Connie Willis - Bellwether

“I’ll have the Reality Check,” I said, hoping it would enhance my ability to face facts.

I tried reading the personals, but they were too depressing: “To the blonde who eats lunch every day at Jane’s Java Joint, you don’t know me but I’m hopelessly in love with you. Please reply.”

I switched to the articles.

A “harmonic bonding” therapist was offering duct tape soul alignments.

Two men in New York City had been arrested for operating the hot new fad, a “smoking speakeasy.”

Po-mo pink had fizzled as a fad. A fashion designer was quoted as saying, “There’s no accounting for the public’s taste.”

Truer words, I thought, and it was time I faced that, too. I was never going to discover the source of the hair-bobbing fad, no matter how much data I fed into my computer model. No matter how many different colored lines I drew.

Because it didn’t have anything to do with suffrage or World War I or the weather. And even if I could ask Bernice and Irene and the rest of them why they’d done it, it still wouldn’t help. Because they wouldn’t know.

They were as benighted and blind as I had been, moved by feelings they weren’t aware of, by forces they didn’t understand. Right straight into the river.

My smart drink came. It was chartreuse, a color that had been a fad in the late twenties. “What’s in it?” I said.

He sighed, a heavy sigh like someone out of Dostoyevsky. “Tyrosine, L-phenylalanine, and synergistic cofactors,” he said. “And pineapple juice.”

I took a sip of it. I didn’t feel any smarter. “Why did you get your forehead branded?” I said.

Apparently he hadn’t finished his smart drink. He stared at me blankly.

“Your i brand?” I said, pointing at it. “Why did you decide to have it done?”

“Every body has them,” he said, and slouched off.

I wondered if he had gotten the brand to please his girlfriend or if he was rebelling against anti-intellectualism or his parents, or in love with somebody who didn’t know he was alive.

I sipped my drink and kept reading. I didn’t feel any smarter. Bantam Books had paid an eight-figure advance for Getting in Touch with Your Inner Fairy Godmother. Cerenkhov blue was the “cool/hot” color for winter, and men and women were smoking cigars in L.A., inspired by Rush Limbaugh or David Letterman or forces they didn’t understand. Like sheep. Like rats.

None of which solved the problem of how I was going to go on working with Bennett. Or of where I was going to find Romantic Bride Barbie.

I went over to the library and checked out Anna Karenina and Cyrano de Bergerac and got the Denver phone book from the reference section. I copied down all the toy stores that weren’t on Gina’s list and all the department and discount stores, explained to Flip’s clone that I had already paid the fine on Browning’s Complete Works, and set out again, marking off stores as I went.

I eventually found Romantic Bride Barbie at a Target in Aurora—wedged in behind Barbie’s Horse Stable Club—and took it up to the checkout.

The clerk was trying to make change for the man in front of me.

“It’s eighteen seventy-eight,” she said.

“I know,” the man said. “I gave you a twenty-dollar bill and then after you rang it up as eighteen seventy-eight, I gave you three cents. You owe me a dollar and a quarter.”

She flipped her hair back, irritably, revealing an i.

Give up, I thought. It’s no use.

“The register says one twenty-two,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I gave you the three cents. Twenty-two plus three makes a quarter.”

“A quarter of what?”

I set Romantic Bride Barbie on the end of the counter. I read the tabloid headlines and looked at the impulse items on the rack next to the counter. Duct tape in several widths, and bubble packs of Barbie high heels in assorted colors.

“All right, fine,” the man said. “Give me back the three cents and give me one twenty-two.”

I picked up a pack of high heels. “New! Cerenkhov blue,” it read. I set it down next to the duct tape and as I did, I felt a strange sensation, as if I were on the verge of something important, like the final side of a Rubik’s cube clicking into place.

“This doesn’t have a price on it,” the checkout clerk said. She was holding Romantic Bride Barbie. “I can’t sell anything that doesn’t have a price on it.”

“It’s thirty-eight ninety-nine,” I said. “The manager said to ring it up under Miscellaneous.”

“Oh,” she said, and rang it up.

This is a fad I could actually learn to like, I thought, smiling at her i. Forewarned is forearmed.

“That’ll be forty-one thirty-three,” she said. I stood there, wallet in hand, looking at the boxes of crayons, trying to recapture the feeling I’d had. Something about Cerenkhov blue, and duct tape, or—

Whatever it was, it was gone. I hoped it hadn’t been the cure for cholera.

“Forty-one thirty- three,” the clerk said.

I carefully counted out the exact change and left with Romantic Bride Barbie. On the way out, I stepped on something and looked down. It was a penny. Farther on there were two more. They looked like they had been flung down with some force.

Prohibition [1895–January 16, 1920]

Aversion fad against alcohol fueled by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Carry Nation’s saloon-smashing, and the sad effects of alcoholism. Schoolchildren were urged to “sign the pledge” and women to swear not to touch lips that had touched liquor. The movement gained impetus and political support all through the early 1900s, with party candidates drinking toasts with glasses of water and several states voting to go dry, and finally culminated in the Volstead Act. Died out as soon as Prohibition was enacted. Replaced by bootleggers, speakeasies, bathtub gin, hip flasks, organized crime, and Repeal.

Gina couldn’t believe I’d found Romantic Bride Barbie. She hugged me twice. “You’re wonderful. You’re a miracle worker!”

“Not quite,” I said, trying to smile. “I don’t seem to be having any luck finding the source of hair-bobbing.”

“Speaking of which,” she said, still admiring Romantic Bride Barbie, “Dr. O’Reilly was up here before, looking for you. He looked worried.”

What’s Flip lost now? I wondered, the bellwether? and started down to Bio. Halfway there, I ran into Ben. He grabbed my arm. “We were supposed to be in Management’s office ten minutes ago.”

“Why? What’s this about?” I asked, trying to keep up. “Are we in trouble?”

Well, of course we were in trouble. The only time anybody got to see the inside of Management’s office, Staff Input notwithstanding, was when they were getting transferred to Supply. Or having their funding cut.

“I hope it isn’t the animal-rights activists,” Ben said, coming to a stop outside Management’s door. “Do you think I should have worn a jacket?”

“No,” I said, remembering his jackets. “Maybe it’s something minor. Maybe we didn’t dress down enough.”

The secretary in the outer office told us to go right in. “It’s not something minor,” Ben whispered, and reached for the doorknob.

“Maybe we’re not in trouble,” I said. “Maybe Management’s going to commend us for cross-disciplinary cooperation.”

He opened the door. Management was standing behind his desk with his arms folded.

“I don’t think so,” Ben murmured, and we went in.

Management told us to sit down, another bad sign. One of SHAM’s Eight Efficiency Enhancers was “Holding meetings standing up encourages succinctness.”