Nathan Hill - The Nix

She opened the paper. It was the edition Sebastian had been printing last night, full of letters to the editor. She began to read.

Dear Chicago Free Voice,

Do you like hiding from the pigs and those other people that stare at us put us down? Because of our clothes and hair? I mean I used to but I don’t anymore I talk to them. Get them to like me and become friends and then tell them I smoke grass. And if they like you they might smoke it with you sometime and listen. You will help add one more of us to our ever growing number I think 50 percent of the USA is doing it and Narcotics Officers think we’re all mental patients haw haw.

It was hot today, and bright, and buggy: The gnats dove into her face, black dots between her eyes and the page, as if the punctuation marks were fleeing. She shooed them away. She was alone, nobody around; she’d found a quiet little spot on the northeast part of campus, a patch of grass separated from the sidewalk by a small hedge, back behind the brand-new Behavioral Sciences Building, which was roundly the most loathed building on the entire Circle campus. This was the one all the brochures talked about, designed according to the geometric principles of field theory, a new architecture meant to break the old architecture’s “tyranny of the square,” the brochures had said. A modern architecture that abandoned the square in favor of an overlapping matrix of octagons inscribed by circles.

Why this was better, philosophically, than a square, the brochures never explained. But Faye could guess: A square was old, traditional, antique, and therefore bad. It seemed to Faye that the worst thing on this campus, for both the students and the buildings, was to be square.

So the Behavioral Sciences Building was modern, many angled, which in practice made the place a bewildering mess. The interconnected honeycombs made no intuitive sense, hallways jagged and serpentine so you couldn’t walk ten feet without having to make some kind of navigational choice. Faye’s poetry class met here, and simply finding the correct classroom was an ordeal that taxed both her patience and her sense of spatial awareness. Certain stairs led into literally nothing, just a wall or a locked door, while other stairs led down to tiny landings where several other staircases intersected, all of them identical-looking. What seemed like a dead end actually opened into an entirely new area she never would have predicted was there. The third floor was visible from the second floor, with no obvious way to get up to it. That everything was built in circles and oblique angles pretty much guaranteed anyone would get lost, and indeed all who encountered this building for the first time had the same baffled expression, trying to navigate a place where concepts like “left” and “right” had little meaning.

It seemed less a place where students would study the behavioral sciences and more a place where behavioral scientists would study the students, to see how long the students could endure this nonsensical environment before going completely berserk.

So mostly the students avoided it, if they could, which made it a good place for Faye to be alone and read.

Do you people out there think you’re crazy? I mean you’re part of those 50 percenters right? I mean you all smoke grass don’t you? I do. And I work hard or almost as hard as anyone else at the post office. And all my fellow workers know I turn on I mean they’re always asking me if some box of tea smells like grass. Today I found one that did and most of them wanted to smell it. Then we wrapped it up and delivered it. That person who got it might have gotten it by now. He might be enjoying his package. He might be reading my rap. Hello friend.

Movement in the distance distracted her, and she looked up, worried. Because if any of her teachers saw her reading the Chicago Free Voice, if any of the college officials who administrated her scholarship saw her reading the pro-narcotic, pro-Vietcong, antiestablishment “Newspaper of the Street”…Well, they would think certain unfortunate things about her.

So her head popped out of reading at the first peripheral sight of the approaching figure, walking down the sidewalk on the other side of the hedge. And she gathered at a glance that he was no teacher, no administrator. His hair was too big for that. Moppy was the word going around, but his hair had gone well beyond moppy and into a kind of efflorescence. Wild growth. She watched him come, her head bent into the newspaper so it wouldn’t look like she was staring, and as he approached his features clarified and she realized she knew him. He was the boy from last night. At the meeting. Sebastian.

She pushed her hair back and wiped the sweat off her forehead. She lifted the newspaper to conceal her face. Pressed her back into the wall and felt thankful that the building had so many overhangs and corners. Maybe he’d walk by.

I’d rather smoke a joint with a pig than keep on running from him I mean wouldn’t you? I mean wouldn’t you like it if everybody did? No fights no wars! Just a bunch of happy people. Wild thought or is it?

Her head buried in the newspaper — she recognized this as a somewhat pathetic, ostrichlike maneuver. She could hear Sebastian’s footsteps in the grass. Her face felt ten degrees warmer. She felt the sweat on her temples and smeared it off with her fingers. She squeezed the newspaper and held it close.

How would you people, my people, like to all, and I mean ALL, get together? I mean at least 10 million people well maybe 9 million. I’d sure like to shake all you good people’s hands out there. All we need is someplace to have a huge Turn On Festival and let them know how many of us there really are!

The footsteps stopped. Then started again and came closer. He was walking toward her now, and Faye breathed and wiped the moisture from her forehead and waited. He approached — maybe ten feet away, maybe five. The paper blocked her, but she sensed him there. It would be absurd to pretend otherwise. She lowered the paper and saw him smiling.

“Hello, Faye!” he said. He bounced over and sat down beside her.

“Sebastian,” she said, and she nodded and smiled her most genuine-feeling smile.

He looked handsome. Professional, even. He seemed pleased she’d remembered his name. The mad-scientist lab coat was gone. Now he was in a proper jacket — neutral beige, corduroy — and a plain white shirt, thin navy blue tie, brown slacks. He looked presentable, acceptable, except maybe the hair — too long, too disheveled, too big — but good-boy material nonetheless, one that could be, in his current state, maybe even furnished to parents.

“Your newspaper is quite good,” Faye said, already working out how to be maximally likable in this moment, how to ingratiate herself to him: be supportive, be full of praise. “That letter from the man at the post office? I really think he has a point. It’s quite interesting.”

“Oh, lord, can you imagine that guy organizing a festival? Ten million people? Yeah, right.”

“I don’t think he really wants to organize a festival,” Faye said. “I think he wants to know he’s not alone. He just seems lonely to me.”

Sebastian gave her a look of mock surprise — cocked his head and raised an eyebrow and smiled.

“I thought he was nuts,” he said.

“No. He’s looking for people he can be himself around. Aren’t we all?”

“Huh,” Sebastian said, and stared at her for a moment. “You’re different, aren’t you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She wiped the sweat off her forehead.

“You’re sincere,” Sebastian said.

“I am?”

“Quiet, but sincere. You don’t talk much, but when you talk you say what you mean. Most people I know talk constantly but never say anything true.”