The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

by Connie Willis

  Ulric walked over to the window. “I don’t want her,” he said.

  “I bet you don’t even know which one she is,” Brad said.

  I don’t, Ulric thought. They all sound exactly alike. They use interface as a verb and support as an adjective. One of them had called for Brad and when Ulric told her he was over at Research, she had said, “Sorry. My wetware’s nonfunctional this morning.” Ulric felt as if he were living in a foreign country.

  “What difference does it make?” Ulric said angrily. “Not one of them speaks English, which is probably why they’re all dumb enough to think they’re engaged to you.”

  “How about if I get you a gal who speaks English and you honeyfuggle Sally Mowen for me?” Brad said. He turned to the terminal and began typing furiously. “What exactly do you want?”

  Ulric clenched his fists and looked out the window. The dead cottonwood under the window had a kite or something caught in its branches. He debated climbing down the tree and walking over to Mr. Mowen’s office to demand an apartment.

  “Makes no never mind,” Brad said when he didn’t answer. “I’ve heard you oratin’ often enough on the subject.” He typed a minute more and hit the print button. “There,” he said.

  Ulric turned around.

  Brad read from the monitor, “‘Wanted: Young woman who can generate enthusiasm for the Queen’s English, needs to use correct grammar and syntax, no gobbledygook, no slang, respect for the language. Signed, Ulric Henry.’ What do you think of that? It’s the spittin’ image of the way you talk.”

  “I can find my own ‘gals,’” Ulric said. He yanked the sheet of paper as it was still coming out of the printer, ripping over half the sheet in a long ragged diagonal. Now it read, “Wanted: Young woman who can generate language. Ulric H.”

  “I’ll swop you horses,” Brad said. “If this don’t rope you in a nice little filly, I’ll give you Lynn when she gets back. It’ll cheer her up, after getting her name taken off the project and all. What do you think of that?”

  Ulric put the scrap of paper down carefully on the table, trying to resist the impulse to wad it up and cram it down Brad’s throat. He slammed the window up. There was a sudden burst of chilly wind, and the paper on the table balanced uneasily and then drifted onto the windowsill.

  “What if Lynn misses her plane in Cheyenne?” Ulric said. “What if she comes back here and runs into one of your other fiancées?”

  “No chance on the map,” Brad said cheerfully “I got me a program for that, too.” He tore the rest of the paper out of the printer and wadded it up. “Two of my fiancées come callin’ at the same time, they have to come up in the elevators, and there’s only two of them. They work on the same signals, so I made me up a program that stops the elevators between floors if my security code gets read in more than once in an hour. It makes an override beep go off on my terminal, too, so’s I can soft-shoe the first gal down the back stairs.” He stood up. “I gotta go over to Research and check on the waste emissions project again. You better find yourself a gal right quick. You’re givin’ me the flit-flats with all this unfriendly talk.”

  He grabbed his coat off the back of the chair and went out. He slammed the door, perhaps because he had the flit-flats, and the resultant breeze hit the scrap of paper on the windowsill and sailed it neatly out the window.

  “Flit-flats,” Ulric mumbled to himself, and tried to call Mowen’s office. The line was busy.

  Sally Mowen called her father as soon as she got home. “Hi, Janice,” she said. “Is Dad there?”

  “He just left,” Janice said. “But I have a feeling he might stop by Research. He’s worried about the new stratospheric waste emissions project.”

  “I’ll walk over and meet him.”

  “Your father said to tell you there’s a press conference tomorrow at eleven. Are you at your terminal?”

  “Yes,” Sally said, and flicked the power on.

  “I’ll send the press releases for you so you’ll know what’s going on.”

  Sally was going to say that she had already received an invitation to the press conference and the accompanying PR material from someone named Gail, but changed her mind when she saw what was being printed out on the printer. “You didn’t send me the press releases,” she said. “You sent me a bio on somebody named Ulric Henry. Who’s he?”

  “I did?” Janice said, sounding flustered. “I’ll try it again.”

  Sally held up the tail of the printout sheet as it came rolling out of the computer. “Now I’ve got a picture of him.” The picture showed a dark-haired young man with an expression somewhere between dismay and displeasure. I’ll bet someone just told him she thought they could have a viable relationship, Sally thought. “Who is he?”

  Janice sighed, a quick, flustered kind of sigh. “I didn’t mean to send that to you. He’s the company linguist. I think your father invited him to the press conference to write press releases.”

  I thought the press releases were already done and you were sending them to me, Sally thought, but she said, “When did my father hire a linguist?”

  “Last summer,” Janice said, sounding even more flustered. “How’s school?”

  “Fine,” Sally said. “And no, I’m not getting married. I’m not even having a viable relationship, whatever that is.”

  “Your mother called today. She’s in Cheyenne at a NOW rally,” Janice said, which sounded like a non sequitur, but wasn’t. With a mother like Sally’s, it was no wonder her father worried himself sick over who Sally might marry. Sometimes Sally worried, too. Viable relationship.

  “How did Charlotte sound?” Sally said. “No, wait. I already know. Look, don’t worry about the press conference stuff. I already know all about it. Gail somebody in publicity sent me an invitation. That’s why I came home for Thanksgiving a day early.”

  “She did?” Janice said. “Your father didn’t mention it. He probably forgot. He’s been a little worried about this project,” she said, which must be the understatement of the year, Sally thought, if he’d managed to rattle Janice. “So you haven’t met anyone nice?”

  “No,” Sally said. “Yes. I’ll tell you tomorrow.” She hung up. They’re all nice, she thought. That isn’t the problem. They’re nice, but they’re incoherent. A viable relationship. What on earth was that? And what was “respecting your personal space”? Or “fulfilling each other’s socioeconomic needs”? I have no idea what they are talking about, Sally thought. I have been going out with a bunch of foreigners.

  She put her coat and her hat back on and started down in the elevator to find her father. Poor man. He knew what it was like to be married to someone who didn’t speak English. She could imagine what the conversation with her mother had been like. All sisters and sexist pigs. She hadn’t been speaking ERA very long. The last time she called, she had been speaking ERA and the time before that California. It was no wonder Sally’s father had hired a secretary that communicated almost entirely through sighs, and that Sally had majored in English.

  Tomorrow at the press conference would be dreadful. She would be surrounded by nice young men who spoke Big Business or Computer or Bachelor on the Make, and she would not understand a word they said.

  It suddenly occurred to her that the company linguist, Ulric Something, might speak English, and she punched in her security code all over again and went back up in the elevator to get the printout with his address on it. She decided to go through the oriental gardens to get to Research instead of taking the car. She told herself it was shorter, which was true, but she was really thinking that if she went through them, she would go past the housing unit where Ulric Henry lived.

  The oriental gardens had originally been designed as a shortcut through the maze of fast-food places that had sprung up around Mowen Chemical, making it impossible to get anywhere quickly. Her father had purposely stuck Mowen Chemical on the outskirts of Chugwater so the plant wouldn’t disturb the natives, trying to make the original buildings and
housing blend in to the Wyoming landscape. The natives had promptly disturbed Mowen Chemical, so that by the time they built the Research complex and computer center, the only land not covered with Kentucky Fried Chickens and Arbys was in the older part of town and very far from the original buildings. Mr. Mowen had given up trying not to disturb the natives. He had built the oriental gardens so that at least people could get from home to work and back again without being run over by the Chugwaterians. Actually, he had intended just to put in a brick path that would wind through the original Mowen buildings and connect them with the new ones, but at the time Charlotte had been speaking Zen. She had insisted on bonsais and a curving bridge over the irrigation ditch. Before the landscaping was finished, she had switched to an anti-Watt dialect that had put an end to the marriage and sent Sally flying off east to school. During that same period her mother had campaigned to save the dead cottonwood she was standing under now, picketing her husband’s office with signs that read TREE MURDERER!

  Sally stood under the dead cottonwood tree, counting the windows so she could figure out which was Ulric Henry’s apartment. There were three windows on the sixth floor with lights in all three, and the middle window was open for some unknown reason, but it would require an incredible coincidence to have Ulric Henry come and stand at one of the windows while Sally was standing there so she could shout up to him, “Do you speak English?”

  I wasn’t looking for him anyway, she told herself stubbornly. I’m on my way to meet my father, and I stopped to look at the moon. My, it certainly is a peculiar blue color tonight. She stood a few minutes longer under the tree, pretending to look at the moon but it was getting very cold, the moon did not seem to be getting any bluer, and even if it were, it did not seem like an adequate reason for freezing to death, so she pulled her hat down farther over her ears and walked past the bonsais and over the curved bridge towards Research.

  As soon as she was across the bridge, Ulric Henry came to the middle window and shut it. The movement of pulling the window shut made a little breeze. The torn piece of printout paper that had been resting on the ledge fluttered to a place closer to the edge and then went over, drifting down in the bluish moonlight past the kite, and coming to rest on the second lowest branch of the cottonwood tree.

  Wednesday morning Mr. Mowen got up early so he could get some work done at the office before the press conference. Sally wasn’t up yet, so he put the coffee on and went into the bathroom to shave. He plugged his electric razor into the outlet above the sink, and the light over the mirror promptly went out. He took the cord out of the outlet and unscrewed the blackened bulb. Then he pattered into the kitchen in his bare feet to look for another light bulb.

  He put the burned-out bulb gently in the wastebasket next to the sink and began opening cupboards. He picked up the syrup bottle to look behind it. The lid was not screwed on tightly, and the syrup bottle dropped with a thud onto its side and began oozing syrup all over the cupboard. Mr. Mowen grabbed a paper towel, which tore in a ragged, useless diagonal, and tried to mop it up. He knocked the salt shaker over into the pool of syrup. He grabbed the other half of the paper towel and turned on the hot water faucet to wet it. The water came out in a steaming blast.

  Mr. Mowen jumped sideways to get out of the path of the boiling water and knocked over the wastebasket. The light bulb bounced out and smashed onto the kitchen floor. Mr. Mowen stepped on a large ragged piece. He tore off more paper towels to stanch the blood and limped back to the bathroom walking on the side of his bleeding foot, to get a bandaid.

  He had forgotten about the light in the bathroom being burned out. Mr. Mowen felt his way to the medicine cabinet, knocking the shampoo and a box of Q-Tips into the sink before he found the bandaids. The shampoo lid wasn’t screwed on tightly either. He took the metal box of bandaids back to the kitchen.

  It was bent, and Mr. Mowen got a dent in his thumb trying to pry the lid off. As he was pushing on it, the lid suddenly sprang free, spraying bandaids all over the kitchen floor. Mr. Mowen picked one up, being careful to avoid the pieces of light bulb, ripped the end off the wrapper, and pulled on the orange string. The string came out. Mr. Mowen looked at the string for a long minute and then tried to open the bandaid from the back.

  When Sally came into the kitchen, Mr. Mowen was sitting on a kitchen chair sucking his bleeding thumb and holding a piece of paper towel to his other foot. “What happened?” she said.

  “I cut myself on a broken light bulb,” Mr. Mowen said. “It went out while I was trying to shave.”

  She grabbed for a piece of paper toweling. It tore off cleanly at the perforation, and Sally wrapped Mr. Mowen’s thumb in it. “You know better than to try to pick up a broken light bulb,” she said. “You should have gotten a broom.”

  “I did not try to pick up the light bulb,” he said. “I cut my thumb on a bandaid. I cut my feet on the light bulb.”

  “Oh, I see,” Sally said. “Don’t you know better than to try to pick up a light bulb with your feet?”

  “This isn’t funny,” Mr Mowen said indignantly. “I am in a lot of pain.”

  “I know it isn’t funny,” Sally said. She picked a bandaid up off the floor, tore off the end, and pulled the string neatly along the edge of the wrapping. “Are you going to be able to make it to your press conference?”

  “Of course I’m going to be able to make it. And I expect you to be there, too.”

  “I will,” Sally said, peeling another bandaid and applying it to the bottom of his foot. “I’m going to leave as soon as I get this mess cleaned up so I can walk over. Or would you like me to drive you?”

  “I can drive myself,” Mr. Mowen said, starting to get up.

  “You stay right there until I get your slippers,” Sally said, and darted out of the kitchen. The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” Sally called from the bedroom. “You don’t budge out of that chair.”

  Mr. Mowen picked a bandaid up off the floor, tore the end off of it and peeled the string along the side, which made him feel considerably better. My luck must be starting to change, he thought. “Who’s on the phone?” he said cheerfully as Sally came back into the kitchen carrying his slippers and the phone.

  She plugged the phone cord into the wall and handed him the receiver. “It’s Mother,” she said. “She wants to talk to the sexist pig.”

  Ulric was getting dressed for the press conference when the phone rang. He let Brad answer it. When he walked into the living room, Brad was hanging up the phone.

  “Lynn missed her plane,” Brad said.

  Ulric looked up hopefully. “She did?”

  “Yes. She’s taking one out this afternoon. While she was shooting the breeze, she let fall she’d signed her name on the press release that was sent out on the computer.”

  “And Mowen’s already read it,” Ulric said. “So he’ll know you stole the project away from her.” He was in no mood to mince words. He had lain awake most of the night trying to decide what to say to Sally Mowen. What if he told her about Project Sally and she looked blankly at him and said, “Sorry. My wetware is inoperable?”

  “I didn’t steal the project,” Brad said amiably. “I just sort of skyugled it away from her when she wasn’t looking. And I already got it back. I called Gail as soon as Lynn hung up and asked her to take Lynn’s name of the press releases before Old Man Mowen saw them. It was right lucky Lynn missing her plane and all.”

  Ulric put his down parka on over his sports coat.

  “Are you heading for the press conference?” Brad said. “Wait till I rig myself out, and I’ll ride over with you.”

  “I’m walking,” Ulric said, and opened the door.

  The phone rang. Brad answered it. “No, I wasn’t watching the morning movie,” Brad said, “but I’d take it big if you’d let me gander a guess anyway. I’ll say the movie is Carolina Cannonball and the jackpot is six hundred and fifty-one dollars. That’s right? Well, bust my buttons. That was a right lucky guess.”

&
nbsp; Ulric slammed the door behind him.

  When Mr. Mowen still wasn’t in the office by ten, Janice called him at home. She got a busy signal. She sighed, waited a minute, and tried again. The line was still busy. Before she could hang up, the phone flashed an incoming call. She punched the button. “Mr. Mowen’s office,” she said.

  “Hi,” the voice on the phone said. “This is Gail over in publicity. The press releases contain an inoperable statement. You haven’t sent any out, have you?”

  I tried. Janice thought with a little sigh. “No,” she said.

  “Good. I wanted to confirm nonrelease before I effected the deletion.”

  “What deletion?” Janice said. She tried to call up the press release but got a picture of Ulric Henry instead.

  “The release catalogs Lynn Saunders as co-designer of the project.”

  “I thought she was co-designer.”

  “Oh, no,” Gail said. “My fiancé Brad McAfee designed the whole project. I’m glad the number of printouts is nonsignificant.”

  After Gail hung up, Janice tried Mr. Mowen again. The line was still busy. Janice called up the company directory on her terminal, got a resume on Ulric Henry instead, and called the Chugwater operator on the phone. The operator gave her Lynn Saunders’ number. Janice called Lynn and got her roommate.

  “She’s not here,” the roommate said. “She had to leave for back east as soon as she was done with the waste emissions thing. Her mother was doing head trips on her. She was really bummed out by it.”

  “Do you have a number where I could reach her?” Janice asked.

  “I sure don’t,” the roommate said. “She wasn’t with it at all when she left. Her fiancé might have a number.”

  “Her fiancé?”

  “Yeah. Brad McAfee.”

  “I think if she calls you’d better have her call me. Priority.” Janice hung up the phone. She called up the company directory on her terminal again and got the press release for the new emissions project. Lynn’s name was nowhere on it. She sighed, an odd, angry sigh, and tried Mr. Mowen’s number again. It was still busy.