Crossword puzzles were the only fad that was halfway reasonable, and even that was a puzzle. The fad had started in the fall of 1924, well after hair-bobbing, but crossword puzzles had been around since the 1800s, and the New York World had published a weekly crossword since 1913.
And reasonable, on closer examination, wasn’t really the word. A minister had passed out crosswords during church that, on being solved, revealed the scripture lesson. Women had worn dresses decorated with black-and-white squares, and hats and stockings to match, and Broadway put on a revue called “Puzzles of 1925.” People had cited crosswords as the cause of their divorces, secretaries wore pocket dictionaries around their wrists like bracelets, doctors warned of eyestrain, and in Budapest a writer left a suicide note in the form of a crossword puzzle, a puzzle, by the way, which the police never solved, probably because they were already consumed with the next fad: the Charleston.
Bennett stuck his head in the door. “Have you got a minute? I need to ask you a question.” He came in. He had changed his checked shirt for a faded plaid one that was neither madras nor Ivy League, and he was carrying a copy of the simplified funding form.
“A two-letter word for an Egyptian sun god?” I said. “It’s Ra.”
He grinned. “No, I was just wondering if Flip had brought you a copy of the memo Management said they’d send around. Explaining the simplified funding form?”
“Yes and no,” I said. “I had to get one from Gina.” I fished it out from a pile of twenties books.
“Great,” he said, “I’ll go make a copy and bring this back.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You can keep it.”
“You finished filling out your funding forms?”
“No,” I said. “Read the memo.”
He looked at it. “ ‘Page nineteen, Question forty-four-C. To find the primary extensional funding formula, multiply the departmental needs analysis by the fiscal base quotient, unless the project involves calibrated structuring, in which case the quotient should be calculated according to Section W-A of the accompanying instructions.’ ” He turned the paper over. “Where are the accompanying instructions?”
“No one knows,” I said.
He handed the memo back to me. “Maybe I don’t have to go to France to study chaos. Maybe I could study it right here,” he said, shaking his head. “Thanks,” and he started to leave.
“Speaking of which,” I said, “how’s your information diffusion project coming?”
“The lab’s all ready,” he said. “I can get the macaques as soon as I finish this stupid funding form, which should be in about”—he pulled a calculator out of his threadbare pants and punched in numbers—“six thousand years from now.”
Flip slouched in and handed us each a stapled stack of papers.
“What’s this?” Bennett said. “The accompanying instructions?”
“No-o-o,” Flip said, tossing her head. “It’s the FDA report on the health hazards of smoking.”
Dance marathon [1923–33]
Endurance fad in which the object was to dance the longest to earn money. Couples pinched and kicked each other to stay awake, and when that failed, took turns sleeping on their partner’s shoulder for as long as 150 days. The marathons became a gruesome spectator sport, with people watching to see who would have hallucinations brought on by sleep deprivation, collapse, or, in the case of Homer Moorhouse, drop dead, and the New Jersey SPCA complained that the marathons were cruel to (human) animals. Persisted into the first years of the Depression simply because people needed the money, which worked out to a little over a penny an hour. If you won.
Tuesday I met the new assistant interdepartmental communications liaison. I’d decided I couldn’t wait any longer for the accompanying instructions and was working on the funding forms when I noticed that the bottom of page 28 read, “List all,” and the top of the next page read, “to the diversification quotient.” I looked at the page number. It read “42.”
I went down to see if Gina had the missing pages. She was sitting in a tangle of sacks, wrapping paper, and ribbons. “You are coming to Brittany’s party, aren’t you?” she said. “You have to come. There are going to be six five-year-olds and six mothers, and I don’t know which is worse.”
“I’ll be there,” I promised, and asked her about the missing pages. “There are missing pages?” she said. “My funding form’s at home. When am I going to be able to fill out missing pages? I’ve still got to go buy plates and cups and decorations and fix the refreshments.”
I escaped and went back to the lab. A gray-haired woman was sitting at the computer, rapidly typing in numbers.
“Sorry,” she said as soon as I came in the room. “Flip said I could use your computer, but I don’t want to get in your way.” She began rapidly touching keys to save the file.
“Are you Flip’s new assistant?” I asked, looking at her curiously. She was thin, with tan, leathery skin, like Billy Ray would have after another thirty years of riding the range.
“Shirl Creets,” she said, shaking my hand. She had a grip like Billy Ray’s, and her fingers were stained a yellowish brown, which explained how Sarah and Elaine had known she was a smoker “just by looking at her.”
“Flip was using Dr. Turnbull’s computer,” she said, and her voice was hoarse, too, “and she told me to come up here and use yours, that you wouldn’t mind. I’ll be off this as soon as I save the file. I haven’t been smoking,” she added.
“You can smoke if you want,” I said. “And you can use the computer. I’ve got to go over to Personnel anyway and pick up a different funding allocation form. This one’s missing pages.”
“I’ll go get it for you,” Shirl said, getting up immediately and taking the form from me. “Which pages is it missing?”
“Twenty-nine through forty-one,” I said, “and maybe some at the end, I don’t know. Mine only goes up to page sixty-eight. But you don’t have to—”
“What are assistants for? Do you want me to make an extra copy so you can do a rough draft?”
“That would be nice, thank you,” I said, in shock, and sat down at the computer.
I had been nice to Flip, and look what it had gotten me. I took it back that Browning knew anything about trends, Pied Piper or no Pied Piper.
The data Shirl had been typing in were still there. It was some kind of table. “Carbanks—48, Twofeathers—34,” it read. “Holyrood—61, Chin—39.” I wondered what project Alicia was working on now.
Shirl was back in five minutes flat, with a stack of neatly collated and stapled sheafs. “I put copies of the missing pages in your original, and made you two extra copies just in case.” She set them gently down on the lab table and handed me another thick sheaf. “While I was in the copy room, I found these clippings. Flip didn’t know who they belonged to. I thought they might be yours.”
She held up a stack of clippings on dance marathons, neatly paper-clipped to a set of copies.
“I assumed you wanted copies,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said, astounded. “I don’t suppose you could talk Flip into assigning you to me?”
“I doubt it,” she said. “She seems to like you.” She set the clippings on the lab table and began straightening the top of it. She fished the chaos theory book out of the mess.