Gibbon's Decline and Fall

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “You? Oh, sure. Sure you do. Real sexy. But it’s okay. The face isn’t that much you, you know. You worried about your Dad seein’ it, he’d never know it was you.”

  They came out. “I need to talk to her for a minute,” said Petra. “You go on. I’ll be right there.”

  As he went down the stairs, the girl stood, hunched a bit, warming herself. She looked frozen, as though she’d been out in the chill of the night. The heat was on in the studio, and Faye drew her back inside.

  “All right, Pet child. What’s eating on you?”

  The girl looked up, her face strained with woe and doubt. “Narcisso,” she whispered. “He don’t … he’s not takin’ me to bed anymore.”

  And a very good thing, too, Faye told herself. “Good for him,” she said.

  “It’s not good,” the girl cried in anguish. “ ‘Cause I don’t know why!”

  “Maybe he got smart. Maybe he doesn’t want you pregnant.”

  She shook her head. “He use to say he want me to have his baby. Even when I don’t want to, he hits me and says I should be a woman and have his baby.”

  “Hits you?”

  “Yeah, you know. Not too bad. Just enough to show me, like he says, who’s boss. But he don’t hit me now, and he don’t take me to bed.”

  “Maybe he thinks you should be married first.”

  The girl looked up, her expression changing. “You think?”

  “If he’s in love with you. Yes.”

  “That never stop him before. Maybe he’s got AIDS,” the girl whispered. “That’s what I think.”

  Which could be true. “Have you asked him?”

  She shook her head miserably. “We don’t talk about that stuff.”

  Of course not. Do it ceaselessly, sequentially, serially, even promiscuously; hear it discussed ad lib, ad nauseam on every channel; but do not speak of it applying to oneself. Taboo. Taboo.

  “What can I do?”

  “Ask him.” She examined the girl’s face. “Do you still want him? Maybe if he doesn’t ever make love to you, do you want him anyhow?”

  “He got me all mixed up. He won’t take me to bed, but he takes me to the store, and he never use to. He don’t hit me no more, but he’s nicer than he use to be. We have more fun, you know? An’ I can’t figure it out.”

  Faye could understand her disbelief; what she couldn’t understand was the change in Narcisso.

  “Why don’t you just enjoy it, Petra? Can’t you do that?”

  “I guess.” She didn’t look at all convinced as she went down the steps with her eyes fixed on her feet. The boy came to meet her, putting his hand affectionately on her shoulder as he helped her into the car.

  The graveled road was faceted with sun as the car turned and went away, not too fast. An enigma. Something totally unexpected.

  And nothing she could figure out at the moment! One of the many things she had no time for! She stalked purposefully into the studio, put the covers over the maquette, and returned to her work. Botticelli’s Mercury was to be transformed into a composite Noah-Dionysus-St. Francis, savior of wild animals, surrounded by the animals themselves, ones that had gone extinct in Europe. Wild boar. Forest bison. Elk. A bear—not a teddy type, but one with wildness implicit, nose down, teeth showing, paw scooping up a flapping fish.

  She hadn’t decided on a replacement for the central figure of Venus Genetrix yet, but she would replace the three Graces with three avatars of nature, exemplars of what Carolyn called the covenant: shepherdess, gardener, dryad.

  “You’d know about that,” she said to Sophy, who stood naked in the corner. The wreath and drapery had been put away, in a locked cabinet. Now Sophy simply stood there, reaching out, her arm sagging under the huge, invisible weight it held. Looking at her own hands, Faye said, “You’d know about forests and animals and birds and all that.”

  “They are the teachers,” Sophy replied. “When the first women studied what the world was like, they learned from birds and animals. When I was in the desert, I learned from them, too.…”

  Faye looked up from the clay. She couldn’t remember Sophy ever talking about the desert. The form stood there unmoving, and yet she had heard Sophy’s voice, very clearly, talking about the desert!

  Had the statue spoken to her? Had she remembered Sophy speaking, or had she remembered someone quoting something Sophy had said?

  Probably a bit of all three. Memory of Sophy, memory of someone speaking of Sophy, and the sculpture itself speaking, the bronze talking to its creator.

  SIMON WAS AT THE DESK in the study when Ophy got home from Misery late Friday afternoon, the surface before him littered with untidy piles of paper scraps, different colors and sizes, all scratched over in Simon’s spiky hand.

  “What are you doing?” Ophy asked, dropping her bag and coat onto a chair near the door. “It looks like you’ve been here all day.”

  “Sorting notes for a story,” he said. “I realized this morning that I’ve already got a lot of stuff on this plague of yours. I’ve been covering it without knowing it. If my editor won’t assign me, I’ll do it freelance. Look at this.” He picked up one pile. “These are notes I took in France. Elle magazine. You know?”

  She nodded. “Fashions, isn’t it? Like Vogue?”

  “Sort of a glamour mag. I met one of the editors at a cocktail party. He was crying a blue streak over business. Subscriptions were off, down by twenty, twenty-five percent. He couldn’t figure it out.

  “At the time it meant very little, though I made notes of what he said. You know me: I always make notes. So after our talk last night, I got to thinking about the old women’s riots here, you know, and today I started digging about. Gentlemen’s Quarterly. Womenswear Daily. Vogue. I got a snarky idea, so I included Victoria’s Secret, Frederick’s. I made some phone calls. Doing a feature piece, sez I. How’s business? Now, if business was good, they’d have crowed about it. Instead they say this, they say that, they ask why do I want to know.”

  “Why those particular magazines?”

  “Depression is an ego problem, isn’t it? Fashion is ego related.”

  She dropped into the chair across from him. “You’re trying to verify the depression epidemic?”

  “I thought of the different kinds of ego stuff. Cars, maybe. For women it’s clothing, and maybe that ties into what these old biddies are doing. Cosmetics, maybe? My theory is, if there’s an epidemic of fear or depression, the first things to nose-dive will be stuff like clothes and cars.”

  “How can you quantify this? You didn’t get any numbers from these people you talked to.”

  “Thus speaks the scientific mind. No, love, no numbers. Just a lot of uncomfortable silences.”

  “How would we get some real data? The people from CDC, they’re dying for something real, Simon. Are you planning on writing something now?”

  “Of course not now. I don’t have a story yet. I have a dozen or so phone calls that produced only negative information. ‘Fashion Biggies Touchy About Sales’ is not a story. No, I’m just digging. I thought maybe you’d join me for a night on the town.”

  “Where? What’s up your sleeve?”

  “Well, the car dealerships are closed at night, so I thought Frederick’s, maybe.” He grinned and ran his fingers through already untidy hair. “We could look around, maybe have supper out.”

  “Wandering around at night? How safe is it?”

  “The town seems pretty quiet to me. Early in the evening should be okay. We’ll pick up a security team if you like.”

  “I guess we should. No point taking chances, even though the town does seem quiet. Things have simmered down lately.”

  Quiet or not, Ophy dressed down. Solid low-heeled shoes, dark trousers, loose sweater under a looser coat. No jewelry. No scent. Her HoloID in a zippered inside pocket. The face that looked back at her from the mirror looked anemic and hollow-cheeked.

  Simon didn’t seem to notice. “Very good,” he said approvingly. “
You look like one of us journalists—no-nonsense and all that.”

  “I look like a waif.”

  “No. You look determined in a waiflike way.”

  “I’m not sure what we’re doing this for.”

  “For your people from CDC. For my newspaper. For the two of us, because we want to know.”

  That much was true. She did want to know. Besides, Simon had offered to help her and Carolyn with the defense of that pathetic girl in Santa Fe, so it was only fair that she keep him company tonight.

  They called for a two-man security car from the gate of the quad-block, waiting patiently after it arrived for the gatekeeper to phone-check it. When the car had been double-checked, they went through the gate. Ophy recognized the man riding shotgun as her driver from the previous day.

  “Hey,” he said through the grill to the backseat. “You’re the doctor, right? You ever find out about that allergy?”

  “Not much,” she admitted. “Emil, wasn’t it? Emil Fustig? Any more of your friends coming down with it?”

  “Coming down,” he laughed. “That’s the truth. Only I guess it’s more a case of not getting it up in the first place.” He laughed again. “No offense. You bein’ a doctor, I don’t guess you mind jokes like that.”

  She frowned, not getting it. She started to ask him, but Simon spoke first.

  “You’re not bothered by this whatever it is?”

  “Oh, hell, I was never into all that stuff,” the man said. “Some guys, they gotta work out, they gotta drive a fast car, they gotta chase women like tomorrow was the last day of sex season. I mean, some guys do what they want, you know? They don’t believe nobody.”

  Throughout all this the driver had kept his mouth shut, his eyes on the street. Now he asked, “Where you want to start?”

  “Would there be a Frederick’s open?” said Simon.

  “Only one the old ladies didn’t burn down yet. Down the street from The Naked Truth,” said Ophy’s acquaintance. “That’s on the corner.”

  The driver made a quick left, then a right. Ahead of them a bevy of pink and purple neon nudes cavorted up the face of a building, disappearing at the fifth floor into an incandescent nova: THE NAKED TRUTH, flashing forty times a minute. The driver took them past, then double-parked in front of Frederick’s.

  Ophy stopped outside the brightly lit window, scanning the array of crotchless panties, garter belts, and bustiers as she might any collection of artifacts. They carried no emotional load. She did not, as she might have at one time, imagine how she would look in that flimsy babydoll, whether that lacy see-through might be seductive. Instead her eyes went through the display to the counter inside, where a middle-aged woman confronted a large, vehement man. The shotgun moved protectively in front of them as they went in.

  “Look,” the man was saying. “I know business is terrible. It keeps getting worse, too, but that don’t mean I can stop collecting the rent. You got it, give it to me. You don’t got it, I’ll give you notice of eviction. All neat and nice and according to the law.” He turned, seeing them come in, and appealed to them. “Ain’t that right? Rent is rent, right? It’s like death and taxes.”

  “Is business really bad?” asked Simon, all sympathy.

  The woman mopped angrily at the tears still wetting her face. “We got word this week they’re closing most of the stores the old ladies didn’t burn down. I’ve got twenty years with them. They offered me a mail-order job in California. California! What do I do with my folks? What do I do with my apartment? I’m trying to tell him it doesn’t do any good to ask me, I don’t have it to pay him. So let him evict.”

  “No customers at all?” Ophy asked.

  “Oh, sure. The regulars. I got women buy their stuff here every few weeks, a pair of panties, a bra, maybe a slip. Fancy stockings, maybe, for dress-up. Same stuff they always buy, like it’s a habit, you know. I got a few guys, transsexes, cross-dressers, you know—they still come in to get all dolled up. Even that’s a lot less than it used to be.”

  “It’s the same all up and down the street,” offered the rent collector. “There for a while my boss figured it was a conspiracy. Like the old-lady riots, maybe all the women was doing a rent strike.…”

  “All up and down the street,” Simon mused as they went back outside. “Let’s see who’s open.”

  They pushed the buzzer outside a porno shop, were scanned, then admitted to find it empty except for one plump and smooth-faced clerk, the phone propped at his ear, the broom he should have been using propped against the wall. He murmured and hung up at their approach.

  “Binness? Lousy. That was my boss onna phone, he says it’s so lousy, he’s not even comin’ in from Lon Guyland. He says why’n I take up smokin, so’s mebbe I c’n fry the inventory. Ha.”

  Ophy ran her fingers along one stack of boxed tapes, drawing them away dust laden. “Been a while since anybody changed stock,” she commented.

  “What’ud I change it for?” the youth asked, almost belligerently. “Guy makes our movies, he’s on vacation or some-thin’. Nobody’s got nothin’ new.”

  “Is this still anecdotal?” asked Simon as they went out into the chilly air. “Does it seem to you consequential that the producer of porn movies has not delivered for some time? Does it seem to you likely that he has not been able to get any actors qualified to … ah …”

  “Act?” suggested Ophy. “You think the actors are all too depressed to take off their clothes? This thing is … universal?”

  “Way I hear it, that’s pretty much so,” said the shotgun from behind them. “A month ago I’d hear guys griping about it. Now? It’s like nobody cares.”

  “Come on,” Simon said eagerly, dragging her by the hand. “Let’s stop in The Naked Truth for a drink.”

  “Not my kind of place,” muttered Ophy:

  “Just for a minute, Doctor. Summon up your professional detachment.”

  The shotgun stayed with them as they went inside, seating himself at a table about three feet from the one Simon and Ophy took, toward the back, away from the runway, where the girls pranced, gyrated, slunk, or crawled. The Naked Truth made a big thing out of costumes: colorful, fantastic, and expensive costumes that set off the flesh while allowing no single sequin to obstruct a clear view of breast, buttock, or pubic hair dyed emerald, sapphire, or ruby red. High-feathered collars jiggled by, like the tails of peacocks. Long trains swished the runway, beginning just below the neat little bottoms. Jeweled corselets, leggings, and gloves set off the sexual parts. Many of the women wore masks, also feathered or jeweled. Those who did not looked bored.

  “The place is damned near empty,” said Simon, leaning back to talk to the shotgun. “Isn’t it usually pretty full by this time of night?”

  “Last time I was here, yeah. That was a while ago, though.”

  The waitress, when she showed up, looked as bored as the girls on the runway.

  “Kind of dead tonight,” Simon commented.

  “Every night!” said the waitress. “This is my last one here. I can’t make it without tips.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Ophy.

  “Hostess in a seafood place. Even with no fish left but fake shrimp, fake crab, soybean fish cakes, they’re still busy. This place is dying on its pudendums, and that’s no joke.”

  The place seemed already dead. They left their drinks almost untouched and went outside.

  “Enough anecdote?” Simon asked when they reached the sidewalk again. “You want to go on?”

  She shook her head, baffled, stunned. So fast. A few weeks ago she hadn’t even heard of this. And here it was, everywhere, all at once. As though it had started slow, built up gradually, then, wham, critical mass in a matter of days!

  “There aren’t any prostitutes,” she said, staring along empty curbs at the passing traffic. “I heard the numbers were down, but there aren’t any!”

  “Forget the working girls,” he said, putting his arm around her. “Hey, Ophy. Let’s
have dinner.”

  She nodded. The shotgun accepted an invitation to join them. The driver said he’d stay with the car if they’d bring him something. They found a Chinese restaurant half a block down and across, a busy Chinese restaurant that showed no signs of disruption or failing business.

  “Food isn’t included,” Ophy said, watching a scurrying waiter carry a heavily laden tray past their table. “This place doesn’t indicate any loss of appetite.”

  “Guys I know still want to eat,” agreed the shotgun. “They still like a beer, still like to watch baseball, not football so much, women still seem to be doing what they usually do. Kids are going to school like usual. It’s not like the end of the world.”

  “Look at the women,” whispered Simon. “Ophy. Look.”

  She looked, seeing nothing strange. The women were laughing, talking, shushing children, handling chopsticks.…

  “What?”

  “No makeup.”

  She looked again. He was wrong. There was some makeup, but it was the habitual kind. Her own kind. A swipe with the base, another swipe with the lipstick, forget the eyes unless you’re going out. Of all the women in the place, only half a dozen had done their eyes. She said as much.

  “Hold the fort.” Simon slid out of the booth and went to one of the eye-women, crouched down beside her, and showed his credentials, smiling.

  “What’s he doing?” asked the shotgun.

  “Telling her he’s doing a story about women and makeup, or something like that. Telling her she’s one of the best-looking women in the room, does she always do a full makeup job. Something that’ll make her feel good, make her talkative.”

  “Right.” The shotgun accepted delivery of spring rolls, dipped one into hot mustard, and bit into it, reflectively. “He’s good at that, isn’t he? I try that, she’d have me arrested. Look at her, smilin’ at him.”

  Simon moved on to another woman, and then another. When he returned to the table, he looked grimly pleased.

  “All the gals who did their eyes do it every day. They’re models, receptionists, front people. It’s as much habit with them as the swipe wipe is with the others. Another thing, look at the shoes.”