Nathan Hill - The Nix

He imagined them in Paris trying to talk to each other. She’d give small lectures on the country’s innovative health care system; he’d give similar disquisitions on French jurisprudence. That would get them through one day, maybe two. Then they’d start making small talk about whatever was in front of them at that moment: the charming Parisian streets, the weather, the waiters, the daylight that clung on until well past ten. Museums would be a good choice because of the enforced silence. But then they’d be at a restaurant looking at menus and she’d say what looked good and he’d say what looked good and they’d stare at the plates of other diners and point out those that also looked good and express how they were perhaps changing their mind about what they intended to order and that whole inner debate one usually has when ordering food at a restaurant would be vocalized and performed for the express purpose of filling space, of jamming the silence so full of meaningless idle chitchat that they’d never get around to talking about the thing they never talked about but were always thinking: that if they had been born into a generation that found divorce more acceptable, they would have left each other so long ago. For decades they had avoided this subject. It was like they’d come to an agreement — they were who they were, they were born when they were born, they were taught that divorce was wrong, and they openly disapproved of other couples, younger couples, who divorced, while secretly feeling bolts of envy at these couples’ ability to split and remarry and become happy again.

Where was all this piety getting them? Who was benefiting?

She’d never forgiven him for the lustfulness of his youth, for his early indiscretions. She’d never forgiven him but also never spoke of it, not after the accident that put him in the wheelchair, which was an effective solution. Yes, he’d been punished by God for his lust, and punished for decades by his wife, and now he was in the punishment business. It suited him. He’d learned from the best.

No, they would not travel. More likely they would sink into separate hobbies and try as best they could to reproduce in retirement exactly their working lives. They’d repair to separate floors of their giant house. It was an uncomfortable life, yes, a painful life. But it was a familiar life. And this made it less scary than whatever would happen if they finally acknowledged all this resentment and loathing and actually talked.

Sometimes what we avoid most is not pain but mystery.

He had finished a half pot of coffee when he heard the newspaper delivery truck drive by, and heard the newspaper land softly on his front driveway. He opened his front door and glided down the house’s short front ramp, landing on the sidewalk and letting the momentum carry him into the driveway, where the newspaper lay wrapped in its rainproof orange plastic sleeve. That car, he noticed, was still there. A nondescript sedan that could have been made by anyone, foreign or domestic. A light tan color, mildly dented on the front bumper, otherwise completely inoffensive and anonymous, one of those cars you’d never even notice on the road, a car that salesmen pitched to families as “sensible.” Teenager borrowed his daddy’s ride, Brown thought. Better be moving along, as the rest of the neighborhood would soon be stirring. In less than an hour, joggers, dog walkers, they’d all be out and alert to the presence of strangers, especially a teenage boy wandering down the street postcoitally.

But as Judge Brown reached for the newspaper, something caught his attention, something in the trees: a slight movement. The sky was beginning to lighten, but the block was still dark, the trees beyond the car still black. He stared and searched for confirmation: Did something move over there? Was someone there right now, watching him? He looked for the shape of a person.

“I see you,” he said, though he didn’t see anything.

He rolled himself into the street, and as he did so a figure emerged from the tree line.

Brown stopped. He had enemies. Every judge did. What small-time dealer, what pimp, what crackhead was there across the street waiting for revenge? There were too many to count. He thought about his gun, his old revolver, sitting uselessly in the upstairs nightstand. He thought about calling out to his wife for help. He sat up as straight as he could. He exuded the most calm and intense and frightening expression he could currently produce.

“Can I help you?” he said.

The figure approached and moved into the light — a young man, perhaps mid-thirties, a face that seemed mortified and cowed, a look Brown recognized from his years in the criminal justice system: the embarrassed face of someone caught doing something wrong. This man was no crackhead out for revenge.

“You’re Charles Brown, right?” the man said. His voice — young, a little shrill.

“I am,” Brown said. “Is this your car?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Were you hiding behind a tree?”

“I guess so.”

“May I ask why?”

“I don’t have a very good answer for that.”

“Do your best.”

“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I suppose I wanted to see you, to find out more about you. Frankly, it made way more sense in my head than it does now, as I attempt to explain it.”

“Let’s start over. Why are you spying on my house?”

“I’m here because of Faye Andresen.”

“Oh,” Brown said. “You a reporter?”

“Nope.”

“Lawyer?”

“Let’s just say I’m a concerned party.”

“C’mon, man. I’ve already memorized your license plate number. I’m going to run it as soon as I get inside. No sense being coy.”

“I wanted to talk to you about Faye Andresen’s case.”

“Usually that’s done in the courtroom.”

“I was wondering if maybe it’s possible to, you know, drop all charges against her?”

Brown laughed. “Drop all charges. Right.”

“And maybe just leave her alone?”

“That’s funny. You’re a funny guy.”

“Because, here’s the thing. Faye never did anything wrong,” the man said.

“She threw rocks at a presidential candidate.”

“No, not that. I mean back in ’68. She didn’t do anything wrong back then. To you.”

Which gave Brown a moment’s pause. He frowned and studied the man. “What do you think you know?”

“I know all about what happened between you and her,” he said. “I know about Alice.”

Brown’s throat tightened at the thought of her. “You know Alice?” he said.

“I’ve spoken with her.”

“Where is she?”

“Not going to tell you that.”

Brown’s jaw muscles tightened — he could feel it happen, that old tic of his, the way his face seemed to constrict and ossify whenever he thought about Alice and all that had happened back then, a habit that had caused him some pretty intense TMJ-related suffering now, in his old age. His memory of Alice had never faded — more like it became a reservoir for all his guilt and remorse and lust and anger, decades-deep. When that old photograph of her appeared on television recently, he had such a powerful and tactile sense memory of her body that he momentarily felt that gush of excitement he used to feel when he found her out walking the streets in the deadest part of the night.

“So I suppose you’re here to blackmail me then, right?” Brown said. “I agree to back off Faye Andresen, and in exchange you don’t release your information to the press. Am I close?”

“I actually hadn’t considered that.”

“Do you also want money?”

“I’m sort of embarrassingly bad at this,” the man said. “You just right now came up with a way better plan than mine. I really came here only to spy on you.”