Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics

“You’ve been sayin’ that all fuckin’ year,” said Milton.

“Yawn,” said Nigel.

“Actually I kind of agree,” said Leulah solemnly. “That haircut’s scary.”

“Finally!” Jade shouted. “I have a convert! I have one, do I hear two, two, going, going, sold at the pathetic number of one. ”

“Seriously,” Lu went on, “I think she might be clinically depressed.”

“Shut up,” Charles said.

It was 11:00 P.M.. Sprawled across the leather couches in the Purple Room, we were drinking Leulah’s latest, something she called Cockroach, a mishmash of sugar, oranges and Jack Daniel’s. I don’t think I’d said twenty words the entire evening. Of course, I was excited to see them again (also grateful Dad, when Jade picked me up in the Mercedes, said nothing but “See you soon, my dear,” accompanied with one of his bookmark smiles, which would hold my place until I returned), but something about the Purple Room now felt stale.

I’d had fun on these types of nights before, hadn’t I? Hadn’t I always laughed and sloshed a little bit of Claw or Cockroach on my knees, and said quick things that sailed across the room? Or, if I’d never said quick things (Van Meers were not known for stand-up comedy), hadn’t I allowed myself to drift in a pool with a deadpan expression on an inflatable raft wearing sunglasses as Simon and Garfunkel went “Woo woo woo”? Or if I hadn’t allowed myself to drift with a deadpan expression (Van Meers did not excel at poker), hadn’t I let myself become, at least while I was in the Purple Room, a shaggy-haired counterculture biker on my way to New Orleans in search of the real America, hobnobbing with ranchers, hookers, rednecks and mimes? Or if I hadn’t let myself be a counterculture roadie (no, the Van Meers were not naturally hedonistic) hadn’t I let myself wear a striped shirt and shout in a frankfurter American accent, “New York Herald Tribune!” with eyeliner jutting out from my eyes, subsequently absconding with a small-time hood?

If you were young and mystified in America you were supposed to find something to be a part of. That something had to be either shocking or rowdy, for within this brouhaha you’d find yourself, be able to locate your Self the way Dad and I had finally located such minuscule, hard-to-find towns as Howard, Louisiana, and Roane, New Jersey, on our U.S. Rand-McNally Map. (If you didn’t find such a thing, your fate would sadly be found in plastics.)

Hannah has ruined me, I thought now, pressing the back of my head into the leather couch. I’d resolved to dig an unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere and bury what she’d told me (shoe box it, save it for a rainy day much like her own alarming knife collection) but of course, when you deep-sixed something precipitously, inevitably it rose from the dead. And so, as I watched Jade pluck the harp strings in the absorbed manner of plucking hairs from an eyebrow, I couldn’t help but envision her tossing her skinny arms around the barrel torsos of various truck drivers (three per state, thus the grand total for her journey from Georgia to California was twenty-seven grease-prone gear-jammers; roughly one per every 107.41 miles). And when Leulah took a sip of her Cockroach and some of it dribbled down her chin, I actually saw the twenty-something Turkish math teacher looming behind her, sinuously grooving to Anatolian rock. I saw Charles as one of those golden babies gurgling next to a woman with her eyes punched in, body naked, curled up on a carpet like overcooked shrimp, grinning madly at nothing. And then Milton (who’d just arrived from his movie date with Joalie, Joalie who’d spent Christmas vacation skiing with her family at St. Anton, Joalie who sadly had not fallen into a mile-deep crevice on an unmarked trail), when he dug into his jean pocket to remove a piece of Trident, I thought for a split second he was actually removing a switchblade, similar to the ones the Sharks danced with in West Side Story as they sang—

“Retch, what in hell’s the matter with you?” demanded Jade, squinting at me suspiciously. “You’ve been staring at everyone with freaky-ass eyes all night. You didn’t see that Zach person over the break, did you? There’s a good chance he turned you into a Stepford wife.”

“Sorry. I was just thinking about Hannah,” I lied.

“Yeah, well, maybe we should do something instead of just thinking all the time. At the very least, we should stage an intervention so she doesn’t keep going to Cottonwood, ’cause if something happens? If she does something extreme? We’ll all look back on this moment and detest ourselves. It’ll be a thing we won’t get over for years and years and then we’ll die alone with tons of cats or be hit by cars. We’ll end up road pizzas—”

“Will you shut the fuck up?” shouted Charles. “I–I’m tired of hearing this shit every fu cking week end! You’re a fucking moron! All of you!”

He banged his glass on the bar and raced from the room, his cheeks red, his hair the color of the palest, barest wood, the soft kind you could dent with your thumbnail, and then seconds later — none of us spoke — we heard the front door thump, the whining motor of his car as he sped down the driveway.

“Is it me or is it obvious none of this ends happily,” Jade said.

Around 3:00 or 4:00 A.M., I passed out on the leather couch. An hour later, someone was shaking me.

“Want to take a walk, old broad?”

Nigel was smiling down at me, his glasses pinching the end of his nose.

I blinked and sat up. “Sure.”

Blue light velveted the room. Jade was upstairs, Milton had gone home (“home,” I suspected, meant a motel rendezvous with Joalie) and Lu was sound asleep on the paisley couch, her long hair ivying over the armrest. I rubbed my eyes, stood and blearily plodded after Nigel, who’d already slipped into the foyer. I found him in the Parlor Room: walls painted mortified pink, a yawning grand piano, spindly palms and low sofas that resembled big, floating graham crackers you didn’t dare sit on for fear they’d break and you’d get crumbs everywhere.

“Put this on if you’re cold,” Nigel said, picking up a long black fur coat that’d been left for dead on the piano bench. It sagged romantically in his arms, like a grateful secretary who’d just fainted.

“I’m okay,” I said.

He shrugged and slipped it on himself (see “Siberian Weasel,” Encyclopedia of Living Things , 4th ed.). Frowning, he picked up a large, blue-eyed crystal swan that had been swimming across the top of an end table toward a large silver picture frame. The frame featured not a photo of Jade, Jefferson or some other beaming relative, but the black-and-white insert it had ostensibly been purchased with (FIRENZE, it read, 7" x 91/2").

“Poor fat drowned bastard,” Nigel said. “No one remembers him anymore, you know?”

“Who?”

“Smoke Harvey.”

“Oh.”

“That’s what happens when you die. Everyone makes a big deal about it. Then everyone forgets.”

“Unless you kill a state employee. A senator, or — or a police officer. Then everyone remembers.”

“Really?” He looked at me with interest, nodding. “Yeah,” he said cheerfully. “You’re probably right.”

Customarily, when one stopped to consider Nigel — his face, ho-hum as a penny, his fiercely gnawed fingernails, his thin, wired glasses that forever evoked the image of an insect brazenly resting its tired, transparent wings on his nose — one was hard pressed to imagine what, exactly, he was thinking, what was the reason for the eyes that sparked, the tiny smile, reminiscent of those cute red pencils used to mark voting ballots. Now I couldn’t help but assume he was thinking of his real parents, Mimi and George, Alice and John, Joan and Herman, whoever they were, tucked away in maximum-security prison. Not that Nigel ever looked particularly glum or brooding; if Dad were ever permanently incarcerated (if a handful of June Bugs had their way, he would be) I’d probably be one of those kids always jaw clenching and teeth grinding, fantasizing about killing my fellow students with cafeteria lunch trays and ball point pens. Nigel did a remarkable job of remaining positive.