“Whoa.”
“They were pretty insistent,” she said. “Didn’t want to be told no.”
“I can imagine. With the Affinity Charm, you could work anywhere.”
As they neared First Avenue, Bix began recalling favorite landmarks: Benny’s Burritos; Polonia with its incredible soups; the newsstand along Tompkins Square Park that sold egg creams. He wondered which of them were still there. At First Avenue he paused to say goodbye before turning left—but Rebecca, too, was heading north. Suspicion reared up in him, impossible to ignore. He quickened his pace and gazed up the long gray avenue, wondering how exactly to confront her.
Rebecca spun around to face him. “Promise me you don’t work for them,” she said.
He was blindsided. “Me? That’s crazy. Work for who?” But he was keenly aware of being in disguise.
Rebecca stopped walking. They were nearly at the corner of Sixth Street. Searching his face, she said, “Can you swear that you really are Walter Whatever, graduate student in electrical engineering at Columbia?”
Bix stared at her, heart bucking in his chest.
“Shit,” Rebecca said.
She swerved right onto East Sixth, Bix matching her stride. He had to fix this. “Look,” he said under his breath, “you’re right. I’m… who I look like.”
“Bix Bouton?” she cried in outrage. “Give me a break! You have dreadlocks, for fuck’s sake.” She sped up, as if trying to escape him without breaking into a run.
“I am,” Bix insisted softly, but making this claim while he half-chased a beautiful stranger through the East Village, after midnight, caused him to doubt himself. Was he Bix Bouton? Had he ever been?
“I gave you that idea,” Rebecca said. “Remember?”
“You noticed the resemblance.”
“This is, like, classic.” She was smiling, but Bix could feel that she was afraid. There was trouble in this situation. To his relief, she stopped run-walking and scrutinized him in the acid streetlight. They had somehow lurched their way almost to Avenue C. “You don’t even look that much like him,” she concluded. “Your face is different.”
“That’s because I’m smiling, and he doesn’t smile.”
“You’re talking about him in the third person.”
“Fuck.”
She gave a scornful laugh. “Bix doesn’t swear, everyone knows that.”
“Holy shit,” Bix heard himself exclaim, but then his own suspicions swerved back into view. “Wait a minute,” he said, and something in his tone made Rebecca stop and listen. “You’re the one who came out of nowhere. I think you followed me all the way from Ted and Portia’s. How do I know you didn’t say yes to Homeland Security?”
She gave an outraged laugh. “That’s psychotic,” she said, but he heard a tremor of anxiety in her denial, the mirror of his own. “I wrote my master’s thesis on Nella Larsen,” she said. “Ask me anything about her.”
“I’ve never heard of her.”
They eyed each other with mistrust. Bix felt spooked in a way that brought to mind a bad mushroom trip in his teens when, after an Uptones concert, he and his friends had briefly scattered in fear. He took three long breaths, the basis of his mindfulness practice, and felt the world settle back around him. Whatever else Rebecca might be, she was a kid. He had fifteen years on her, at least.
“Look,” he said, standing at a respectful distance. “I don’t think either of us is a dangerous person.”
She swallowed, looking up at him. “I agree.”