The Nix

by Nathan Hill

  “Simon?” he said. “Thank you so much. You’ve been very, very helpful.”

  5

  AT O’HARE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, terminal five, people waited quietly in lines: lines to get their ticket, lines to drop off their luggage, lines to get through security, all the lines running at such a laggard and reluctant and frankly un-American pace that they forced everyone to fully imbibe the terminal’s deeply disorienting combination of melancholy and chaos. The smell of car exhaust from all the taxis outside, and the inside smells of meats that had been cooking all day at Gold Coast Dogs. Easy-listening standards heavy on saxophone occupied the aural spaces between security announcements. Televisions showing airport news that was different from regular news in unknown ways. Samuel felt disappointed that a foreigner’s first impression of America would be made here, and what America was offering them was a McDonald’s (whose big message to the incoming throngs seemed to be that the McRib was back) and a store specializing in gadgets of questionable necessity: HD video pens, shiatsu massage chairs, wireless Bluetooth-activated reading lamps, heated foot spas, compression socks, automatic wine-bottle openers, motorized barbecue-grill brushes, orthopedic dog couches, cat thundershirts, weight-loss armbands, gray hair prevention pills, isometric meal replacement packs, liquid protein shots, television swivel stands, hands-free blow-dryer holders, a bath towel that said “Face” on one end and “Butt” on the other.

  This is who we are.

  Men’s bathrooms that required you touch nothing but yourself. Automated dispensers that pooed little globs of generic pink soap onto your hands. Sinks that did not run enough water to fully wash. The same threat-level warning issued ad nauseam. The security mandates—empty your pockets, remove your shoes, laptops out, gels and liquids in separate bags—repeated so many times that eventually everyone stopped hearing them. All of this so reflexive and automatic and habituated and slow that the travelers were a little zoned out and playing with their phones and just simply enduring this uniquely modern, first world ordeal that is not per se “difficult” but is definitely exhausting. Spiritually debilitating. Everyone feeling a small ache of regret, suspecting that, as a people, we could do better. But we don’t. The line for a McRib was quiet and solemn and twenty people deep.

  “I’m feeling a surge of pessimism about our plan,” Faye said to Samuel as they stood in the security line. “I mean, do you think they’re really going to let us through? Like, Oh yes, Miss Fugitive from Justice, right this way.”

  “Would you keep it down?” Samuel said.

  “I can feel the drugs wearing off. I can feel my anxiety bounding back to me like a lost dog.”

  “We are normal passengers taking a normal vacation abroad.”

  “A normal vacation to a country with very strict extradition laws, I sincerely hope.”

  “Don’t worry. Remember what Simon said.”

  “I can literally feel my confidence in our plan disintegrating. It’s like someone has taken our plan and applied a cheese grater. That’s what it feels like.”

  “Please be quiet and please relax.”

  They had taken a cab to the airport and purchased one-way tickets on the next available international flight, a nonstop to London. Their boarding passes were issued without a problem. They checked their luggage, again without a problem. They waited in the security line. And when they finally handed their tickets and passports to the blue-uniformed TSA agent, whose job it was to visually inspect their photographs and run their tickets over a bar-code scanner and wait for the computer to make a pleasant sound and for the light to flash green, the computer did not, in fact, make the pleasant sound. The sound it made instead was the harsh errrrrr sound like the buzzer at the end of a basketball game, that sound indicating authority and finality. And in case anyone was confused over the sound’s meaning, the light also turned red.

  The security agent sat up straighter at this, surprised at the computer’s negative judgment. A rare moment of drama in terminal five.

  “Could you please wait over there,” he said, pointing at an empty little holding pen whose boundaries were demarcated only by strips of dirty purple masking tape on the floor.

  While they waited, the other travelers glanced at them once or twice, then were drawn back to their phones. A television above them showed the airport news network, currently a story about Governor Packer.

  “They know about me,” Faye whispered into Samuel’s ear. “That I’m a fugitive. I’m on the run.”

  “You are neither of those things.”

  “Of course they know. This is the information age. They all have access to the same data. There’s probably a room somewhere covered with TV screens monitoring us right now. It’s in Langley, or Los Alamos.”

  “I doubt you’d register as that high a threat.”

  They watched the slow crawl of the line through the security checkpoint: people taking off their shoes and belts and standing in clear plastic tubes and putting their hands over their heads while gray metal arms circled their bodies, probing them.

  “This is the post-9/11 world,” Faye said. “The post-privacy world. The law knows where I am at all times. Of course they wouldn’t let me fly.”

  “Relax. We don’t know what’s happening yet.”

  “And you. They’ll arrest you as an accessory.”

  “Accessory to what? A vacation?”

  “They’ll never believe we’re taking a vacation.”

  “Aiding and abetting a weekend trip abroad? Hardly criminal.”

  “We’re being watched right now on a bank of televisions and computer screens. Probably in the basement of the Pentagon. A feed from every port in the world. Bundles of fiber-optic cables. Face-recognition software. Technology we don’t even know exists. They are probably reading my lips at this exact moment. The FBI and CIA working in conjunction with local law enforcement. That’s how they always say it on the news.”

  “This is not the news.”

  “This is not the news yet.”

  A man with a clipboard had by now begun talking in low tones with the security agent, glancing at them occasionally. He looked like he’d been pulled from a previous era—his hair cut into a severe and geometric flattop, a white short-sleeved shirt and thin black tie, square jaw, bright blue eyes—like he’d once been an Apollo astronaut but was now doing this. A badge hanging on his shirt pocket turned out to be, upon closer inspection, a laminated card with the image of a badge on it.

  “He’s talking about us,” Faye said. “Something is about to happen.”

  “Just stay calm.”

  “Do you remember the story I told you about the Nix?”

  “Which one was that?”

  “The horse.”

  “Right, yeah. The white horse that picked up children, then drowned them.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Excellent story to tell a nine-year-old, by the way.”

  “Do you remember the moral?”

  “That the things you love the most can hurt you the worst.”

  “Yes. That people can be a Nix to each other. Sometimes without even knowing it.”

  “What’s your point?”

  The man with the clipboard had begun walking in their direction.

  “That’s what I was to you,” she said. “I was your Nix. You loved me most, and I was hurting you. You asked me once why I left you and your father. That’s why.”

  “And you’re telling me this now?”

  “I wanted to get it in under the wire.”

  The man with the clipboard crossed the purple tape and cleared his throat.

  “So it looks like we have sort of a problem here,” he said in an unusually upbeat way, like one of those customer-service people you sometimes get on the phone who seem really into their jobs. He was not making eye contact with either of them, staring instead at whatever was on his clipboard. “It looks like, it turns out, you’re on that no-fly list, there.” He seemed uncomfortable having to say thi
s, as if it were his fault.

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” Faye said. “I should have known.”

  “Oh, no, not you,” the man said, looking surprised. “You’re not on the list. He is.”

  “Me?” Samuel said.

  “Yes, sir. That’s what it says right here,” tapping the clipboard. “Samuel Andresen-Anderson. Absolutely not allowed on an airplane.”

  “How am I on the no-fly list?”

  “Well,” he said, flipping through the pages as if he were reading them for the first time. “Were you recently in Iowa?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you visit the ChemStar factory while you were there?”

  “I stopped by.”

  “Did you, um”—and here he lowered his voice, as if he were saying something obscene—“did you take photographs of the factory?”

  “A couple, yeah.”

  “Well,” he said, and shrugged as if the answer should have been obvious. “There you go.”

  “Why were you taking photographs of ChemStar?” Faye said.

  “Yes,” the man with the clipboard said. “Why were you?”

  “I don’t know. It’s nostalgic.”

  “You were taking nostalgic pictures of a factory,” the man said. He frowned. He was dubious. Not buying it. “Who does that?”

  “My grandfather works there. Used to work there.”

  “That part is true,” Faye said.

  “That part? All of it is true. I was visiting my grandfather and took some pictures of all the old childhood places. The old house, the old park, and yes, the old factory. I think the better question here is why am I on the no-fly list for photographing a corn-processing plant?”

  “Oh, well, those kinds of facilities have some pretty dangerous toxic chemicals. And it’s right there on the Mississippi. Let’s just say that your presence raised”—and here he put up two fingers to indicate air quotes—“homeland security concerns.”

  “I see.”

  He flipped to another page on his clipboard. “It says here that they saw you on their closed-circuit cameras, and you fled when security approached.”

  “Fled? I didn’t flee. I left. I was done photographing. I never even saw security.”

  “That’s exactly what I would say if I were fleeing,” the man said to Faye, who nodded.

  “I know,” she said. “You’re exactly right.”

  “Would you stop?” Samuel said. “So am I never going to fly again? Is that what this means?”

  “It means you’re not going to fly today. But you can take steps to remove yourself from the list. There’s a website for that.”

  “A website.”

  “Or an 800 number, if you prefer,” he said. “Then an average wait time of six to eight weeks. I’m afraid I’m going to have to escort you out of the airport now.”

  “And my mother?”

  “Oh, she can do whatever she wants. She’s not on the list.”

  “I see. Can you give us a second?”

  “Oh sure!” the man said. Then he took one step beyond the purple tape and turned his back three-quarters to them and clasped his hands in front of him and began very slightly tilting back and forth like someone whistling and rocking to his own tune.

  “Let’s forget about it,” Faye whispered. “Let’s go home. The judge can do whatever he wants. It’s not like I don’t deserve it.”

  And Samuel thought about his mother going to jail, thought about his life returning to normal: losing his job, in debt, alone, passing through his days in a digital fog.

  “You have to leave,” he said. “I’ll come find you, when I can.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Faye said. “Do you know what the judge will do to you?”

  “A lot less than what he’ll do to you. You need to go.”

  She looked at him a moment, wondering whether to fight him.

  “Don’t argue,” he said. “Just go.”

  “Fine,” she said, “but we’re not going to have one of those sappy parent-child moments, right? You’re not going to cry, right?”

  “I am not going to cry.”

  “Because I was never very good at dealing with that.”

  “Have a good flight.”

  “Wait,” she said. She grabbed his arm. “This has to be a clean break. If we do this, we won’t be able to contact each other for a while. Radio silence.”

  “I know.”

  “So I’m asking you, are you prepared to do that? Can you handle that?”

  “You want permission?”

  “Permission to leave you. Again. For the second time. Yes, that’s what I want.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know,” Faye said. “I’ll figure that out in London.”

  On the television above them, the airport news network came back from commercials and into a segment on the Packer for President campaign. It looked like Governor Packer was out to an early lead in Iowa, they said. Looks like the attack in Chicago really boosted his peripherals.

  Faye and Samuel looked at each other.

  “How did we get into this?” he said.

  “It’s my fault,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Go,” he said. “You have my permission. Get out of here.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She picked up her bag, looked at him for a moment, then dropped it back on the ground and leaned into Samuel and wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest and squeezed. Samuel didn’t know what to do, it was such an out-of-character gesture. She took one long hard breath, like someone about to plunge underwater, then quickly let go.

  “Be good,” she said, and patted him on the chest. She collected her suitcase and wandered back to the TSA agent, who let her through uneventfully. The man with the clipboard asked Samuel if he was ready to leave. And Samuel watched his mother, and felt a little tremble at her sudden embrace. His hand lightly touched the spot she’d pressed her head against.

  “Sir?” said the clipboard man. “Are you ready?”

  Samuel was about to say yes when he heard a name he recognized—a name that abruptly popped out of the airport’s ubiquitous and usually ignorable noise. It came from the television overhead: Guy Periwinkle.

  Samuel looked up to see if he’d heard correctly, and that’s when he saw him, Periwinkle, on TV, sitting in the studio, talking to the anchors. Under his name it said Packer Campaign Consultant. They were asking him what drew him to the job.

  “Sometimes the country thinks it deserves a spanking, sometimes it wants a hug,” Periwinkle said. “When it wants a hug, it votes Democrat. I’m hedging on it’s a spanking moment right now.”

  “It’s time to go now, sir,” the man with the clipboard said.

  “One second.”

  “Conservatives tend to believe more than the rest of us that we need a spanking. Read into that whatever you want.” Periwinkle laughed. The anchors laughed. He was a natural on television. “Right now the country sees itself as a poorly behaved child,” he continued. “When people vote, what they’re really doing, way deep down, is externalizing some childhood trauma. We have reams of paper showing this.”

  “It’s really time to go now, sir.” The man with the clipboard was getting impatient.

  “Okay, fine,” Samuel said, and he let himself be escorted away from the television, toward the exterior doors.

  But just before leaving, he turned around. He turned in time to see his mother collect her belongings on the other side of security. And she didn’t look for him, she didn’t wave at him. She simply gathered her things and left. And thus Samuel endured, for the second time in his life, the sight of his mother walking away, disappearing, and not coming back.

  | PART NINE |

  REVOLUTION

  Late Summer 1968

  1

  THE CONRAD HILTON ground-floor bar is separated from the street by panes of thick, leaded, plate-glass windows that muffle all but the closest sirens or screams. The Hilton’s front entran
ce is guarded by a phalanx of police officers, who themselves are being watched over by a great many Secret Service agents, all of whom are making sure anyone coming into the Hilton is registered and unthreatening: delegates, their wives, candidate support staff, the candidates themselves, Eugene McCarthy and the vice president, they’re here, as are some minor artist-type celebrities, Arthur Miller and Norman Mailer being the two that at least a couple of the cops recognize. The bar itself is full of delegates today, and the lights are appropriately low to accommodate the privacy needed to lubricate the political process. Small packs of intense-looking men in booths talk quietly, make promises, trade favors. Everyone has a cigarette and most have martinis and the music is jazz and big-band stuff—think Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey—at a volume great enough to obscure nearby conversations but not so loud that anyone needs to shout. Television over the bar tuned to CBS News. Delegates walking around the bar and seeing friends and slapping hands and backs because roughly the same people come to these things every time. Ceiling fans twirl just fast enough to draw the cigarette mist up and scatter it.

  Outsiders to the political process sometimes complain that real decisions happen in dark smoky rooms, and this is one of those rooms.

  Two guys at the bar that absolutely no one approaches or fucks with: mirrored sunglasses, black suits, obviously Secret Service, off duty, watching the news and sipping glasses of something clear. The buzz in the room dies down momentarily when a hippie breaks through the police line and sprints down Michigan Avenue and gets himself tackled right outside the plate-glass windows of the bar, and all the patrons inside—everyone but the two Secret Service guys—stop and watch the scene made wavy by the leaded glass as the police officers in their baby-blue uniforms descend on the poor guy and club him on his back and legs while inside the bar nobody can hear a thing except maybe sometimes old Cronkite talking on CBS and Glenn Miller playing “Rhapsody in Blue.”

  2