The Nix

by Nathan Hill

  Samuel has been waiting for twenty minutes, walking around the room like a bean jumping in its pod, from window to advertisement and back, studying each thing for as long as he can before his agitation twists him up and he feels it necessary to pace. He’d left for New York directly from his mother’s apartment. It is the second time in his life he’s driven from Chicago to New York City, and the feeling of déjà vu is so powerful right now that he’s feeling this low-level background dread: The last time he drove to New York, it did not turn out well. And it’s impossible not to remember this right now, because as he stares out Periwinkle’s office window he can see, a few blocks to the east, that old familiar building, the thin white one with the gargoyles near the top: the building at 55 Liberty Street. Bethany’s building.

  He stares at the building and wonders if she’s there right now, maybe looking this way, in Samuel’s direction, at all the ruckus below. For between Bethany’s building and Periwinkle’s, way down at street level, is Zuccotti Park—though “park” is a generous term for this small patch of concrete no larger than a few tennis courts, where protesters have been gathered for weeks. Samuel had waded through the crowd on his way into the building. WE ARE THE 99 PERCENT, their signs said. THIS SPACE OCCUPIED. From above, he can see the great mass of people, the fluorescent blue nylon bubbles of their tents, the drum circle on the outer edge, which is all he can hear of the protest from up here on the twentieth floor: the endless, unstoppable drumming.

  He moves back to the advertisement. The new torpedo-shaped potato chips seem to come in their own special plastic serving cups with peel-away tops like yogurt. The way the couple stares at the chips in anticipation of eating them is so manic that it almost looks like terror.

  The door opens and Periwinkle finally appears. He wears his usual tight gray suit and colorful tie—turquoise today. His hair is newly dyed and looks lacquered black. He sees Samuel looking at the potato-chip poster and says, “That advertisement tells you everything you need to know about twenty-first-century America.”

  He swings himself into the desk chair and swivels it around until he faces Samuel. “Everything I need to know to do my job is right there,” he says, pointing at it. “If you can understand this ad’s insight, then you can conquer the world.”

  “It’s a stupid potato chip,” Samuel says.

  “Of course it’s a stupid potato chip. It’s that phrase I love: snack routine.”

  Outside, the drumming swells and then dissipates by some improvisational musical logic.

  “I guess I’m missing it,” Samuel says, “the genius.”

  “Think about it. Why does one eat a snack? Why is a snack necessary? The answer—and we’ve done a million studies on this—is because our lives are filled with tedium and drudgery and endless toil and we need a tiny blip of pleasure to repel the gathering darkness. Thus, we give ourselves a treat.

  “But here’s the thing,” Periwinkle continues, his eyes all aglow, “even the things we do to break the routine become routine. Even the things we do to escape the sadness of our lives have themselves become sad. What this ad acknowledges is that you’ve been eating all these snacks and yet you are not happy, and you’ve been watching all these shows and yet you still feel lonely, and you’ve been seeing all this news and yet the world makes no sense, and you’ve been playing all these games and yet the melancholy sinks deeper and deeper into you. How do you escape?”

  “You buy a new chip.”

  “You buy a missile-shaped chip! That’s the answer. What this ad does is admit something you already deeply suspect and existentially fear: that consumerism is a failure and you will never find any meaning there no matter how much money you spend. So the great challenge for people like me is to convince people like you that the problem is not systemic. It’s not that snacks leave you feeling empty, it’s that you haven’t found the right snack yet. It’s not that TV turns out to be a poor substitute for human connection, it’s that you haven’t found the right show yet. It’s not that politics are hopelessly bankrupt, it’s that you haven’t found the right politician yet. And this ad just comes right out and says it. I swear to god it’s like playing poker against someone who’s showing his cards and yet still bluffing by force of personality.”

  “This isn’t exactly what I came here to talk about.”

  “It’s a heroic job, when you think about it. What I do. It’s the only thing that America’s good at anymore. We don’t make the snacks. Our specialty is making new ways to think about snacks.”

  “So it’s patriotic, then. You’re a patriot.”

  “Have you ever heard of the Chauvet cave paintings?”

  “No.”

  “They’re in southern France. Oldest paintings ever found there. We’re talking like thirty thousand years old. Scenes typical of the Paleolithic—horses, cattle, mammoths, that kind of thing. No pictures of humans but one depiction of a vagina, for what that’s worth. The really interesting thing is what happened when they carbon-dated the place. They found pictures in the same room painted six thousand years apart. They looked identical.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “So think about that. For six thousand years there was no progress and no evidence of any impulse to change anything. People were fine with the way things were. In other words, this is not a people experiencing spiritual desolation. You and I need new diversions nightly. These people didn’t change a thing for sixty centuries. This is not a people tired of their snack routine.”

  The drumming outside escalates for a moment and then fades back into a kind of ominous tolling.

  “Melancholy,” Periwinkle says, “had to be invented. Civilization had this unintended side effect, which is melancholy. Tedium. Routine. Gloom. And when those things were birthed, so were people like me, to attend to them. So no, it’s not patriotism. It’s evolution.”

  “Guy Periwinkle, pinnacle of evolution.”

  “I understand you’re trying to be sarcastic there, but a word like pinnacle doesn’t make sense in an evolutionary context. Remember that evolution is value-free. It’s not what’s best, it’s just what survives. I assume you’re here to talk about your mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where is she these days?”

  “Norway.”

  Periwinkle stares at him for a moment, digesting this.

  “Wow,” he says, eventually.

  “Northern Norway,” Samuel says, “all the way at the top of it.”

  “I’m speechless, for I think maybe the very first time.”

  “She wants you to tell me the truth.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything.”

  “I really seriously doubt that.”

  “About you and her.”

  “There are certain things that children let’s say have the right not to know about their mothers.”

  “You met each other in college.”

  “What I mean is I seriously doubt she wants you to know everything.”

  “That was her word. That was the word she used.”

  “Yes, but did she mean it literally? Because there are certain things—”

  “You met each other in college. You were lovers.”

  “This is what I’m saying! There are certain details, certain sexual things of a sexual nature—”

  “Tell me the truth, please.”

  “Certain, let us say, racy particulars you and I would almost definitely agree we should be spared the embarrassment of, if you understand my drift.”

  “You knew my mother in college, in Chicago. Yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know her?”

  “Biblically.”

  “What I mean is, how did you come to meet her?”

  “She was a new student. I was a counterculture hero. Back then I went by a different name. Sebastian. Sexy, right? And so much better than Guy. You can’t be a counterculture hero and a Guy. That name is way too average. Anyway, your mother sort of fell
for me. It happened. And, yeah, I fell for her too. She was a cool girl. Sweet and smart and compassionate and totally uninterested in getting people to pay attention to her, which was unusual for my social circle back then, when even my friends’ wardrobe choices had a kind of Look at me! subtext. Faye never bought into it, which was refreshing. Anyway, I published a newspaper called the Chicago Free Voice. It was the thing all the turned-on kids read. Your late-sixties version of an internet meme, to put it in terms you might understand.”

  “It doesn’t sound like my mother to be drawn to something like that.”

  “It was a seriously influential newspaper. Really. You can read every edition at the Chicago History Museum. They’ll make you wear these tiny white gloves to touch it. Or you can access it on microfiche. They’ve all been archived and microfiched.”

  “My mother is not exactly a people person. Why did she get involved with a protest movement?”

  “She didn’t intend to. She was more like dropped into the middle of it, so to speak. Do you even know what microfiche is? Or are you too young for that? Little black-and-white coils that you spool into this machine that blows hot air and goes ka-chunk when you turn the page. Very analog.”

  “She was dropped into the middle of it because of you?”

  “Me and Alice and this cop who got involved, this guy with some serious jealousy-management issues.”

  “Judge Brown.”

  “Yes. That was unexpected, encountering him again. Back in ’68 he was a cop who, I think, really wanted to kill your mother.”

  “Because he thought she was having an affair with Alice, whom he loved.”

  “That’s right! That’s right all the way down to the correct usage of ‘whom.’ Congratulations. Now keep going. Tell me what you know. Tell me about 1988. It’s twenty years later and your mother finally leaves your father, leaves you. Where does she go? Tell me.”

  “I have no idea. She goes to live in Chicago? In her tiny apartment?”

  “Think harder,” Periwinkle says. He leans forward in his chair, his hands clasped and resting on his desk. “One moment your mother’s in college, in the beating heart of the protest movement, the next she’s married to your dad, the frozen-foods salesman, living his safe suburban life. Imagine how that must have felt for her after all the thrills and drugs and sex of which I’m not going to give you any details. How long could she last being Henry’s housewife before it started burning her up, the decision she didn’t make, the life she could have had?”

  “She went to you?”

  “She went to me, Guy Periwinkle, counterculture hero.” He spreads his arms like he wants a hug.

  “She left my dad for you?”

  “Your mother is the kind of person who never feels at home no matter where she is. She didn’t leave your dad for me, per se. She left your dad because leaving is what she does.”

  “So she left you too.”

  “Not as dramatically, but yes. There was some yelling, some disgust on her part. She said I was abandoning my principles. It was the eighties. I was getting rich. Everyone was getting rich. She wanted a life of books and poetry, but that wasn’t my, shall we say, career trajectory. She wanted another chance to live like a radical, since she blew it the first time. I told her to grow up. I suppose this is what she meant by telling you everything?”

  “I think I need to sit down.”

  “Here,” Periwinkle says, getting up from his chair. He withdraws to the window and stares out.

  Samuel sits and rubs his temples at what feels suddenly like a migraine or hangover or concussion.

  “The drumming down there sounds like it’s improvised and chaotic,” Periwinkle says, “but it’s actually on a loop. You just have to wait long enough for the repeats.”

  Samuel’s feeling about all this new information is simply to be numb to it for now. He suspects he will be feeling something very powerful, very soon. But right now all he can really do is imagine his mother working up the courage to go to New York, only to be utterly disillusioned once she got here. He imagines her doing this and he feels sad for her. They are exactly alike.

  “I suppose my big book contract wasn’t some huge coincidence.”

  “Your mother was snooping on the internet,” Periwinkle says. “She found out you were a writer. Or trying to be one. She called me and asked for a favor. I figured I owed her at least that much.”

  “Good lord.”

  “Bursts your bubble, doesn’t it?”

  “I actually thought I’d gotten famous on my own.”

  “The only people who get famous on their own are serial killers. Everyone else needs people like me.”

  “Governor Packer, for example. He needs someone like you.”

  “Which brings us to the present.”

  “I saw you on TV defending him.”

  “I’m on his campaign. I’m a consultant.”

  “Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Working on his campaign while you’re publishing a book about him?”

  “I think you’re confusing your role here with some kind of journalism. What you call conflict of interest, I call synergy.”

  “So the day my mother attacked the governor, you were in Chicago, weren’t you. You were with him. At his fund-raiser. His grub-down.”

  “That is his delightfully folksy name for it, yes.”

  “And while you’re there,” Samuel says, “you also schedule a meeting with me. At the airport. To tell me you’re suing.”

  “For totally failing to write your book. For completely fucking up the giant contract we gave you. A contract you didn’t deserve in the first place, I should add now, since we’re putting all our cards on the table and everything.”

  “And you told my mother about this, this meeting with me, this lawsuit.”

  “As you can imagine, she was pretty upset that she’d screwed up your life for a second time. She asked to speak with me, before I met with you. She wanted to talk me out of it, I’m guessing. I said okay, let’s meet in the park. She asked to meet at the exact spot where, many years ago, police fired tear gas at us. Your mother is a nostalgic sap sometimes.”

  “And then you showed up with Governor Packer.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “She must have truly despised that you were working for someone like Governor Packer.”

  “Well, let’s see. She threw away her marriage for some vague liberal antiestablishment idealism. And Packer is the most pro-establishment authoritarian candidate, like, ever. So it’s fair to say she was not pleased. She had the same reflexive hatred of him that most die-hard liberals do, comparing him to Hitler and so on, calling him a fascist. She just doesn’t understand what I understand.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Packer has the same stuff inside him as anyone else who runs for president. Left or right, they’re all made of the same material. It’s just that he’s shaped like a missile instead of a chip.”

  The drumming outside slows for a moment and falls apart. Everything goes silent for a few seconds and then begins again with that familiar driving thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa. Periwinkle raises a finger. “There’s the repeat,” he says.

  “You wanted all this to happen,” says Samuel. “You wanted my mother to react the way she did.”

  “Some might call it a crime of passion, but I say I presented your mother with an opportunity.”

  “You set her up.”

  “In one moment, she had the chance to give you a story that would fulfill your contract, get herself off the hook for screwing up your life again, and give my candidate a much-needed visibility bump. Win win win win win. You’ll only be angry with me if you fail to see the big picture.”

  “I cannot believe this.”

  “Plus remember that I only masterminded it. Your mother was the one who actually picked up the stones and threw them.”

  “She wasn’t aiming at Governor Packer. She was aiming at you.”

  “I was in his entoura
ge, yes.”

  “And the photograph in the news? The one from ’68, where she’s leaning on you, at the protest. You had a copy of that.”

  “A nice present from a great poet.”

  “You cropped yourself out of it and gave it to the news. You leaked the photo and you leaked my mother’s arrest record, which you also knew about.”

  “I was adding heat. It’s what I’ve always done, what I’ve always been good at. I should say that your mother attacking me with rocks was a sincere gesture on her part. She really does, I believe, hate me. But afterward, the two of us agreed that in order to make the most of the situation, she should stonewall you completely. Tell you absolutely nothing. That way, you’d have no choice but to agree to my version of events. Speaking of which?”

  Periwinkle fetched a book from the shelf behind his desk and gave it to Samuel. It was a plain white book, with black letters on the cover: The Packer Attacker.

  “That’s an advance copy,” Periwinkle said. “I had my ghostwriters whip it up. I’m going to need to put your name on that book. Or else we’ll have to move forward with that lawsuit of ours, unfortunately, for you. There’s a piece of paper on my desk indicating such in bewildering lawyer language. Please sign it.”

  “I assume this book is not very kind to her.”

  “It savages her intimately, publicly. I believe that was your pitch. The Packer Attacker. Good title. Catchy without being smug. But I’m especially fond of the subtitle.”

  “Which is?”

  “The Untold Inside Story of America’s Most Famous Radical Leftist, by the Son She Abandoned.”

  “I don’t think I can put my name on that.”

  “Most books of nonfiction are sold on the strength of their subtitles. You may not know that.”

  “I can’t do it, not in good conscience. It wouldn’t feel right, putting my name on that book.”

  “And what, ruin the reputation I invented for you?”

  “Is she really America’s most famous radical leftist?”

  “We’re selling it as a memoir. The genre allows a little wiggle room.”

  “It’s just that the book now seems to me, you know, false.”