Gibbon's Decline and Fall (38 page)

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.”

She looked. She couldn't find heels anywhere, just flats and low pumps. “And they're not depressed?”

“Do they look depressed to you?”

“Not much.”

“It isn't depression we're after, Ophy. It's something else.”

“Sex,” said the shotgun around a mouthful of shrimp and pork, his voice slightly surprised. “I thought the two of you had it figured when we went to Frederick's. It's sex.”

“What about sex?” Simon asked.

“It isn't people are depressed, so they don't have sex. It's people don't feel sexy, so some of 'em get depressed. You got it backward.”

“Some of them get depressed?” Ophy asked. “Because …”

“Oh, some guy because that's all he really liked doing. Or because his wife wants a kid, or because … You know, any old because. Mostly men. Doin' sex is all some men have to
brag about, you know. Got no brains, got no ambition, got no skills, but they can fuck like a bunny. Or used to could. And some of 'em, they think God is punishin' 'em, so they get together in some prayer group or other, whippin' themselves, endin' up killin' themselves or maybe blamin' women, so they go out bopping dames, end up killin' some. Like the guys in the black hoods; that's their problem.”

Ophy breathed slowly in and out, knowing what he said was true but still unwilling to buy it. So simple. Too simple. “I had one case, his wife said he wasn't that upset.…”

“How'd she know?” he asked reasonably. “You take some little shrimpy guy can hardly keep it up half a minute, inside himself, maybe he's King Kong.”

“What's your name again?” Simon asked the shotgun.

“Name's Emil Fustig. My friends call me Fusty.”

“You're not depressed?”

“Hell, no. There was always too much screwin' around. Even when you didn't do it, you said you did. You know, you've got to pretend, otherwise yóu'd start doubting your manhood, right? If we didn't have sex and football, what would we talk about?”

“Well, what have you been talking about lately?”

“Sort of interestin'. Driver I know, Max Benevidez—always usta talk about his last lay or his last bar fight or how he'd rather die of AIDS than do without—he's been talkin' about how he used to play trumpet. He thinks it might be fun to start a little mariachi group. Joe Zanger—last winter he was told off for sex-harrassing the dispatchers—he's been doin' crossword puzzles. Won himself a hundred dollars last week in a crossword contest. Funny, I'da swore he didn't know more than fifty words total. Me, I don't notice much different. Not much interested in football anymore. You noticed how the game's gone downhill? But I always was a reader. Now instead of the beer and the game, I'll stretch out with a book.”

“You married, Fusty?”

“Me? Sure. Me 'n' Francis been married twenty-six years. She's a real good old girl. Always did like her a lot.”

“Children?”

“Two of 'em. Boy and girl. Good kids. Francy's got her mind set on grandkids, too. That's the only thing worries me.”

“Worries …”

“I been scared to ask. What if the young ones don't care about sex anymore, either?”

Later that night Ophy and Simon lay close, side by side, skin against skin. He felt wonderful, Ophy thought. All the warm, wiry length of him, bony toes, like hers, mostly hairless except the line down his belly. Quite wonderful. Like a baby. You always wanted to stroke babies, their skin was so nice and soft. Warm and sleek and familial. She felt like an otter, curled up in a burrow, joyous with life.

“I've been going crazy,” said Simon, his lips close to her ear. “I used to stay away from you purposely, did you realize that? I'd extend a trip, from a week to ten days, from ten days to two weeks, teasing myself with the thought of you here. I'd put it off, like a kid saving candy. I'd look at women in bars, teasing myself with them, thinking they were just an echo of you. I'd wait until I was on fire to come home to you.