Gibbon's Decline and Fall (33 page)

“No matter what their age or race is, women must not show their faces!”

Ophy fought down the impulse to giggle and closed the window tight, checking to be sure the doors were locked. The car next to her was a police car. The officer at the wheel was watching her reaction, grinning at her expression of distaste.

A short-skirted girl came out of a corner drugstore, head down, and started for the street, not watching where she was going. She collided with one of the marchers, fell back, and put her hand to her head as though dazed. The man she had bumped made a halfhearted gesture with his whip, then did a quick Elmer Fudd two-step getting back into position as the last of the procession crossed the intersection and went off down the street. A marcher two rows over saw this exchange, shook his head angrily, and flicked his whip at the girl, butt first, catching her on the forehead. She stood there stupidly, blood streaming down her face as the police car squealed its wheels and took off after the marchers.

The whole episode had a kind of cartoon idiocy to it. The words had been stupid, but the tone had been threatening; the drumbeat had been inexorable, but many of the marchers had seemed tentative about the whole thing. The one guy's action had been almost comic. He'd been more worried about staying in step than anything else. Ophy pulled into a parking space and went back to the young woman, who was by now leaning against the wall, sobbing. Two men, one old, one young, approached hesitantly from inside the corner store.

“What in the hell?” breathed the elder. “What do they think they're doing!”

Ophy pressed a clean tissue over the wound.

“Why did he do that?” the wounded woman cried. “I didn't do anything to him! I think he's crazy!”

“Honey, you and me both,” said the older man. “All my years in this town, I've never seen so many crazies!”

“Is she going to be all right?” the younger man asked.

“I'm going to drop her off at the hospital, okay? I'm a doctor. That cut needs a couple of stitches.”

“Are they going to arrest them? Those men?” asked the younger man. “God, they ought to arrest them.”

Moved by some obscure impulse, Ophy asked, “You never felt the urge to join one of those marches?”

“Lord, no! Some people I know, they have, but me? Not on your life. Listen, I'll follow you to the hospital. I can bring her home. She just lives upstairs.”

“Thanks, Rog,” sobbed the girl. “Will somebody tell my mom?”

The older man offered to do so. Ophy said to the younger, “If you have transportation, why don't you take her over to MSRI?”

The younger man put his arm around the girl's shoulder and led her away to his car, murmuring soothingly at her.

“You have any idea why they did that?” the older man demanded. “Any idea at all?”

“You got me. I haven't any idea.”

And she hadn't. The whole episode had seemed ritualized, even to the cop keeping watch from the sidelines. Perhaps the Elmer Fudd guy had been a trainee terrorist? A neophyte Nazi? And the other was the old professional warrior who knew when to knock heads? She was still puzzling over it when she reached the quad-block Simon had insisted they move into a few years earlier, when the violence had been at its height.

Their quad was typical: a four-square-block area with the two cross streets walled off at the outer ends and topped with razor wire; all the outside building entrances walled up and the outside windows grilled to the roofline, where a tangle of electrified fencing overhung the street and crosshatched the roofs to prevent the unlikely possibility of wall climbers or people dropped by helicopters.

Quad-blocks were closed fortresses; the most dangerous
part of living in one was the short walk from the car to the security gate. Ophy parked, got her HoloID out of her purse, pinned it to her shoulder, went through the security gate on her parking level, exchanging greetings with the yawning guard, who let her into the elevator. At street level she entered the lock and put her hand on the identity plate that opened the final gate.

Once through that, she was home, among people she recognized as neighbors, all of them wearing photo IDs. Any strange face had better be labeled by a visitor's badge with a great big number on it. Anonymity, so the quad-block charter went, was the nursemaid of crime; no anonymity was allowed.

She walked the half block to her building lobby, where she found a woman from her floor waiting for the building elevator. They rode up together, buddy system, each keeping an eye on the other until they had their door unlocked. Ophy stood for a moment agape. The dead bolt on her door was unlocked.

“It's okay,” she called, waving at her neighbor and taking a deep breath. So Simon was home. Finally.

He was sitting in the living room, the blinds drawn, a wine bottle beside him on the table, something soft and unobtrusive tinkling in the background. Harps, flutes, tom-toms. Jessamine had noticed more and more of that kind of music lately. Loose and windy music, without pattern or melody. A mere wandering of sound, an evocation of space and tranquillity.

“Simon.”

“Hello, love.” He turned his narrow, foxish face toward her, brow furrowed, one slender arm raised to greet her.

“I didn't know you'd be here.”

“I am here. Decided the time had come. Face the music.”

Getting to him was like swimming. The atmosphere was thick with his mood, whatever it was. Apprehension? Anxiety? She sat down on the table, leaned forward to take his hand, which gripped hers hard, as a drowning man might grip a floating log. “Simon! What is it?”

“I don't know, Doctor, love. Something wrong, somewhere.”

“Are you hurt? Are you ill?”

“I don't know.”

“What do you know?”

“I know I love you as much as ever, but something is wrong with me and I don't know what.”

His voice was so weighted with sadness, it made her want to cry, but surprisingly she felt relief, a weight fallen away, some heavy load of apprehension dropping to leave a less horrible mystery in its place.

“Oh, shit, Simon, so that's it. But it's not just you. You're not alone! It's an epidemic!”

He sat up, regarding her beneath glowering brows, slightly angry, this dramatic scene, so well set, so long rehearsed, slipped suddenly into the banal. “What are you talking about?”

“You're depressed, right? You think you should be full of joie de vivre and the Old Nick, but you're not. Maybe you've even considered suicide. I said it's going around. Lots of people have it. Men. Women. We had a meeting about it. Oh”—she clapped hand over mouth—“I keep slipping! I'm not supposed to talk about it!”

“A secret epidemic?” His brows went up, a tilted glance under a forelock of curly hair. “Come on, Ophy.…”

“It is! The medical establishment is afraid there'll be panic. Besides, we don't know what it is. A bug. A virus. An allergy.” She laughed. “Just this afternoon I slipped and told someone. I told her it was an allergy.”

“What am I allergic to?” he demanded. “Life? Women? Or you in particular?”

She shook her head, moved to hold him, was pushed gently away. “Simon, I love you. Damn, don't let this—don't let this get in the way of our loving each other, understanding each other. I just
said
it was an allergy, making it up; I don't know what it really is. Nobody does.”

“Who did you meet with?” Now he was the journalist, getting the story.

“You can't write about this, Simon. You mustn't.”

“Why not? I've been in the dumps for months. Think of all the poor bastards out there who're going crazy. Isn't it better if they know?”

“Know what! We don't know anything, except that it's happening. The suicide rate's up. Cult-related deaths are up. Rapes are down, but assaults on women are up, or were a few months ago. Probably still are with these guys marching around.…” She described her encounter on the way home.

“The KKK?” His jaw dropped.

“I said dressed like the KKK. Only in black.”

“Who were these people you met with?” he repeated.

“People from CDC.”

“Is it everybody? Just older people? What?”

“You're not old! And it's not any particular age. It's people. They kill themselves, or try to. More men than women. No certain reason. They just do.”

“A disease? Maybe a sexually transmitted disease?”

“Not according to the CDC people. People like the Amish have it. People who've never been sexually exposed.”

“And women. What about women? What about you!”

She recoiled. What about her? She didn't know. She shook her head helplessly. “I don't think I'm depressed. Any more than usual, that is. Things can be pretty depressing at Misery.”

“There should be riots!” he said almost angrily.

“Depressed people don't riot, Simon! It's too much effort! And it's been kept quiet, so the people who aren't affected don't know about it!”

“There've been those old-woman riots.”

“Well, yes, but that's … philosophical. I was talking to the chief about it the other day. It's a kind of old-women's wisdom cult. They're very matter-of-fact about it.”

“You must know more than you've told me!”

“Simon, I honestly don't!” She rose, began to pace. “It's a mystery. We don't know how far-reaching it is, we don't know what the cause is, we don't know what the ramifications are, we don't know.”

“How long has it been going on?”

She frowned, trying to recollect. “About two years. Since ninety-eight. I mean, that's not certain, but that's when the first cases came to CDC attention. They could have been … infected long before that, of course. AIDS was already quite widespread by the time people figured out what it was.”

“What do the survivors say?”

“I don't know. They give reasons. Stress. Fear. Being tired. According to the CDC woman, most of them have no physical problems to speak of. That was true of the case I investigated today.…”

“Tell me.”

“This little guy lost interest in life, in sex, his wife maybe nagged at him, he decided to kill himself, but he botched it.”

“How many is it affecting?”

She cast her mind back to the meeting, the lines on the
charts. “We have no way of knowing the total. The suicide rate is up almost a hundred fifty percent in two years.”

He leaned back. She took a deep breath, went to sit beside him, insinuating herself under his arm, hugging him. He felt good to her. He felt lean and tough and totally right. She sighed, leaning her head against his chest. “You feel good.”

His arm tightened about her. “So do you.” His voice was husky. She looked up to see tears gathering below his eyes.

“Simon. Whatever you worry about, don't worry about that, this, us. Don't. We'll start you on Prozac or something. Something's bound to work. Get you on an even keel, anyhow.” She stopped abruptly, making a mental note. Could this be a withdrawal reaction to some widely used drug? Like an antidepressant? Had Simon used anything?

He didn't notice the hesitation. “I never really planned on an even keel, Ophy. Even keels are for dolts. I always preferred a blaze of passion. But what do I do now? What's recommended?”

“We get you to a doctor—not me, don't worry. Someone better than me. And we hold on to each other.”

“And I'll write the story,” he muttered, wry-faced. “God, I'll win the Pulitzer. How the world got so damned depressing, everybody died of it!”

I
T WAS LATE
M
ONDAY AFTERNOON
when Bettiann received the call about Charley. William wasn't at his office; Maybelle didn't know where he was. Both she and Bettiann tried his cellular phone without result. Finally Bettiann left a message with Bemis and another taped to the banister where he couldn't miss it if he came home: “
Your brother Charley at Methodist Hospital, car accident, don't know how bad. I'll be there. Betts.”

Three hours later she was still there and still didn't know how bad. The state trooper who came to sit opposite her didn't know, either.

“Would you mind a few questions?”

She shook her head.

“You're his …?”

“His sister-in-law. I couldn't locate my husband. I left a message for him and came on down. Just to be here, in case …”

“Would you know if your brother-in-law drank very heavily, Mrs. Carpenter?”

“Sometimes.” She shrugged uncomfortably. “I've never known him to drink and drive, though. Charley was always good about that. He'd always call a taxi or get someone to drive him if he'd been drinking a lot.”

“Would you know if he'd been depressed lately?”

She gestured, palms up. “He wouldn't tell me. He might tell Bill. We only saw one another at the club, on social occasions, or at holiday time.…”