Gibbon's Decline and Fall Read online

  The bag ladies were still waiting, watching her expectantly. Ophy went toward the mourners’ bench, where they were hunched beneath their stratified layers of clothing, holey sweaters over ragged T-shirts, draggle-hemmed coats over the lot. “Is there something I can do for you ladies?”

  “Dr. Gheist,” said one, half smiling. “Ophelia Gheist.”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m Sarah Sourwood. Do you remember me?”

  Ophy stared for a moment, brow furrowed in an attempt at recollection. “I don’t think …”

  “Well, that’s all right, dear. It was a long time ago. But you remember Jen! You worked on her leg once, when she got hit by a cab.”

  She turned to the other woman, evading the question of recognition. “I hope I did a good job.”

  “Very good. I brought my friends to see you.”

  “Have they also been hit by cabs?”

  Laughter, surprisingly joyous. “No,” whispered one. “We wanted to see you. See what you looked like. In case one of us needs you, if we get hurt, in the great battle.”

  “Now, what great battle is that?”

  “The one that’s coming. Your friend is leading it.”

  “My friend? Who?”

  “Baba Yaga.”

  Automatically, she said, “I don’t know anyone by that name.…” But of course she’d heard the name. Sophy. Sophy had talked about Baba Yaga. The crone. The hag. The healer. The grandmotherly personification of racial wisdom.

  Sarah didn’t wait for comment. “Well, she says she knows you.” Shrugs. Winks.

  Ophy didn’t pursue the name question; a matter too complicated for a busy day. “I’ve heard something about you ladies preaching on street corners. What’s that about?”

  “Somebody has to,” said one. “You have to give people warning before it happens. You have to cast down the gauntlet and summon the beast onto holy ground.”

  They all agreed with nods and murmurs. The rules said you had to give warning. You had to declare war!

  “Thank you for telling me.” She half turned, as though to leave, but the woman clutched at her arm.

  “There’s something else. We’ve brought her.” The spokeswoman jabbed her elbow toward the end of the bench, where a figure huddled. “She didn’t want to come, but we made her.”

  The woman looked up, eyes staring redly from circles of livid flesh. She’d been beaten. The line of the cheekbone was dented, broken. Ophy drew breath, whispering, “Who?”

  “Her pimp,” said the bag lady without expression. “The beast made him do it. She hasn’t been bringing in as much money as she used to now that the world is …” Her voice trailed off as she noticed Ophy wasn’t listening.

  Ophy was on her knees before the woman, looking at the injured eyes. One was half-obscured by a blood clot. Ophy got up, pulling the woman to her feet. “Come with me. We’ll fix you up.”

  “You go with her,” urged the spokeswoman. “You go with her, she’ll take care of you.”

  Ophy called across the room to one of the aides, on his way from reception to the elevators. He brought a chair. Together they got the woman into it, and the aide wheeled her away toward the first trauma team with free time. Ophy lifted a hand in farewell and went after them, stopping in confusion halfway there, disturbed by some half thought, some illusive odor. Something about those old women, reminding her of something. Sarah Sourwood. Why did that ring a faint chime?

  “Problem?” Stroking fingers caressed the back of her neck and drove the memory away.

  She moved decorously away from the man who had walked up behind her, Dr. Smithson. Chief of Misery. Whose caresses were purely affectionate and bestowed on all ages, races, sexes, and species with equal largesse.

  She stepped back and met his eyes, far above her own, noting the questioning lift of one eyebrow. “Actually, I was trying to identify a smell, I think.”

  “Smells like it always smells in here. Like a combination soup kitchen whorehouse. Reason I stopped you, Dr. Bir—Ophy-my-dear …”

  “You started to say Dr. Birdbones. I’ve asked you not to do that, Smitty.”

  “I do try. But then I see you fluttering, and all my good resolutions go out the window. Mea culpa. Reason I stopped you, we’ve having a little meeting that you need to attend. Friday A.M., seven, the boardroom.”

  “About what?”

  “Something mysterious the CDC wishes to consult us on.”

  “Ah. Mysterious? You mean you don’t know?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll all find out on Friday.”

  He gave her a comfortable squeeze, then went off looking for some other huggee. She checked the wall clock for the time, seven-seventeen, and walked toward her reflection in the glass door. She’d tried to break Smithson from calling her Dr. Birdbones, though she wasn’t sure Ophy-my-dear was any improvement. He didn’t need to remind her what she looked like. She knew she was all angles, all knobby elbows and long skinny feet and dark-circled eyes! Bedroom eyes. That’s how Simon had described them. Used to describe them. Back when he had bothered to look at her.

  “Hasn’t he bothered to look recently?” the voice asked from behind her right shoulder.

  Simon hadn’t bothered to look recently because he hadn’t been home in weeks. Now he was supposedly in Italy, and last week he’d been covering an economic summit in Germany, and before that he’d been in Paris at a European common-language conference, though so far as the French were concerned, common languages were too damned common.

  Simon used to make it a point to get home every three or four weeks, no matter what. So? What was happening with him? And with whom else?

  “Does that upset you?” the voice asked.

  The thought shook her to her roots. Simon wouldn’t do that. Jessamine’s husband, Patrick, yes. Bettiann’s husband, William, sure. Everyone knew Bill Carpenter fooled around. Bill was often in New York on business, and just last year Ophy had seen him coming out of a cozy little French restaurant with what looked like a high-priced lady, very snuggly during the quarter-block stroll it took to reach a cozy brown-stone. She’d sat through a green light watching them, the traffic behind her piling up noisily. Did one tell one’s dear friend, Bettiann?

  “You decided not to tell her,” the voice reminded her.

  It would only hurt Bettiann, who still had her particular problem, after all these years. There had to be limits. If you told everything you knew or thought or suspected, you wouldn’t stay friends long. Like back in ninety-seven, when they’d met in San Francisco and Jessamine’s husband, Patrick, had made separate and well-thought-out seduction attempts on every member except Agnes. Evidently a nun was out of bounds, even for Patrick. Each of the others—except Sophy, for some reason—had thought herself singled out until a red-faced Jessamine had announced that Patrick had confessed to testing the loyalty of her friends.

  “I don’t know if he really did,” she said ruefully, trying to laugh about it. “But if he did, well, Patrick likes to stir things up. I know I can trust all you guys.”

  Which would have been uncomfortable, but not fatal, if Carolyn hadn’t remarked tartly:

  “It isn’t necessarily a matter of trust or loyalty, Jessy. It may simply be a matter of taste. I, for one, find Patrick personally repugnant.”

  “That annoyed Jessamine,” Sophy said.

  Carolyn’s comment had annoyed Jessamine, certainly, and during the ensuing days, whenever Bettiann and Jessamine weren’t around, the other five—four, really, since Sophy didn’t discuss such things—had speculated whether Jessamine might have preferred any one of them to become emotionally involved with Patrick rather than pronounce him undesirable. Or whether, as Faye seemed to think, Jessy didn’t really care what Patrick did, except he ought not to do it with the DFC.

  “But you didn’t blame Bettiann?” her friend asked.

  No, Jessamine thought. They hadn’t blamed Bettiann. Even Jessamine, if she’d known about it, probably wouldn’t
have blamed Bettiann. No matter how expensively groomed, dressed, and coiffured, no matter how rigorously exercised and massaged, Bettiann was still the girl they’d known in school, the swan who could not be convinced she was not an ugly duckling, the beauty queen who needed constant male attention to assure herself she was desirable while at the same time she avoided any intimacy that might test the proof.

  “Dressed, I’m fine,” she’d told Ophy long ago, when Bettiann was first married. “You know, clothes can make anyone look great. But even now that I’m married, I can’t stand the thought of anyone seeing … you know.” She’d wept. Ophy had held her, unable to comfort her. There was no logic to it, no rationality. It was a wound too deep for medicine to reach.

  Patrick had reached it. But, then, according to Jessamine, Patrick was good at that. He could find an opponent’s weakness and figure out a way to exploit it in the time it took him to shake hands. Patrick was a born politician; he was clever about people. Jessamine said he used people’s weaknesses, playing them as if they were chessmen—pushing one here, jumping another there. What had he offered Bettiann? The promise of a cure, perhaps. “Why, Bettiann, have another drink, dear, I know how to get you over that. I’ve done it before. Just call me Dr. Pat.”

  No one had blamed Bettiann, with her particular problem, for falling for Patrick’s particular line. No doubt stronger women had done so, perhaps even Jessamine herself. Of course, Bettiann’s particular problem made it hard to blame William, either. It was an unhappiness, all the way around.

  Lucky Faye, who had always preferred women; and lucky Agnes, who was married, supposedly, to heaven. Lucky Carolyn, whose marriage to Hal had been made in heaven. Sophy was out of it, of course, out of everything.

  “You’re out of everything,” Ophy said aloud to her friend, hearing the words go away into untenanted space. She came to herself in a sudden panic, uncertain where she was, eyes darting around like trapped birds.

  She was standing beside her car in Misery’s basement garage.

  She spun on her heel, searching the shadowed edges of the sloping ramps. She had been talking with Sophy. But she couldn’t have.… But she had been! And when had she herself come down here into the garage? She was in street clothes, with her purse, though she didn’t remember going to her office to change. Where else had she been? What else had she done? Who had been with her?

  Frantically, she looked at her watch. Seven thirty-two. Only a quarter of an hour lost. It had been only a short lapse, a kind of daydream. Had she called Orthopedic to reserve a slot for the man upstairs? Yes. She remembered doing that. And she remembered sending the girl with the shattered collarbone there as well. Surely she couldn’t have done that without any thought at all?

  Leave it, she told herself. Just leave it. This wasn’t the first time it had happened. She probably had been talking to herself, pretending Sophy was still alive, pretending she could still be there to listen, to help. Any other suggestion was ludicrous. She was not haunted. She was not possessed. Tomorrow she’d arrange for a psychiatric on Jenks, and while she was at it, perhaps she’d better get one for herself. Doctors couldn’t diagnose their own problems.

  A CHILL SPRING MORNING IN New York, with the bag ladies gathering, one from here, two from there, lines and files of them, making their way along the avenue, there dispersing into the invisibility the city grants, two here, three there, down a little alley, into a recessed entrance, a hobble of hags, a dilapidation of old dames, an assembly of anility, hanging around.

  One cluster, then another: click of heels on morning pavement, little hammers gently tapping; a soft laugh.

  Emily. Jennie. Have you met our guide?

  The one being introduced has tender eyes, a gently curved mouth, hair and body hidden under shapeless garments, like the rest of them, anonymous, and yet, oh, the power that flows from her. So much. So sweet. Like wine, or a marvelous drug that has not yet been discovered. One like themselves, to all outward appearances, yet the inward self shows to anyone who looks.

  Well met, a murmur. Well come, and bless you.

  She is with them only briefly, before moving on elsewhere, leaving one woman whispering to another: Oh, Sarah, aren’t we lucky, having a guide? Somehow I thought she’d be wearing armor. Like St. Joan, don’t you know?

  I imagine she wears what she chooses. Something she chooses carefully. Her own garb, always, for her own reasons. Not because of fashion.

  Laughter again, wry and accepting, as sets of heels go off tap-tapping.

  Where is it? The place?

  Just down the street. There on the corner, where the red carpet is, and the awning. We’re early. We won’t all go in at once.

  Why did we pick this one?

  It was on TV, on the E channel. They do a show on the latest in fashions. We voted on this one as the worst.

  I’m glad it’s not far. These shoes! And this girdle! Are they really necessary?

  Some asperity: We’re the mission leaders, and we’ll seem more in character wearing them. We’re supposed to be respectable small-town buyers.

  A ladylike snort: I had a shower at the shelter to smell in character. How do you like my dress?

  Salvation Army?

  St. Vincent de Paul. But I thought not bad.

  Not bad at all. And the others?

  All of them got cleaned up for the occasion. Edna shoplifted panty hose for her bunch. Rose’s group went to the beauty college, for a makeover. They’re waiting, see, in the alley there. And by the crosswalk. And in the coffee shop. And coming down the street on the other side.

  Aren’t we elegant! So many! Must be thirty of us.

  Oh, there are lots more of us than that, hundreds and thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands for the final array.…

  I’ve been wanting to ask …

  So? Ask!

  Will we die, then?

  A long pause in which thoughts simmer, almost invisible, like heat waves rising from pavement.

  I don’t know. She has never said. But, then, what else do we have to do with our lives? Ah?

  So many of us.

  So many, yes. But this little affair won’t take many. This is only a divertissement!

  They wait. Soon the guide returns. They hear her voice whispering to them, an intimate sound, like the shush of their own blood.

  These are the words to remember: Even a great storm starts with a few drops, a spatter, a wet spot touching an age of dust, a mutter of thunder breaking a conspiracy of silence. So, hearing this thunder, the world pricks up its ears; smelling this rain, the world widens its nostrils and scents a change in the wind.

  Already the first drops are falling. Already the thunder growls on the horizon. But we do not want them to forecast the storm—not yet. We want them to be preoccupied with other ideas, with amusements, with jests. We are here today to divert their attention from what’s coming.

  So near the end, and they still don’t know what’s coming?

  They still don’t. No. So let us amuse them, let them look at us, let them laugh at us old ladies and what we do, let them mock us and point fingers and sneer; let them write columns about us for a little while longer, while the clouds gather.

  The voice falls silent. The women swirl and regroup, pass and repass, murmuring to one another:

  There’s the place. There’s a guard out front. Do you have the invitations?

  Here they are. Harriet got them. She joined the cleaning crew at the print shop. She got enough for all of us.

  Who’s the man talking to the guard?

  That’s Rene Raoul. The designer himself. New Yorker magazine did a special on him. They call him the crown prince of fashion.

  Rene Raoul, née Robert Weiss, lets himself back through the bronze doors of Chez Raoul, recently identified by the cognoscenti as New York’s most exciting new fashion house. His eyes sweep the foyer, all très chic, and the showroom, recently redone in ebony and magenta. His stable of models is already assembled in the dres
sing room with the handlers. The girlies are having their little egos massaged, their little hysterias calmed, their bony little bodies stroked, their foxy little faces made up. Though it will be almost an hour before the show starts, there are already a few buyers scattered around the room, yawning over the coffee and croissants he has furnished. One of them is Liz Porter, the fashion editor of Fatale. He stops to drop a kiss on her wrinkled cheek.

  “Dear Liz,” he murmurs.

  “Dear Bobby,” she murmurs in return with a wink. Not that she lets on. Bobby has been Rene Raoul for almost five years now, and his accent is good enough to fool most people. “How’s Hank?”

  “Hank, my dear, is in Barcelona, if you can believe that.”

  “Chasing olive-skinned young bullfighters, no doubt.”

  “He swears he’s true to me,” this with a pout. “Though I’d imagine you’re right. How’s Esmee?”

  “Her usual temperamental self. Quieter than usual lately, to tell the truth. She thinks she’s getting old, but aren’t we all? What do we have on the agenda today?”

  He simpers in self-mockery. “Liz, sometimes I’m too naughty! This time I’m almost ashamed of myself. Boredom, I think. I’m showing some absolutely ridiculous outfits today. It’s amazing what one can get women to wear!”

  She gives him a warning look. “Not all women, love.”

  “Well, no, of course, not all. Some women are just too smart for their own good.” He twinkles at her. “Still, most women aren’t like you, love. There’s one model back there who’s been putting her little fingies down her froat for a whole week, just so she’ll fit into the evening dress she’s showing. It’s ridiculous even in size four. Any bigger than that, one would look like Dumbo’s mama. Now, who in hell’s that?”