Ursula wends her way down a steep and curving section of Lansdale Street, staggering a little in the heels that she likes to imagine make her height seem like an exceptional feature rather than merely a peculiar one. Her eyes to the sidewalk, she almost runs into a couple of pay phones, and she considers taking this as a sign—a sign to call Javier and tell him about the kind of day it is. It’s the kind of day he would like, there’s something whimsical about the sky today—the way the blimps and helicopters and early moon all hang suspended in it like lint caught in a sweater; the way it seems to suck that one slender line of ash from the volcano peak straight up, as though through a straw; the way it’s stratified like a candy corn almost, an abstract expressionist triptych of yellow and orange and white.
The last time they walked this beat together, they spotted a line of graffiti, “Just Remember: you live For Ever,” scrawled across a paste-up poster ad for a cable-TV movie about astronauts. He stopped to examine it and then remarked how incredible it was that the rocket in the background had not been grafittied into a giant penis squirting jism out the nose cone; no, instead simply the words SPACE COSMOS ETERNITY had been penned along its flank like a logo. This was the Light Age, he said, every life a spiritual journey, essential and unique, lone journeys of self-creation that would ultimately bring humanity together out of a common respect for the depth and beauty of the human experience. He said all this quietly, lightly, falling silent with a smile and a little shrug. She asked him if he thought he’d live forever, and he said yes, because it was such a beautiful thing to imagine that it had to be true. He asked her to try to imagine she’d live forever, and she couldn’t do it on command, but later, on a crosstown bus, she looked around at the other passengers and saw the slope of a grinning child’s nose, and the arroyos of dried skin on an old man’s neck, and felt their proximity, their warmth, their inexplicable but undeniable eternality, and she thought to herself something she had never thought before: she thought, My fellow souls.
A steady procession of broad-bellied planes vault over the volcano, like ducks circling on a target wheel.
She continues walking, leaving the pay phones behind. Another block and she finds a square with park benches and sits down. Ray E. Carter Square, a triangle actually, as so many squares in Middle City seem to be, this one of cobblestones and bushes landscaped to resemble the surrounding buildings. She crosses her legs and hugs herself in the breeze. Directly in front of her on a cement pediment stands the inevitable bronze statue of a man in a cheap suit. His eyes, set too close together for comfort, stare menacingly at the fenced-in playground opposite the benches, where a little blond boy giggles and flies down the slide to the applause of his young, smiling, blond parents. The second his feet hit the ground the boy runs back around to clamber up the ladder and slide down again, again, again. He laughs joyously every time.
Nearby, a bulky old woman in a babushka and overcoat stands unmoving except for her right arm, which flails out repeatedly from a grocery bag, stocky fingers opening to release showers of gray breadcrumbs into the black, roiling pool of pigeons at her feet. Ursula wonders what a plaza would look like without an old woman flinging breadcrumbs. They must have to fight for their turf. All those lonely old ladies out there, and not enough plazas to go around.
Across the square the blond child tells his parents to watch him go down for the dozenth time. They watch, proud as ever.
A conspiracy against the children.
She keeps hearing him say that. She tries to recall the expression on his face. Was he speaking literally? Has he become truly delusional? She doesn’t think so. It sounded more along the lines of a figurative exaggeration, a way of describing the ugliness he now sees everywhere around him.
The blond family strolls off hand in hand in hand. Its place at the slide is taken by a thin woman and her dark-haired son, who climbs the ladder to sit timidly at the apex, clutching the rails. The son and the mother, recent immigrants, perhaps, look at each other with huge, dark eyes. The mother offers a strained smile, and the boy lets go of the rails. He goes down slowly, braking with his clunky black shoes, holding his hands out just over the sides. Halfway down his face lights up with the most heartbreaking, most tremendous smile Ursula has ever seen, as though the child had never before imagined he could ever be worthy of a pleasure so great. Once on the ground, he beams at his mother exuberantly, then takes a last, wistful look up the silver slope, not daring to wear out its patience by using it again.
Ursula walks the remaining blocks to the loft and rings the unmarked bell dangling by its wire from the door frame. A window opens on the second floor, and James T. Couch appears. He turns back toward his listeners inside.
“Just like I said. A Jehovah’s Witness,” she hears him announce. His face reappears. “Hey, get with it, haven’t you heard? The day of Liteness is upon us! The Lord is the corporation, and Lacouture is his prophet! Eternal poverty and Happy Meals to all infidel shmucks! Get lost!”
He grins, teeth and TV lenses gleaming.
“Do you live here now or something?” she shouts up.
“Every great man needs a couple of slavish disciples,” he replies as the buzzer sounds.
The loft Ivy shares with Sonja is still virtually bare, despite the fact that the girls have been here for almost three months. There are no boxes, no curtains, no foodstuffs in the kitchen cupboards as far as Ursula can see. The only decorations are the magazines strewn around on the floor and the lease agreement sitting on the granite island counter—exactly where it was signed, no doubt. The main area is occupied by a total of two oversized pillows and a giant TV set with an integrated DVD player, which sits like the Tycho monolith in the middle of the floor. There are no other furnishings to get in the way of the streaming skylight and white walls. The place looks disturbingly like a photographer’s studio, as though the girls were determined to inhabit the bright, blank world of their photographs. Sonja stands with her back to the wall, dwarfed by the empty space around her, wearing a black T-shirt and a long black skirt. Ivy stands in the kitchen area, gazing into the empty recess of the Sub-Zero refrigerator, a little tuft of hair sprouting like a blond avocado plant from an elastic band at the top of her head. She’s wearing a tube halter top, hot pants with a British flag–print crosshairing on her ass, and bunchy white socks. Couch assists with her wardrobe now, whenever she decides to let him. Her feet, however, are still clad in her disposable hospital slippers, a last holdout of unconquered territory. Still bent over, red and blue ass protruding, face hazily backlit by the wisps of cold air and refrigerator light, she looks at Ursula and waves. These days Ivy’s every motion seems calculated to appease a hypothetical camera. She smiles or pouts incongruously, holds any potentially striking or seductive stance just a second too long to come off naturally.
“I thought you two were going to go out and get some furniture this week,” Ursula says, looking from Ivy to Sonja.
“Taken care of,” Couch calls out from his perch on the windowsill. “Picked everything out myself. It’ll all be here Monday at four o’clock. Installed by five. Party at six. Orgy at six-fifteen.”
“You let James pick out your furniture?” she says to Sonja. “Do you think that was wise?”
Sonja stands straight, legs together, arms at her sides, as though facing a firing squad. “Why?” she asks.
“Look at the way he’s dressed.”
Couch rises to his feet, mock-indignant, displaying his attire: plaid pants and a Japanese product T-shirt that reads Black Black Chewing Gum. Excellent. Hi-Technical. Taste.
“My haberdashery is meticulously calculated,” he huffs.
“ ‘Calculated’? It’s horrible.”
“I’m a contrarian. Plaid is down right now, a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity for anyone man enough to take the heat.”
Sonja stares at Couch’s wardrobe, her face suddenly troubled.
“Anyway,” Couch says, striding toward the kitchen area, “someone had to get the furniture. These girls never leave the house. They’re too busy furnishing other things. My sexual needs, par example.”
“Could you possibly be more repulsive?”
Couch walks up to Ivy, who maintains her pose at the open refrigerator. He studies her ass for a moment, then, with a smarmy smile to Ursula, places one hand on it and the other on her collarbone and straightens her out. Even then, Ivy’s eyes stay fixed on the lit shelves until the door swings shut.
“Don’t worry, baby,” Couch says, slowing down and overarticulating the words to the point of obscenity, “I’ve got some hot, hot, spicy Indonesian food on the way.”
“God,” Ursula gasps. “Get away from her.”
He looks at Ursula innocently, pretending not to comprehend.
“Don’t talk to James that way,” Ivy says, wide-eyed. “James is our trusted friend.” The line seems forced, overdramatic, as though she were reading it from a TelePrompTer mounted on the far wall. Ursula can’t shake the feeling that Ivy is only playing a part, approximating emotional reactions appropriate to situations she isn’t deeply experiencing.
“See?” Couch says, shaking Ivy by the waist like a rag doll. “I’ve gained their trust. Pretty soon they’ll be walking around naked in front of me. And from there, getting the ménage up and running will be a lead-pipe cinch.”
“James is going to make me a star,” Ivy says to Ursula, boasting like a child. “I’m going to be a dotcom. I’m going to command serious eyeball hours. Isn’t that right, daah-link?” She cranes her long neck and bats her eyelashes up at him, replicating his smile tooth for tooth.
“Right you are,” he replies in some old Hollywood voice. “Stick with me, kid. We’re going straight to the top.”
“Like Sonny and Cher,” Ivy says.
“Like the Captain and Tennille.”
“Like Donny and Marie,” she exclaims.
“Like Kermit and Miss Piggy.”
“Like the big Schmoo and the little Schmoo!”
“Definitely!”
The unlikely rapport between Couch and Ivy baffled Ursula at first. How could Couch, she wondered, with his lewd smiles and double entendres and the rest of his no less paranoia-inducing behaviors, manage to soothe a paranoiac like Ivy the way he did with such ease at the photo shoot? How did the two of them ever come to bond? As it turns out, they bonded over the same thing most people bond over: pop culture. For them, however, it’s far more than just a shared experience: it’s a shared expertise, about which they compare notes like specialists talking shop. Their favorite subject is bad TV, past and present. Ursula has listened to entire conversations between them—debates seemingly replete with theses, developments, rebuttals, substantiating evidence, and final judgments—consisting entirely of the names of sitcom characters. They can communicate purely in references, some of them dizzyingly obscure. When Ivy says something too obscure even for Couch, he just smiles brightly, nods, and says “Definitely!” and they go right on talking. He has a way of humoring her that she seems to find reassuring. And for his part, Couch is clearly flattered by the way she sidles up to him, with the half-trusting, half-cunning cuteness of a kitten. Indeed, there seems to be an element of cunning on both sides of this saccharine, cartoonish burlesque of a friendship: they clearly feel they have use for each other. Ivy is cultivating Couch, just as he is her; the other day she all but confessed this to Ursula, whispering, “He’s putty in my hands.”
Her little dramatic scene accomplished, Ivy ambles over and sits down on one of the pillows against the wall. Sonja moves over and slides down the wall to join her on the pillow, and the two of them fix their attention on the TV set. The set’s back is to Ursula. She assumed it was off because no sound was coming out.
Or maybe it is off.
“Look at those two,” Couch says softly. “If you want to know what I think, I think Sonja has a little crush on your sister.”
“What on earth gave you the idea I want to know what you think?” Ursula says, orbiting the island counter in a futile search for signs of life. The kitchenware she bought for Ivy and Sonja sits stacked in the cupboards like a museum display. She half believes that this apartment is just part of an elaborate ruse, that every night the two models climb the fire escape to the roof, placidly board their UFO, and speed off to the dark side of Venus, the planet of fashion models, where they serve their triple-breasted, quintuple-buttocked Venusian queen. All things considered, Couch is probably doing them both a service. It’s doubtful that either of them ever would have gotten furniture on her own.
“Guess we’ve got to get cracking on this new tween report,” Couch says. “Speaking of which, weren’t you supposed to pay Javier a visit this week?”
“I did. Yesterday.”
“Well?” he asks.
“Well nothing. He’s depressed.”
“Who isn’t? But did you find out what his big discovery was?” His question drips with sarcasm. False sarcasm. He waits breathlessly for the answer.
“He said there’s a conspiracy against the children,” Ursula replies dismissively. “He says we’re starving them of love to make them hungry for products. He says the children know it. It was really creepy.”
Couch nods, says nothing.
“He’s depressed. He’s a total mess. He’s been sitting around playing computer games. He just talked nonsense.”
Couch scratches his head, indicating contemplation. “ ‘A conspiracy against the children,’ ” he repeats. “Hmmn. The phrase has a certain . . . ring to it, a certain sonority, don’t you think?”
“You’re putting me on, right?”
He smiles brightly, as if to say he is, or as if to say he isn’t.
The buzzer sounds.
“The geeks!” he shouts, and runs to the intercom.
“The geeks!” Ivy shouts, abandoning Sonja and running up behind Couch.
“Come on up,” Couch says to the intercom. He slides open the metal door.
“ ‘The geeks’?” Ursula asks.
“The website guys,” Couch says.
Four skinny young men enter the loft, carrying boxes.
“Ivy’s room is right over there,” Couch says, while Ivy peeks at them over his shoulder. “I’ll be right with you.”
They trudge across the room and through Ivy’s door, and Ivy follows them in. Sonja watches her leave a little dolefully.
“What are they here for?” Ursula asks.
“To set up the computer and all the cameras.”
“You mean she’s going to do the website from here?”
“Of course. How else could people get to watch her take a shower?”
“What?”
He covers his smirk with his hand, as though he’d just revealed something he didn’t mean to.
“James,” she says. “Let me just ask you one thing, OK?”
He shrugs. “OK.”
“What do you think of this whole Lite Age idea, anyway?”
Couch smiles. “Well, Ursula, I’m glad you asked, because, you know, I’ve actually given the matter some thought, and I’d be delighted to share my conclusions with you.”
He falls silent, waiting to be prompted.
“Well?” she finally says.
“Conclusion number one. . . .” Couch smiles demurely. “Chas is a loon!” he shouts, waving his fingers in the air. “The sahib has finally lost it. Gone nutso! Deranged! Unhinged! Sans marbles!” He widens his eyes at Ursula.
“That’s quite a theory,” she mutters.
“Thank you!” He blinds her with a flashbulb smile. “So you like it?”
“I don’t know,” she says.
Couch grins. “Certain conclusion number two: Our generalissimo may very well be driving our profitable little company into the ground. He’s scaring our clients, Ursula. As if that demented Trendpak he insisted on weren’t bad enough, he had to follow it up with that gloom-and-doom lecture. And the ordeal doesn’t even end there for our poor clients. No! Once they finish their community service, it’s off to Treblinka! They have to go home and read the trendbook! And they thought the lecture was dark. I mean, come on! The part about unhealthy citizens’ being good for most blue-chip investors? The part about destroying nature to ensure imaginative control of the population? The part about voting based on the number of shares you own in the country?”
“It’s pretty over the top, I guess,” Ursula says.
“Jesus! I’ll say.”
“He’s got a pretty morbid imagination, I guess,” Ursula says.
“Doesn’t he? Doesn’t he? I tell you, Ursula, our prime minister’s got the morbidest mind on earth!”
Ursula laughs, a wave of relief washing over her—and coming from this unexpected quarter, no less. Couch is the only sane one left around here.
“What marketer in his right mind,” Couch goes on, “would want to go and say something so nakedly, obscenely, pornographically true-sounding?”
“ ‘True-sounding’?”
The wave of hope crashes.
“I mean, what corporate executive is going to want to read ‘The Truth’?’’ he says, forming the derogatory quote marks with his fingers. “Even if he believes it’s true deep down, he’ll never admit it to himself in a million years. Now, Javier,” he continues, waving a finger in the air, “there’s a guy who knows how to deal with clients. He can lay it on with a trowel.”
“He’s not laying anything on,” she says quietly. “He believes what he says.”
“Well, whatever works. . . . I just wish he were here to go around and smooth things over. And as for the Virtual Ivy thing,” he says, “all I can say is, it better work. Our majordomo’s prepared to spend a fortune marketing it. More than we’ve got. He’s taking out loans left and right. If Ivy doesn’t pick up advertisers fast, we’re off to Chapter Eleven land.”
Couch pantomimes biting his nails, mocking the whole idea of taking the matter seriously. Having become well versed in Couchese by now, Ursula knows this could very well mean he actually is nervous about the possibility of Tomorrow Ltd.’s going bankrupt. If so, she wonders why he cares, owning, as he does, an entire lake and all. She herself feels strangely detached from the situation, experiencing the half-queasy, half-giddy fascination of a little girl who sets a snowball rolling down a mountain and watches it grow into something beyond anything she’s anticipated. Maybe she could still stop it somehow, run ahead and throw herself in front of it, but the gathering mass is hypnotic, and for the moment the impending havoc seems every bit as alluring as it does appalling.
For better or worse, this snowball keeps right on rolling.
“Hey, James,” she says. “One last thing I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
Couch lowers his head and opens his hands, indicating his willingness to serve.
“What did you think about all that stuff Chas said about irony?”
He sighs. “Oh, I don’t know. Irony this, irony that—I’ve never understood the first thing about irony.”
He looks up at her, eyes wide and innocent. For a moment the performance strikes her dumb.