crowd noise and bathhouse odors had hit her at the door, Shepherd had almost turned around and left, hoping to catch the taxi before it left. But Sandy and Dandy had caught her by each wrist and drawn her into the entryway.
Dandy had been wearing a tuxedo and Sandy, a silver lame evening gown, a little daring in the way it molded itself to her body but conservative compared to the dress or absence of it of her female guests. The Willistons liked to remain fully clothed in the midst of nakedness, like Dionysus indulging the weaknesses of his followers but remaining above them. What they did when they were alone, how they sorted themselves out, if they did, or what they did with guests who lingered behind, was a subject that Shepherd had speculated about with other survivors of a Williston party; none had stayed long enough to acquire first-hand details.
Shepherd had been clothed in a short-skirted red cocktail dress that revealed her athlete's legs, that were slender but, like her, too short. At the moment her wrists were captured, she had realized why she had not returned to a Williston party in spite of several invitations. On her earlier appearance she had behaved with embarrassing public wantonness, but that would not have stopped her. What she did not like was the Willistons and their voyeurism. But they would not let her go.
“Bobby,” Dandy had said. “We're so delighted you could come."
“Barbara,” she had said. She hated being called “Bobby."
“We invited someone we particularly thought you'd like, Barbara,” Sandy had said. She had wrapped Shepherd's hand inside her arm and squeezed it to her unfettered breast as she dragged Shepherd into the next room.
Sandy was taller than Shepherd, although probably not as strong, but Shepherd could not free her hand without a struggle, even though contact with Sandy's body had been unpleasant. She had nothing in theory against group sex, or even lesbian sex, but in practice group sex required too much planning and lesbian sex was too artificial. And Sandy's vulturine watchfulness made such possibilities even more repulsive.
But maybe she had just been in the wrong mood.
The rooms were coolly elegant, with spare, fragile, polished wood furniture and parqueted or marbled floors and walls textured in grays and light blues—all carefully designed by some high-paid interior decorator to look like anything but a bordello. But the people who had moved through the rooms or clustered together closer than any of them would have found tolerable in normal circumstances had been in various stages of scarcely concealed tumescence and would have seemed better complemented by flocked, red wallpaper and velvet drapes.
“Here,” Sandy had said, and had stopped in front of a muscular young man dressed only in a pair of hip-riding red silk shorts.
The young man had been talking to an equally handsome young woman clad like her companion only in underpants; hers were small, black, and lacy and her full, firm breasts rose and fell as she breathed. Barbara had looked at them with admiration and a trace of envy.
“This is Joe,” Sandy had said. “Isn't he marvelous? We found him at the local service station. Service station, isn't that priceless? Joe, I want you to meet Barbara. Barbara Shepherd."
Joe's back and legs had been covered with black hair and as he turned Shepherd could see that his chest was even hairier. Like an ape, she had thought, and could not help but notice his erection, which he waved before him like a banner. “My brother Esau is an hairy man,” she had
remembered from her early Bible-reading days. She liked smooth men.
“Hi,” Joe had said. He didn't recognize her face or her name. He was a handsome fellow, short but broad shouldered, and he worked out with weights and exercise machines, it was clear from his muscular definition and ridged abdomen. He had looked her up and down without concealment as if he were appraising a used car.
She had flushed and felt embarrassed about behaving like a school girl. No, not even school girls blushed any more. “What?” she had asked.
“I said,” he had repeated, “what do you do?"
“Nothing,” she had said.
“You got money, then,” he had said as if the statement were as natural as his state of sexual arousal.
She had noticed his hands. They were large and hairy like the rest of his body, and she had repressed a shudder as she thought of them touching her. They would be like huge spiders with broken, dirty fingernails. She should not have been turned off by the emblems of his labors, but she liked cleanliness in a man, too.
Moreover, she had known, Joe was too certain that he was the object of desire, too ready to use that to his advantage. Like a beautiful woman, he believed that the universe revolved around him, and he didn't need to care about anything or anybody else.
“Do you know what year it is, Joe?” Shepherd had asked.
“Sure,” he had said.
“Do you know that the world might end this year?” she had asked.
“Really?” the girl had said, as if wanting to remind Joe of her presence. Her breasts had wobbled.
“Who the fuck believes that shit,” Joe had said.
“Hold to that thought, Joe,” Shepherd had said. She had nodded. “Nice to have met you."
Sandy had left to find other victims. Shepherd had wandered off.
Now that she was actually there, her desire to leave had been balanced by her inertia, and she had drifted through the rooms, upstairs and down, not in the Olympian aloofness of the Willistons but in an uncomfortable detachment from the general mood of sexual excitation. Perhaps the Willistons enjoyed watching defenses crumble and inhibitions discarded, and people behaving in public in ways they usually reserved for their fantasies, but Shepherd had thought it was ugly. Lord Chesterfield was right, and someone else's sexual contortions were even more ridiculous. She had been embarrassed that she had behaved much the same as these others when she had been here before, and she had been embarrassed to belong to a species that behaved in this manner, and she had been embarrassed to admit to herself that if she would only let her hormones perform their usual functions she would be just like them. She had tried a drink of scotch, but it didn't help, and the drugs laid out in one of the rooms might have put her too much at the mercy of the Willistons.
“There must be something better,” she had thought.
“There is,” a man's voice had said, behind her, and she had realized that she must have spoken.
She had turned, expecting to see someone like Joe, but it was a tall, dark-haired man in a blue bodysuit. He had been older than the usual Williston guest though still younger than she by several years, she had guessed, and his face and body were ugly, though in an interesting, Lincolnesque way.
“Do you realize,” he had asked, “how sexy a woman fully clothed appears in the midst of all this nudity?"
“Do you realize,” she had said, “that you don't really need an opening line in the midst of all this opportunity?"
“Too easy,” he had said. “Sex without conversation is like meat without salt."
“You need a little resistance to whet your appetite?"
“Conversation without sex is all right, too."
He had not been the usual Williston guest, and she had warmed to him because of that. She was long past the point of pretending a maidenly reserve she did not feel, but she had not been in the mood.
“Maybe another time,” she had said, and turned away. She had picked her way through clotted flesh toward the door. Several men and one woman had tried to clutch at her as she passed them, but they had been drunk or doped and she had slipped from their grasp and finally reached the wall telephone in the entryway. As she had taken down the receiver, a large hand had reached past her shoulder and closed the contact. It had been, she saw as she half turned, Randy, the third member of the Williston family. He had been dressed in a tuxedo identical to Andy's, but he was bigger and a bit older and fatter, and it didn't fit him as well. By this time in the evening, the tie had been a bit awry and color had climbed into his cheeks. It had been, she had suspected, from excitement, not indulgence.
“I need to call a taxi,” she had said.
“Later,” he had said. “There's something exciting going on downstairs. Something different. You'll like it.” His eyes had glittered. He was the best looking of the Willistons and maybe the most dangerous.
“Not tonight,” she had said.
“I insist,” he had said, like a genial host, and his sweaty hand had caught her by the shoulder. “I'll be your cicerone."
She could have gotten away, but not without a struggle. She had been torn between the desire to hit him in a way that would make him incapable of enjoying the rest of the party, and the desire not to seem prudish or to cause a scene. “No,” she had said, and tried to turn out from underneath his grasp.
His hand had tightened, and she had been gathering her resolution to act when a man's blue-clad arm had slid between them and pulled her away. “She's with me,” a familiar voice had said. It had been young Abe, and he had pulled her away from Randy and through the doorway into the night.
It had been a little chilly outside after the overheated atmosphere of the townhouse, but the smog had dissipated a bit. She had shivered and put her back against the door jamb. “Thanks,” she had said. Her mood had changed; she would let gratitude and interest ripen into desire. She had decided that he would do, after all, and maybe even have enough character for a return engagement. Perhaps he might even represent a long-term relationship, as such things went in these days of imminent catastrophe, a few weeks or a month. She was, she had realized, no different from Williston's other guests, just more particular.
“They can be repulsive,” he had said.
“They have difficulty not being repulsive. I need to call a taxi,” she had said.
“I have a car. Let me take you home."
His name was Evan. He had given no last name, and she had not asked for it. She had been sure he was married. He had revealed, as he drove his bulletproof Mercedes through the empty Manhattan streets, that he was an executive in an unnamed but powerful international corporation. It had not been his first invitation to a Williston party, either, but how many he had attended he had not said. The number might have been too revealing about his character; but perhaps he had business connections with the Willistons. He had called her “Barbara” without asking her name. When they had arrived at her apartment building, she had invited him to come up for a drink, and he had accepted.
There had been the usual armed guards. They had nodded at her and inspected her new companion. They knew her habits and, she suspected, talked about them with other members of the staff. She hadn't needed the usual blood check; the Willistons’ RSVPs required current medical certificates. As soon as they had been inside her door, he had put his arms around her and said, “I don't need a drink. You're intoxicating enough."
The line had been no more original, but this time it hadn't mattered. He had kissed well, and he had removed her clothing slowly and expertly, pausing to admire each aspect of her body as he had revealed it, before he had picked her up and, with her guidance, carried her into her bedroom.
He had been an expert lover, as much concerned about her stimulation as his own and willing to answer her when she asked why he wanted her rather than one of the younger, better endowed guests. “You're Barbara Shepherd,” he had said. Saying her name had seemed to intensify his passion.
“If you know who I am,” she had m
urmured, “you know that I'm as easy as they are."
“You're not,” he had said. “You might sleep with a different man every night—."
“I wish,” she had said.
“But the point is, you pick him. Besides, you're not just a body; you're a person. You have a mind and a character."
“Not much of either one right now,” she had said.
Matters had got more intense for awhile until she said, “Wait!"
“What do you mean?"
“Stop a minute."
“What's the matter?"
“I had a—a feeling."
“You're supposed to have."
“No—I mean a feeling!"
“What kind of feeling?"
“You'll laugh."
“I never felt less like laughing."
“A feeling of—something greater. Of transcendence."
“I've never caused a woman to feel that before. Maybe it's a matter of terminology."
“It had nothing to do with you,” she said.
“Thanks a lot."
“It was a revelation, a flash of light—of enlightenment, like Saul on the road to Damascus. Everything became clear for an instant, but now I've lost it."
“Good,” he said. “It was just a funny feeling then, that people get sometimes for no reason, like déjà vu. We can get back to what we were doing."
His hands and lips got busy again, but she pulled away and put her hands over his to make him stop. “You don't understand. I've got to get it back."
“That's silly,” he said. He was getting irritated. “Those things never come back."
“I've got to feel like that again. Like there was something more. Like there was meaning. Like certainty."
“Like stupidity."
“Call it what you like.” She knew she wasn't being stupid. For a second there, for no reason she could think of, she had grasped something infinite, something she had been looking for all her life and didn't know it until it happened, something that had made her seek all the substitutes that had never been enough. Why it had occurred to her at that moment she might never know, but that was the nature of revelation. That was why religious rites were called “mysteries,” she thought.
