ironing hair (1965—68)—–Hair fad inspired by Joan Baez, Mary Travers, and other folksingers. Part of the hippie fad, the lank look of long straight hair was harder to obtain than the male’s general shagginess. Beauty parlors gave “antiperms,” but the preferred method among teenagers was laying their heads on the ironing board and pressing their locks with a clothes iron. The ironing was done a few inches at a time by a friend (who hopefully knew what she was doing), and college girls lined up in dorms to take their turns.

During the next few days, nothing much happened. The simplified funding allocation forms were due on the twenty-third, and, after donating yet another weekend to filling them out, I gave mine to Flip to deliver and then thought better of it and took it up to Paperwork myself.

The weather turned nice again, Elaine tried to talk me into going white-water rafting with her to relieve stress, Sarah told me her boyfriend, Ted, was experiencing attachment aversion, Gina asked me if I knew where to find Romantic Bride Barbie for Bethany (who had decided she wanted one just like Brittany’s and whose birthday was in November), and I got three overdue notices for Browning, The Complete Works.

In between, I finished entering all my King Tut and black bottom data and started drawing a Barbie picture. I didn’t have a box of sixty-four crayons, but there was a paintbox on the computer. I called it up, along with my statistical and differential equations programs, and started coding the correlations and plotting the relationships to each other. I graphed skirt lengths in cerulean blue, cigarette sales in gray, plotted lavender regressions for Isadora Duncan and yellow ones for temps above eighty-five. White for Irene Castle, radical red for references to rouge, brown for “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.”

Flip came in periodically to hand me petitions and ask me questions like, “If you had a fairy godmother, what would she look like?”

“An old lady,” I said, thinking of Toads and Diamonds, “or a bird, or something ugly, like a toad. Fairy godmothers disguise themselves so they can tell if you’re deserving of help by whether you’re nice to them. What do you need one for?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not supposed to ask interdepartmental communications liaisons personal questions. If they’re in disguise, how do you know to be nice to them?”

“You’re supposed to be nice in general—” I said and realized it was hopeless. “What’s the petition for?”

“It’s to make HiTek give us dental insurance, of course,” she said.

Of course.

“You don’t think it’s my assistant, do you?” Flip said. “She’s an old lady.”

I handed her back the petition. “I doubt very much that Shirl is your fairy godmother in disguise.”

“Good,” she said. “There’s no way I’m going to be nice to somebody who smokes.”

I didn’t see Bennett, who was busy preparing for the arrival of his macaques, or Shirl, who was doing all Flip’s work, but I did see Alicia. She came up to the lab, wearing po-mo pink, and demanded to borrow my computer.

“Flip’s using mine,” she said irately, “and when I told her to get off, she refused. Have you ever met anyone who was that rude?”

That was a tough one. “How’s the search for the Philosopher’s Stone going?” I said.

“I’ve definitely eliminated circumstantial predisposition as a criterion,” she said, shifting my data to the lab table. “Only two Niebnitz Grant recipients have ever made a significant scientific breakthrough subsequent to their winning of the award. And I’ve narrowed down the project approach to a cross-discipline-designed experiment, but I still haven’t determined the personal profile. I’m still evaluating the variables.” She popped my disk out and shoved her own in.

“Have you taken disease into account?” I said.

She looked irritated. “Disease?”

“Diseases have played a big part in scientific breakthroughs. Einstein’s measles, Mendeleev’s lung trouble, Darwin’s hypochondria. The bubonic plague. They closed down Cambridge because of it, and Newton had to go back home to the apple orchard.”

“I hardly see—”

“And what about their shooting skills?” “If you’re trying to be funny—”

“Fleming’s rifle-shooting skills were why St. Mary’s wanted him to stay on after he graduated as a surgeon. They needed him for the hospital rifle team, only there wasn’t an opening in surgery, so they offered him a job in microbiology.”

“And what exactly does Fleming have to do with the Niebnitz Grant?”

“He was circumstantially predisposed to significant scientific breakthroughs. What about their exercise habits? James Watt solved the steam engine problem while he was taking a walk, and William Rowan Hamilton—”

Alicia snatched up her papers and ejected her disk. “I’ll use someone else’s computer,” she said. “It may interest you to know that statistically, fad research has absolutely no chance at all.”

Yes, well, I knew that. Particularly the way it was going right now. Not only did my diagram not look nearly as good as Peyton’s, but no butterfly outlines had appeared. Except the Marydale, Ohio, one, which was not only still there, but had been reinforced by the rolled-down stockings and crossword puzzle data.

But there was nothing for it but to keep slogging through the crocodile- and tsetse fly-infested tributaries. I calculated prediction intervals on Couéism and the crossword puzzle, and then started feeding in the related hairstyle data.

I couldn’t find the clippings on the marcel wave. I’d given them to Flip a week and a half ago, along with the angel data and the personal ads. And hadn’t seen any of it since.

I sorted through the stacks next to the computer on the off chance she’d brought it back and just dumped it somewhere, and then tracked Flip down in Supply, making long strands of Desiderata’s hair into hair wraps.

“The other day I gave you a bunch of stuff to copy,” I said to Flip. “There were some articles about angels and a bunch of clippings about hair-bobbing. What did you do with them?”

Flip rolled her eyes. “How would I know?”

“Because I gave them to you to copy. Because I need them, and they’re not in my lab. There were some clippings about marcel waves,” I persisted. “Remember? The wavy hairdo you liked?” I made a series of crimping motions next to my hair, hoping she’d remember, but she was wrapping Desiderata’s wrappers with duct tape. “There was a page of personal ads, too.”

That clearly rang a bell. She and Desiderata exchanged looks, and she said, “So now you’re accusing me of stealing?”

“Stealing?” I said blankly. Angel articles and marcel wave clippings?

“They’re public, you know. Anybody can write in.”

I had no idea what she was talking about Public?

“Just because you circled him doesn’t mean he’s yours.” She yanked on Desiderata’s hair. Desiderata yelped. “Besides, you already have that rodeo guy.”

The personals, I thought, the light dawning. We’re talking about the personal ads. Which explained her asking me about elegant and sophisticated. “You answered one of the personal ads?” I said.

“Like you didn’t know. Like you and Darrell didn’t have a big laugh over it,” she said, and flung down the duct tape and ran out of the room.

I looked at Desiderata, who was trailing a long ragged end of duct tape from the hair wrap. “What was that all about?” I said.

“He lives on Valmont,” she said.

“And?” I said, wishing I understood at least something that was said to me.

“Flip lives south of Baseline.” I was still looking blank.

Desiderata sighed. “Don’t you get it? She’s geographically incompatible.”

She also has an i on her forehead, I thought, which somebody looking for elegant and sophisticated must have found daunting. “His name’s Darrell?” I asked.

Desiderata nodded, trying to wind the end of the duct tape around her hair. “He’s a dentist.”

The crown, I thought. Of course.

“I think he’s totally swarb, but Flip really likes him.”

It was hard to imagine Flip liking anyone, and we were getting off the main issue. She had taken the personal ads, and done what with the rest of the articles? “You don’t know where she might have put my marcel wave clippings, do you?”

“Gosh, no,” Desiderata said. “Did you look in your lab?”

I gave up and went down to the copy room to try to find them myself. Flip apparently never copied anything. There were huge piles on both sides of the copier, on top of the copier lid, and on every fiat surface in the room, including two waist-high piles on the floor, stacked in layers like sedimentary rock formations.

I sat down cross-legged on the floor and started through them: memos, reports, a hundred copies of a sensitivity exercise that started with “List five things you like about HiTek,” a letter marked URGENT and dated July 6, 1988.

I found some notes I’d taken on Pet Rocks and the receipt from somebody’s paycheck, but no marcel waves. I scooted over and started on the next stack.

“Sandy,” a man’s voice said from the door.

I looked up. Bennett was standing there. Something was clearly wrong. His sandy hair was awry and his face was gray under his freckles.

“What is it?” I said, scrambling to my feet.

He gestured, a little wildly, at the sheaf of papers in my hand. “You didn’t find my funding allocation application in there, did you?”

“Your funding allocation form?” I said bewilderedly. “It had to be turned in Monday.”

“I know,” he said, raking his hand through his hair. “I did turn it in. I gave it to Flip.”