He laughed. “I know. I can’t help it.”
“Sure you can. You don’t have to be this way. You can be a real boy.”
“ ‘I got no strings to hold me down, to make sad or make me frown,’ ” he sang in a surprisingly good voice. He smacked himself in the forehead with a wet hand. “Shit. I can’t believe I just made an Ultron reference.”
“And a Pinocchio reference at the same time. A two--for--one! What you just said? Can’t you see how many antihipster points you hit there?”
He smirked at her and dried his hands on a dish towel. “I gotta use the bathroom. Be right back.”
Nessa wiped the counters, waiting for him to return, and thought about how pleasant this had been, how nice of him it was to show up and make dinner. Which didn’t seem like him at all. But maybe she’d misjudged him.
When he returned, he’d obviously been mulling over their conversation.
“You know, although I don’t self--identify as a hipster, I believe it comes from a sincere place,” he said earnestly. “In a world that so desperately cherishes the super--popular and conformity of values, there’s significance in seeking out the talent that maybe the masses don’t quite recognize because it doesn’t cohere to the norm, to the elite--approved idea of what’s good. Our taste has been developed by corporations desperate to sell products. It’s all manufactured for us and shoved down our throats. It’s fast food for the soul, for the mind. It’s not good for us, you know? We’ve lost the ability as a species to declare what we like instead of having it done for us.”
“Although it’s corny as hell, that may actually be the best unironic explanation of hipster I’ve ever heard,” Nessa said. “Okay, I’ll grant you all that. But what really bugs me? It’s the smugness. The sense of superiority. That you’re better than the masses, the sheeple, as your -people so compassionately call them.”
“But isn’t that what we all do, on some level? Try to elevate ourselves to drown out the chorus of self--hatred that threatens to destroy us all on a daily basis?”
“What just happened?” Nessa said, straightening and fixing him with an astonished gaze. “Did you just . . . say something real to me? Did you really just peel back your veneer of bullshit to give me a glimpse into your existential fears?”
He looked away from her.
“You’ll have your own show one day,” she said. “After a millennia of being the joke of humanity, the tables have turned and nerds now run the universe. Maybe the year of the hipster is coming, and you’ll have your supreme day in the sun, where you run everything—-organically and sustainably, of course—-and turn the world into a flax--wearing, beard--growing, locavore--arama!”
Otto barked a laugh. “My real name is Jim,” he said.
“Of course it is,” Nessa said.
After Otto left, Nessa realized he’d never told her what had happened to him Thursday night.
Chapter Fifteen
Saturday, June 18
NESSA FELT AS though she’d been sleeping with her eyes open because it seemed like she’d been staring at the same dark object for hours. It was like the ceiling fan. Since they’d lived in this house, she’d awoken several times, and upon seeing the ceiling fan, each time she’d thought it was something different: a seagull, a cross, Superman.
But this time her mind was making it into something sinister. It was just a shadow from the window, moving with the wind, trees, maybe.
She blinked in the dark.
But the image resolved into the shape of a man.
John? And she almost sat up.
But then a strange scent met her nostrils. It was Southern Comfort and cigarette smoke. A spear of terror impaled her chest, cutting off her wind.
John was not a smoker.
Nessa did not know this person.
The man stood next to the dresser, unmoving. Nessa resolved not to move either. If she pretended to be asleep, he could take what he wanted and leave.
He turned slowly toward her.
A second sharper wave of panic rippled through her body.
Pleaseleavepleaseleavepleaseplease. . .
The man lunged toward the bed and clamped a large hand over her mouth, bearing down and mashing her lips into her gums, pressure under her nose.
A dark face lowered to hers and whispered, “Don’t make a sound. If you fight me, I will kill you.”
She saw that the darkness of the face was due to a black knit ski mask. His lips touched the skin of her face and the revulsion she felt was so extreme she thought she might faint. His saliva dribbled down her forehead.
A hoarse whisper. “I’ve got a gun, and one way or another, I’m going to use it.”
He raised up and she saw a gun--shaped shadow above her face. He put it in his pocket and leaned back in. “I know you want this, bitch. You want it hard, don’t you? Tell me how you want it.”
Nessa felt pressure on her stomach moving southward. Everything slowed down.
It was happening again, this time in her own house, with her son sleeping next door.