The Nix(145)

“I don’t want anyone to know I’ve seen this. They might think I’m weird.”

“Define ‘weird.’?”

“That I was looking at girls. They might think I like girls.”

“And you’re worried about what they think?”

“Of course I am.”

“That’s not real shame. You think it’s shame, but it’s not.”

“What is it?”

“Fear.”

“Okay.”

“Self-hatred. Alienation. Loneliness.”

“Those are just words.”

There was also the odd fact of it, the magazine, sitting there between them, its objectness. The creases in the photo, the undulations of the pages, the way the gloss of the magazine reflected the light, the curling paper’s sensitivity to humid air. One of the staples holding the magazine together erupted out of Miss August’s arm, as if she’d been struck by shrapnel. The windows in the apartment were open, a small electric fan whirred nearby, and the centerfold pages bounced and shimmied in the shifting air, animating it—it looked like Miss August was moving, twitching, trying to hold still in the cold water but not able to.

“The men in the movement say this shit all the time,” said Alice. “Like if you don’t want to f*ck them they wonder why you have such big hang-ups. If you won’t take off your shirt, they tell you not to be so ashamed of yourself. Like if you don’t let them feel your tits you’re not a legitimate part of the movement.”

“Does Sebastian do that?”

Alice stopped and squinted at her. “Why do you want to know about Sebastian?”

“No reason. I’m curious, is all.”

“Curious.”

“He seems to be, you know, interesting.”

“Interesting how?”

“We had a nice afternoon together. Today. On the lawn.”

“Oh, lord.”

“What?”

“You dig him.”

“Do not.”

“You’re thinking about him.”

“He seems interesting. That’s all.”

“Do you want to ball him?”

“I would not phrase it like that.”

“You want to f*ck him. But you want to make sure he’s worthy first. That’s why you came here today. To ask about Sebastian.”

“We simply had a pleasant conversation and then he was arrested at the ChemStar protest and now I’m worried about him. I’m worried about my friend.”

Alice leaned forward, put her elbows on her knees. “Don’t you have a boyfriend back home?”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“But you do, right? Girls like you always do. Where is he right now? Is he waiting for you?”

“He’s in the army.”

“Oh, wow!” Alice said, clapping her hands together. “Oh, that’s rich! Your boyfriend’s going to Vietnam and you want to screw a war protestor.”

“Never mind.”

“And not just any war protestor. The war protestor.” Alice clapped, a mocking applause.

“Be quiet,” Faye said.

“Sebastian’s got a Vietcong flag on his wall. He gives money to the National Liberation Front. You know that, right?”

“This is none of your business.”

“Your boyfriend is going to get shot. And Sebastian will have supplied the bullets. This is who you choose.”

Faye stood up. “I’m going to leave now.”

“You might as well pull the trigger yourself,” Alice said. “That’s low.”

Faye turned her back to Alice and marched out of the apartment, her hands balled up in fists, her arms straight and rigid.

“Now this is it,” Alice called after her. “Shame. Real shame. This is how it feels, girly.”

The last thing Faye saw as she slammed the door shut was Alice kicking her feet back up on the coffee table and flipping the pages of Playboy magazine.





5


NO CAB FARE, no train tokens. Alice believed in freedom, free movement, being free—here, at five o’clock in the morning, walking in the purple and cool and damp light of Chicago. The sun was beginning to show over Lake Michigan and the faces of buildings glowed weakly pink. Certain delis were opening, and shopkeepers hosed off the sidewalks, where batches of newspapers tossed from trucks landed in heaps like sacks of grain. She looked at one and saw the headline—NIXON NOMINATED BY GOP—and she spat. She inhaled the early-morning scent of the city, its waking breath, asphalt and engine oil. The shopkeepers ignored her. They saw her clothes—her big green military jacket and leather boots, her ripped-up skintight jeans—and they saw her black rumpled hair, her unimpressed eyes leveled over silver sunglasses, and they assumed correctly she was not a paying customer. She carried no cash. She did not warrant being courteous to. She liked the transparency of these interactions, the lack of bullshit between herself and the world.

She didn’t carry a purse because if she carried a purse she might be tempted to put keys in the purse, and if she had keys she might be tempted to lock her door, and if she began locking her door she might be tempted to buy things that needed locking up: clothes purchased at actual stores rather than hand-sewn or shoplifted—that’s where it would begin—then shoes, dresses, jewelry, stockpiles of collectible doodads, then still more stuff, a television, small at first, then a bigger one, then another, one for each room, and magazines, cookbooks, pots and pans, framed pictures on the walls, a vacuum cleaner, an ironing board, clothes worth ironing, rugs worth vacuuming, and shelves and shelves and shelves, a bigger place, an apartment, a house, a garage, a car, locks on the car, locks on the doors, multiple locks and bars on the windows that would finally turn the house more fully into the jail it had long ago become. It would be a fundamental change in her stance toward the world: from inviting the world in to keeping the world out.