Nathan Hill - The Nix

So this is how Faye discovered Alice in an otherwise unremarkable three-story brick building, in an unmarked top-floor apartment, accessible only if you knew the secret knock (which by the way was Morse code for SOS), in a spartan living room decorated mostly with mismatched and obviously secondhand or donated furniture made more inviting and homey by various crocheted and knitted things, where Alice was sitting on the couch, her legs up on the edge of a coffee table, reading Playboy magazine.

“Why are you reading Playboy magazine?” Faye asked.

Alice gave her that impatient, withering stare that announced exactly how little she cared about stupid questions.

“For the articles,” she said.

The thing that made Alice so frightening was that she did not seem to care if she was liked. She did not seem to spend any mental energy accommodating other people, accounting for their wishes, expectations, desires, their basic need for decorum and manners and etiquette. And Faye’s opinion was that everyone should want to be liked — not out of vanity but because wanting to be liked provided an essential social lubricant. In a world without a vengeful god, the desire to be liked and to fit in was the only check on human behavior, it seemed to Faye, who wasn’t sure if she believed in a vengeful god but knew for a fact that Alice and her cronies were atheists to the bone. They could be as rude as they cared to be and not worry about retribution in the afterlife. It was disarming. Like being in the same room with a large and unpredictable dog — that constant latent fear of it.

Alice sighed heavily like this was going to be a huge mental burden, this talking. It was almost as if Alice expected Faye to waste her time, and it was up to Faye to prove otherwise.

“Look at this woman,” Alice said. She kicked her feet to the floor and laid the magazine on the coffee table and opened it to the centerfold. The photo, vertically oriented, took up three full pages. And once Faye got over the initial shock, that first somersault in her belly when she found herself looking at something she was sure she wasn’t allowed to see, the first thing she thought, tilting her head so she could see better, was that the young woman in the photo looked cold. Physically cold. She was standing in a swimming pool, her back turned at a slight angle to the camera, twisting at the waist so that her torso was in profile. She was standing in perfectly turquoise water and hugging a child’s inflatable swimming pool toy — a blow-up swan — hugging it around its long neck, pressing it against her cheek as if she might find warmth there. Of course she was nude. The skin of her butt and lower back appeared rough and coarse, a crocodile skin from the goose bumps popping up all over. Beads of water dribbled off her butt and upper thigh where she had dipped a few inches into the water, but no farther.

“What am I looking at here?” Faye said.

“Pornography.”

“Yes, but why?”

“I think she’s very pretty, this one.”

The centerfold girl. Miss August, it said in the corner. Her pink body was mottled a slight maroon in places where she was cold or where the blood showed under her skin. Water streaked down her back, a few drops clung to her arm, not enough to look like she’d really been swimming — maybe the photographer had spritzed her, for effect.

“There’s an ease to her,” Alice said, “a quiet charm. I’ll bet she’s capable, powerful even. Problem is she has no idea what she can do.”

“But you like her looks.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“I read somewhere that you shouldn’t compliment people’s looks,” Faye said. “It diminishes you.”

Alice frowned. “Says who?”

“Socrates. Via Plato.”

“You know,” Alice said, “you’re way strange sometimes.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize for it.”

Miss August was not quite smiling. Rather, she had that mechanically forced smile of someone who’s very cold being told to smile. Her face was summer-freckled. Two drops of water hung from her right breast. If they fell, they would land on her bare belly. Faye could feel it, that chill.

“Porn is a problem for the whole project of enlightenment,” Alice said. “If otherwise rational, educated, literate, moral, and ethical men still need to look at this, then how far have we really come? The conservative wants to get rid of pornography by banning it. But the liberal wants to get rid of it too, by making people so enlightened they no longer want it. Repression versus education. The cop and the teacher. Both have the same goal — prudishness — but use different tools.”

“All my uncles subscribe,” Faye said, pointing to the magazine. “They leave it out in the open. They put it on the coffee table.”

“They say the sexual revolution is not really about sex but about shame.”

“This girl does not appear to be ashamed,” said Faye.

“This girl does not appear to be anything. It’s not her shame we’re talking about, it’s ours.”

“You feel ashamed?”

“By ours I mean the general we, the abstract we.”

“Oh.”

“The capital V Viewer. Capital L Looker. Not us in particular, you or I.”

“ I feel ashamed,” Faye said. “A little, I guess. I don’t want to, but I do.”

“And why is that?”

“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 fuck 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 fuck 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?”