The Waning Age

by S. E. Grove

  hglt: That’s interesting. How could you tell that she was hurt?

  calvinopio: I can’t explain it I just know she was.

  hglt: Could it have been your imagination? Sometimes we do something called “projection.” We project our feelings onto others. So in this example, it might have been that you were feeling hurt and you imagined that feeling coming from your mother, not yourself.

  calvinopio: No. I wasn’t imagining it. It was real.

  hglt: I’m just saying that it’s a possibility.

  calvinopio: It’s not a possibility. You don’t understand. She was really hurt.

  Was that the end of the test?

  hglt: Not quite. You’re doing a great job.

  7

  NATALIA

  OCTOBER 11—MORNING

  Three days after Dr. Baylor introduced us to her idea of a good time, I was at work when my phone rang. I consider it tacky to have a phone visible, let alone on, but I always keep it within reach because of Cal. The translucent decal is tucked inside a slim, leather-bound translation of De rerum natura, which I know makes me something of a luddite, but the phone is too flimsy and expensive to keep it anywhere else. Book pages make excellent padding.

  In this case the timing worked for me, because I was in the middle of trying to extricate myself from a sticky situation. It happens, not that often but maybe once a month, that one of the Landmark guests, male or female, gets it into his or her head that the cleaning staff are all available for the use of guests, much like the towels and the free shampoo. This is not the case, or I wouldn’t be working there. Usually it starts with an unwelcome look in the hall. Then a spurious request for a clean bathrobe or a new pillow. Then, once you’re in the room, they tend to get more creative.

  After I got the handbook in high school explaining about the five instincts, I turned to Mom for more explanation. Reproductivity?? Mom did her best to explain how lust and love are two different things. (Explaining sex stuff falls neatly under “easygoing,” which is one thing I can say for the adjective.) “Love,” Mom said to me, “is like building a ship, Talia. Do you know how to build a ship? Because I don’t. Planks and masts and ropes and sails? Way, way too complicated. Lust, on the other hand, is like an ocean. Calm and soothing or crazy and wild or stormy and scary. Sometimes good and sometimes bad, but not terribly complicated. The first you have pretty much no chance of figuring how to do on your own, ever. And the second requires no figuring out at all.”

  I found this unsatisfying, coming from Mom, as an explanation for why my dad and Cal’s dad never pictured in our lives, but I found it very satisfying as an explanation for the unpredictable, irrational, and often self-destructive behavior of many adults of my acquaintance.

  Officer Gao, the cop who taught our high school D&D class (Discipline and Defense, for those of you lucky enough to have forgotten it) taught me all I would need to know about rendering one of these unwelcome advances impossible and likely painful for its protagonist, should it ever come to that, but usually it wasn’t necessary. Usually a very firm and clearly worded “I’m not interested and the cleaning staff aren’t here for that” does the trick. I try my best to keep it polite.

  The dim bulb who was giving me a hard time that morning was a bit more persistent than usual. Very white, short blond hair, invisible eyebrows, predatory blue eyes, and one of those misguided workout bodies where the shoulders, arms, and chest are huge while the legs are little spindles. I knew that because he was wearing a towel around his waist and socks on his feet—nothing else. Even without speaking he’d gotten on the wrong side of me by having a live Fish stream on his decal, pasted up on the wall right next to the gold-plated light fixture. The Fish was using brass knuckles on someone’s ribs, and the sound of it made terrible background music.

  I could see by the strewn clothes that Spindle Legs had money—lots of it—which all the Landmark guests do, but they usually handle it with more discretion. In addition to some possibly shaved pectorals and veiny biceps, I could also see that this one, being on the young side, still had some discretion left to acquire.

  “Come on,” he was saying, with a lazy smile. It wasn’t fake. He was taking one of those fancy calibrated regimens where you get a nice cocktail of synaffs once a day and most of the emotions you might want to feel release at the right moment. It’s like having a programmed juice maker in your head. Very handy. Never mind that doctors are woefully corrupt, and I’ve seen them prepare some pretty suspect juice recipes, with about 95 percent hedonistic joy and 5 percent relaxed serenity. This guy was on something that was probably more like 70 percent of the latter. I wasn’t worried, but I did want to avoid having to damage his lazy smile and then explain it to my supervisor.

  “There’s a place right down the street,” I said informationally. “It’s open twenty-four hours. The guys and gals are very friendly. And I’m really not. As you can see.”

  “But I want to have a good time with you.”

  “Sorry. We don’t do that here.”

  A flicker of frustration, probably more about sex than synaffs, made its way into his eyes. His nostrils flared a half millimeter. Contempt. “Are you sure you can afford this? Being all uppity costs money, dulce.”

  What did I tell you? They always deserve it.

  “Lucky for me I’m an heiress. I just work here because I love rubber gloves.” I snapped mine on with deliberation, making him blink.

  That’s when my phone rang, saving me from doing further damage.

  “Excuse me,” I said, turning around quickly and pulling De rerum natura out of my apron pocket. As I was opening the book I was also listening, trying to hear whether his steps were following mine on the polar bear rug. They weren’t. The serenity had kicked back in, drowning out his brief bullishness. I reached the room door, opened it, and shut it quickly behind me, turning my full attention to the phone. It was a number I didn’t recognize in Oakland. I answered anyway.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Miss Peña?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Mr. Freeman. The principal at Moses.”

  “Yes,” I said again. I stopped myself from asking what was wrong.

  “I’m calling to let you know that Cal’s test was very informative, and we’d like to do more tests with him.”

  I didn’t understand what that meant. It seemed like two statements that didn’t belong together, or maybe three that did but the middle one was missing. I put that thought into more coherent words. “If the test was informative, what is your intended purpose with doing further testing?”

  Mr. Freeman fell momentarily silent. “Dr. Baylor is in charge of the testing,” he said, apparently in response to some other question, because it didn’t say a thing about mine. “Could you come to the school now? Cal requested your presence.”

  That was a problem. There were many problems, actually, and I tried to see them all at once as I answered Mr. Freeman. The main problem was that they wanted to do more tests at all. Then there was the problem of Mr. Freeman not being entirely forthcoming about why, which appeared to contain other problems I couldn’t guess at. And there was the problem of my leaving work. I had taken my last sick day for Cal’s previous test. One more sick day and I’d lose my job. “That would be difficult,” I said, going for understated and decisive. “Let’s schedule the test for another day.”

  “No, we can’t. Dr. Baylor would like to do the tests now.”

  “That may be, but today is impossible. We’ll need to reschedule.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Dr. Baylor has already started the test.”

  I stopped for a moment. “She does not have permission to do additional testing.”

  “I’m letting you know that she’s already begun.”

  This conversation was going nowhere. The time for getting the upper hand had clea
rly passed, and I wasn’t sure if I’d missed it or just hadn’t been given the opportunity in the first place. I recalculated. Cass and Tabby were in Richmond installing a sign. Joey was at work with his tyrannical boss. There was no one else who could go, and I wanted to be there anyway. “I am leaving San Francisco immediately. I will be there within an hour. Dr. Baylor should know that we will not be cooperating further with her demands for testing.”

  “I’ll tell Dr. Baylor,” Mr. Freeman agreed.

  I hung up, dropped De rerum natura into my apron, and pushed my little cart as fast as the tiny little wheels would go through the ridiculous carpet. Marta was at the other end of the hallway. I practically threw my cart at her. “What’s wrong?” she asked me, eyes alert.

  “They are testing Cal again. Without permission. Now. And I have no more sick days.” Marta knows all about Cal—I’d explained the whole thing to her.

  “Go,” she said at once, pointing down the corridor like she was an oracle of the ancient world, gesturing the way toward my doom. Marta, what a gem. I’d spotted for her once or twice, and I knew she’d cover me as best she could.

  “Thank you, you beautiful thing.”

  “Hurry,” she commanded, still pointing.

  I hurried. I grabbed my bag from the supply closet but didn’t change, so I was still wearing my black-and-white uniform as I left the hotel—back entrance, naturally. My work shoes were good for this. I scooted to the BART, half running, half power walking. I waited four minutes for a train and sent Cal a message saying I was on my way. Twenty minutes later I was leaving the station in Oakland, walking as fast as I could but knowing I wouldn’t make it if I tried to run. Forty-three minutes after Dr. Freeman had called me, I knocked on his open door.

  His room was still overly odorous and funereal. Sweat was running down my neck, and I could tell my hat was wonky from the look he gave me. “Miss Peña,” he said tonelessly.

  “I’m here. Where’s Cal?”

  “I believe Dr. Baylor has already taken him to the lab for additional testing.”

  “I told you on the phone that I was coming in from San Francisco.”

  “I did pass that on to her.”

  I looked at him hard, trying to figure out whether to dress him down or ask another question. “What do you mean she’s ‘taken’ him?”

  “She said it would be necessary to take Cal to RealCorp to conduct the additional testing.”

  “She doesn’t have permission to do that.”

  Mr. Freeman paused. He opened the desk drawer to his left, flipped through some files, and pulled out a piece of paper. “The Lawsons signed this on the eighth. It gives Dr. Baylor permission to do additional testing, either on the school premises or at RealCorp.”

  I remembered them signing the paper, but I’d had no idea there was a hand grenade in the fine print. “Could you give me Dr. Baylor’s phone number?”

  Mr. Freeman blinked. “I don’t have it.”

  “You don’t have it,” I repeated, disbelieving.

  “I’ve never had occasion to call her.”

  I didn’t feel much of anything as the words rolled out from under Mr. Freeman’s mustache, and yet I had this sense that I was suddenly seeing some rooms in my head that I hadn’t seen for a long, long time. They were empty now, but in the past there were ugly things there: a dark, shapeless stain of uncertainty; the nasty, soiled furniture of terror; a hunched figure screaming with ceaseless, high-pitched panic. Even in the empty room, I could still hear the echo.

  I turned my back on Principal Freeman’s hideous office and headed back out into the sunlight.

  8

  NATALIA

  OCTOBER 11—MIDDAY

  On the train back to San Francisco, I sent Joey a message telling him what was happening. He replied within seconds, Should I join? which was swell of him, but I told him that no, I would keep him posted.

  I got off at Embarcadero, where I used one of the public restrooms to change out of my uniform and back into my street clothes: khaki skirt, cotton blouse, navy raincoat, and low heels. It was one thing to show up dressed as a maid at Cal’s school, but it was another to show up like that at RealCorp, where they would be happy to find any reason to put me out on the curb.

  All the big pharmaceuticals in SF are by the water, including RealCorp. I got on the southbound trolley. The fog had moved in during my truncated trip to Oakland, and now it lay thick on the streets, making it seem as though the whole city was struggling under the weight of a persistent, unwanted ghost. I sat and watched the fog swallow the buildings along the pier until I noticed the man standing next to me on the trolley. He was gripping the pole inches from my face, and his arms and hands were covered with dried blood. I could see it had been there awhile because it was flaking, leaving his hairy arms bare in patches.

  Without moving my head, I shifted my gaze upward to look at his face. He didn’t look like a Fish, but I guess they come in all shapes and sizes. He had long hair pulled back in a band, an unkempt beard, and a lost, vacant expression in his eyes. Maybe he had forgotten about the blood. Maybe he hadn’t noticed it. Maybe he was a butcher, I thought optimistically, although the velour shirt with rolled-up sleeves seemed to argue otherwise. He was considering the fog, too, looking at it with a pensive air as if trying to remember where he’d seen fog like that before. I didn’t want to be around when he lost interest in the question.

  I got off at the next stop, ducking around him carefully. No sense adding my blood to the stuff he already had, I figured. I walked ten minutes more and arrived at RealCorp.

  It drifted toward me out of the fog like a ship made of steel and glass. Translucent screen decals were affixed to the windows, each square forming one tiny piece of a massive whole. The eight-second loop with the beautiful blonde woman was playing, her surprise and tears and joy shimmering across the RealCorp tower. Her mascaraed eyes were ten feet wide.

  I took the revolving door with a steady step and clipped over the marble floor in my low heels. The entrance was a long, oversized nave filled with indoor trees and empty little islands made of linen sofas. They looked cozy, with magazines and throw blankets, like maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be shipwrecked there.

  At the long marble counter stood four women who must have been kin to the advertising blonde. Different haircuts and colors did nothing to hide the copycat makeup, the uniform of muted cashmere and silk, and a set of synaffs that made their faces variations on a single theme: happy, welcoming, relaxed. I walked up to one of them who was already beaming at me, a brunette with pearl-colored eye shadow and perfect teeth. Leave it to RealCorp to staff their offices with models.

  “Hi there,” I said.

  The brunette’s smile widened. “Hi! Bienvenida. I’m Lucy. How can I help you today? Are you here to try one of our free twenty-four-hour synthetic affect regimens?”

  “Nope.” Her smile stayed put regardless. “I’m here to find my brother, Calvino Peña, who was brought by a Dr. Elizabeth Baylor for testing.”

  Lucy blinked a couple times in quick succession. “Testing?” she said, with mild distaste, as if I’d said “regurgitating.”

  “That’s right. My brother Calvino is a ten-year-old student at Moses Elementary, and Dr. Baylor, employed by RealCorp, brought him over to use the equipment.”

  Lucy’s smile had dimmed somewhat. “Hm. Lo siento. I don’t believe we do any testing in this building, Miss . . . ?”

  “Peña. Nat.”

  “Miss Peña, I certainly haven’t seen anyone like that come in here.” She tilted her chin a little sideways. “Our clients come principally to meet with in-house consultants and determine their synaff regimens.” Her smile brightened. “Would you like to do that?”

  I bit back the retort. “Lucy, could you please find someone for me that will be able to locate Dr. Elizabeth Baylor?”

  Lucy looked
briefly crestfallen, and then she gave me a reassuring smile. “Of course, I’ll do everything I can to help.”

  She picked up the handle of a new-retro phone, black, modeled in the manner of the mid-twentieth century. Her eyes glanced upward and sideways, holding a line of vision, and I realized she was looking into a camera. After dialing three numbers she spoke into the receiver. “Could you send Kathy to the lobby?” she asked cheerfully. She listened and hung up. “Someone will be here in just a moment,” she said to me brightly. “In the meantime, please take a brochure.” She handed me a glossy pamphlet with a cropped photo of the familiar blonde. “If you’d like to wait . . .” She gestured to one of the cozy linen islands.

  “Thank you.”

  I didn’t sit. I glanced through enough of the brochure to see that (1) there were no prices listed and (2) you could feel pretty much anything you wanted to feel if you were the kind of person who didn’t need to see prices listed. The synaff regimens, illustrated with photographs of models, had names like spa packages: Natural Indulgence, Easy Balance, Cool Contemplation. The latter promised to put you “in a frame of mind that observes the world with thoughtfulness and consideration. You pick up on the finer points, because that’s who you are.”

  Right. I tossed the brochure onto the shining surface of a lacquered coffee table, and I stood in front of a potted palm with my arms crossed, watching the models gab and giggle with one another. Lucy had already forgotten about my existence.

  Within minutes, a woman in her mid-fifties emerged from a hallway at the far end of the marble counter and gave me a friendly wave. She wore the same makeup and cashmere, but her age and her air of efficiency marked her as a different pay grade. I was guessing in-house lawyer.

  “Miss Peña?” she asked, extending a cool hand. I shook it. “I’m Kathy Moore.” She smiled and gestured to the hallway she’d come from. “Please follow me.”