Connie Willis - Bellwether

Which was incidentally the last time women had cut their hair short until the 1920s, and it was a snap to trace that fad to its source. Aristocrats had had their hair chopped off to make it easier on the guillotine, and after the Empire was reinstated, relatives and friends had worn their hair short in sympathetic tribute. They’d also tied narrow red ribbons around their necks, but I doubted if that was what the dreadlocks person had had in mind. Or maybe it was.

Backpacks were out, and tiny, dangling wallets-on-a-string were in. Also Ugg boots, and kneeless jeans, and plaid flannel shirts. There wasn’t an inch of corduroy anywhere. In-line skating with no regard for human life was very much in, as was walking slowly and obliviously four abreast. Sunflowers were out and violets were in. Ditto the Sinéad O’Connor look, and hair wraps. The long, thin strands of hair wrapped in brightly colored thread were everywhere.

Crystals and aromatherapy were out, replaced apparently by recreational ethnicity. The New Age shops were advertising Iroquois sweat lodges, Russian banya therapy, and Peruvian vision quests, $249 double occupancy, meals included. There were two Ethiopian restaurants, a Filipino deli, and a cart selling Navajo fry bread.

And half a dozen coffeehouses, which had apparently sprung up like mushrooms overnight: the Jumpstart, the Espresso Espress, the Caffe Lottie, the Cup o’ Joe, and the Caffe Java.

After a while I got tired of dodging mimes and in-line skaters and went into the Mother Earth, which was now calling itself the Caffe Krakatoa (east of Java). It was as crowded inside as it had been out on the mall. A waitress with a swag haircut was taking names. “Do you want to sit at the communal table?” she was asking the guy in front of me, pointing to a long table with two people at it, one at each end.

That’s a trend that’s moved over here from England, where strangers have to share tables in order to keep up with the gossip on Prince Charles and Camilla. It hasn’t caught on particularly over here, where strangers are more apt to want to talk about Rush Limbaugh or their hair implants.

I had sat at communal tables a few times when they were first introduced, thinking it was a good way to get exposure to trends in language and thought, but a taste was more than enough. Just because people are experiencing things doesn’t mean they have any insight into them, a fact the talk shows (a trend that has reached the cancerous uncontrolled growth stage and should shortly exhaust its food supply) should have figured out by now.

The guy was asking, “If I don’t sit at the communal table, how long a wait?”

The waitress sighed. “ I don’t know. Forty minutes?” and I certainly hoped that wasn’t going to be a trend.

“How many?” she said to me.

“Two,” I said, so I wouldn’t have to sit at the communal table. “Foster.”

“It has to be your first name.”

“Why?” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “So I can call you.”

“Sandra,” I said.

“How do you spell that?”

No, I thought, please tell me Flip isn’t becoming a trend. Please.

I spelled Sandra for her, grabbed up the alternative newspapers, and settled into a corner for the duration. There was no point in trying to do the personals till I was at a table, but the articles were almost as good. There was a new laser technology for removing tattoos, Berkeley had outlawed smoking outdoors, the must-have color for spring was postmodern pink, and marriage was coming back in style. “Living together is passé,” assorted Hollywood actresses were quoted as saying. “The cool thing now is diamond rings, weddings, commitment, the whole bit.”

“Susie,” the waitress called.

No one answered.

“Susie, party of two,” she said, flipping her rattail. “ Susie.”

I decided it was either me or somebody who’d given up and left. “Here,” I said, and let a waiter with a Three Stooges haircut lead me to a knee-mashing table by the window. “I’m ready to order,” I said before he could leave.

“I thought there were two in your party,” he said.

“The other person will be here soon. I’ll have a double tall caffè latte with skim milk and semisweet chocolate on top,” I said brightly.

The waiter sighed and looked expectant.

“With brown sugar on the side,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “Sumatra, Yergacheffe, or Sulawesi?” he said.

I looked to the menu for help, but there was nothing there but a quote from Kahlil Gibran. “Sumatra,” I said, since I knew where it was.

He sighed. “Seattle-or California-style?”

“Seattle,” I said.

“With?”

“A spoon?” I said hopefully.

He rolled his eyes.

“What flavor syrup?”

Maple? I thought, even though that seemed unlikely. “Raspberry?” I said.

That was apparently one of the choices. He slouched off, and I attacked the personals. There was no point in circling the NSs. They were in virtually every ad. Two had it in their headline, and one, placed by a very intelligent, strikingly handsome athlete, had it listed twice.

Friends was out, and soul work was in. There were two references to fairies, and yet another abbreviation: GC. “JSDM seeks WSNSF. Must be GC. South of Baseline. West of Twenty-eighth.” I circled it and turned back to the code book. Geographically compatible.

There weren’t any other GCs, but there was a “Boulder mall area preferred,” and one that specified, “Valmont or Pearl, 2500 block only.”

Yes, in an eight-and-a-half narrow, and I’d like that delivered Federal Express to my door. It made me think fondly of Billy Ray, who was willing to drive all the way down from Laramie to take me out.

“This place is so ridiculous,” Flip said, sitting down across from me. She was wearing a babydoll dress, thigh-high pink stockings, and a pair of clunky Mary Janes, all of which she had on more or less right side up. “There’s a forty-minute line.”

Yes, I thought, and you should be in it. “There’s a communal table,” I said.

“No body sits together except swarbs and boofs,” she said. “Brine made us sit at the communal table once.” She bent over to pull up her thigh-highs.

There was no duct tape in evidence. Flip motioned the waiter over and ordered. “LattemarchianoskimtallJazula and not too much foam.” She turned to look at me. “Brine ordered a latte with Sumatra.” She picked up my sack from the bookstore. “What’s this?”

“A birthday present for Dr. Damati’s little girl.”

She had already pulled it out and was examining it curiously.

“It’s a book,” I said.

“Didn’t they have the video?” She stuck it back in the sack. “ I would’ve bought her a Barbie.” She tossed her swath of hair, and I could see that she had a strip of duct tape across her forehead. There was a cut-out circle in the middle with what looked like a lowercase i tattooed right between her eyes.

“What’s your tattoo?”

“It’s not a tattoo,” she said, brushing her hair back so I could see it better. It was a lowercase i. “Nobody wears tattoos anymore.”

I started to draw her attention to her snowy owl and noticed that she was wearing duct tape there, too, a small circular patch right where the snowy owl had been.

“Tattoos are artificial. Sticking all those chemicals and cancerinogens under your skin,” she said. “It’s a brand.”

“A brand,” I said, wishing, as usual, that I hadn’t started this.

“Brands are organic. You’re not injecting something into your body. You’re bringing out something that’s already there in your natural body. Fire’s one of the four elements, you know.”