The Nix(176)

Bet she hasn’t showered in days, one of the uncles says. How many days? Six days is where they put the over/under.

The news identifies this leader girl as someone named Alice who, the news says, is a well-known campus feminist, and the uncles huff and snort and one of them says That figures and they all nod because they understand exactly what he means by that.





6


THE CONRAD HILTON’S FIRST-FLOOR BAR is called the Haymarket, and this seems historically significant to at least one of the two Secret Service agents sitting at the bar right now nursing his nonalcoholic drink.

“Like, as in, the Haymarket Riot,” says Agent A——. “The Haymarket Massacre? Anything?” To which Agent B——, whose chin hangs over the glass of club soda he really wishes had bourbon in it, shakes his head. “Nope,” he says. “I got nothin’.”

“It was in Chicago? Eighteen eighty something? Workers striking at Haymarket Square? It’s pretty historic.”

“I thought Haymarket Square was in Boston.”

“There’s one here too. It’s northeast of us, about two clicks.”

“What were they striking for?” asks B——.

“An eight-hour workday.”

“God, I’d love one of those right about now.”

A—— shakes his glass and the bartender fills it. His preferred off-duty drink is this thing involving simple syrup, lemon juice, and rose water. You can’t always find rose water in most places, but the Haymarket Bar, it turns out, is well stocked.

“What happened,” A—— says, “is that they were demonstrating, the workers were, marching and picketing, and then the police showed up and attacked them, and then a bomb went off.”

“Casualties?”

“Several.”

“Perp?”

“Unknown.”

“And you’re bringing this up now because?”

“Because don’t you think it’s a coincidence? That we’re the in the Haymarket Bar? Right now?”

“Riot central,” says B——, pointing with his thumb behind them, toward the thousands of protestors currently gathered beyond the plate-glass windows.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“A real hedley-medley out there.”

Agent A—— looks sidelong at his partner. “A real hugger-mugger, you might say?”

“Yep. Gone all topsy-turvy.”

“A sincere higgledy-piggledy.”

“Yessir, one hundred percent hurly-burly.”

“A pell-mell.”

“A ribble-rabble.”

“A skimble-skamble.”

They smile at each other and suppress a laugh. They clink their drinks. They could do this all day. Outside, the crowd churns and boils.





7


AND WHERE THERE LOOKS to be an oval-shaped cavity in the crowd is actually the spot where dozens are sitting. They’re watching Allen Ginsberg or joining him in his ommmming, his head-bopping, clapping, his face uplifted like he’s receiving messages from the gods. To the anxious and terrified crowd, his chanting is barbiturative. In its monotony and resolve and purpose, it is the verbal equivalent of being held tenderly by a nurse who really cares. Those who join him singing Ommmm feel better about the world. This is their armor, the spoken sacred Syllable. Nobody would strike someone sitting on the ground singing Ommmm. Nobody would gas them.

Around Grant Park, this calm, this peace has rippled out to the far borders. Protesters standing there lost in the crowd screaming at the cops and maybe digging up chunks of sidewalk to throw at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in a spasm of loose rage and wildness because they’re just so angry at all of it when someone touches their shoulder from behind and they turn to find these gentle soothing eyes made tranquil and serene because they themselves were touched by the person behind them, and they in turn by the person behind them, one long chain leading all the way back to Ginsberg, who’s powering this whole thing with his chanting’s great voltage.

He has enough peace for all of them.

They feel part of his song pour into them, and they feel its beauty, and then they are its beauty. They and the song are the same. They and Ginsberg are the same. They and the cops and the politicians are the same. And the snipers on the roofs and the Secret Service agents and the mayor and the newsmen and the happy people inside the Haymarket Bar bopping their heads to music they cannot hear: all of them are one. The same light threads through them all.

And thus a calm comes over the crowd in a slow circle around the poet, moving outward from him like ripples on water, like in that Bashō poem he loves so much: the ancient pond, the still night, a frog jumps in.

Kerplunk.





8


GIRLS STILL MARCHING SOUTH. White girls, black girls, brown girls. Close-ups on their faces now. Chanting, yelling. There are, in the uncles’ opinion, three kinds of girls: long horse-faced girls, and wide muffin-faced girls, and bulging bird-faced girls. This girl at the front of this march, this Alice person, has a lot of horse in her, they think. (Ha-ha, a horse in her, ha-ha.) Mostly horse, but a bit of the bird too. What they can see of her face, anyway, that part of her not covered by sunglasses or ratty hair. Two parts horse face, one part bird face is where they’d plot her on the 3-D map of girl faces.