THE NIGHT JIMMY brought Chip over to meet Pixie was a turning point, Ann thought. They arrived with a pizza and two cartons of bottled beer. Ann had been keenly attuned lately to how people dressed and what their clothing said about them. She was devoted to blue-jeans and sandals now, feeling a liberation from every kind of dress code. Jimmy was thoughtless about the way he dressed, joking that “a handsome man looks good in any old thing he just happens to throw on.” That evening Pixie was wearing floral bell-bottoms and a fringed top. Her jumpy bob had grown out, and she had straightened it. But Chip’s attire seemed inexplicable to Ann. He was wearing an army surplus military paratroop suit.
“I’m just identifying with the GIs!” he said, handing her the pizza.
“You shaved off your mustache.” His face was less exaggerated now.
“I wanted to look my best to visit your girlfriend,” Chip said to Jimmy. “I see you have two of them.” He grinned widely when introduced to Pixie.
“I told him they’d pick him up for impersonating a military man,” Jimmy said.
“I want to remind everybody,” Chip said, tugging at the breast pocket flaps. “Here it is. War, war, war. We can’t forget it.”
“It’s a mockery,” Jimmy said, teasing.
Ann, rummaging in the kitchen drawer for her bottle flip, remembered seeing the GIs against the war at the march.
“I think it’s far out,” said Pixie, stroking the arm of Chip’s suit.
“I get some crazy looks,” Chip said, eyeing her. “Some mean looks if they think I’m really a paratrooper. Like I’m going to jump down from the sky and grab their babies.”
“Picture that,” Jimmy said, handing Pixie a beer. Chip opened one for himself.
“Anything can happen in a war,” Chip said. “And worse.” He slugged his beer.
Ann made a space for the pizza on her long desk. Jimmy pulled over her heavy reading chair and her desk chair and her only kitchen chair, so Pixie and Chip went downstairs to get another. They returned with that and Pixie’s Mamas and Papas album. Pixie wanted them to hear “Go Where You Wanna Go.” After they had eaten most of the pizza and opened more beers, Chip rolled a joint. Ann was drinking a Coca-Cola. Beer could be dishwater. She managed to take the smoke in without coughing. She didn’t hold it in long enough for the full effect, but it made her relaxed and giddy.
“Chip has a fine head of hair, don’t you think, Jimmy?”
“A veritable Liverpool moptop.”
“And you’re a moptop yourself,” she said, tousling Jimmy’s curls, which were already permanently tousled.
“Lassie,” said Pixie.
Ann saw Pixie’s imperious glance at Jimmy and remembered that Pixie had said recently that Jimmy reminded her of Holden Caulfield. Now she was startled to realize that Pixie saw Jimmy as an innocent, a kid, a shaggy dog. Ann did not understand how anyone could look down on Jimmy. But she was not good at reading people. Why would Chip wear a military jumpsuit? She pictured him jumping from an airplane, holding on to an umbrella. A Magritte image.
Chip spoke of a book he was reading about French Indochina, the Warren Commission, where music would go next, companion crops for corn, the myriad uses of cornstarch.
“I could listen to you for hours!” Pixie cried.
Chip wasn’t usually a motormouth. He was a good listener. Maybe the grass triggered logorrhea, Ann thought. He raced along from one thing to another until someone interrupted. He seemed glad to be interrupted.
Ann cleared the table and wiped it with a wet dishrag. Chip was going on about binary code, how words and even thoughts could be reduced to ones and zeroes.
“It comes from Chinese math,” he said.
“Yeah, you can do Chinese math,” Jimmy said with a grin.
“It’s the principle of the I Ching,” said Pixie.
“Itching?” Chip said, flirting.
“I think of throwing the Ching as hopscotch,” Pixie said, deadpan. “It’s the idea of chance, the meaning in it.”
Chip swigged his beer. “Tell me more.”
Pixie went on in a Bacall-to-Bogart tone, “The random can be revealing. Out of the unexpected comes a weird order.”
Chip said, “In statistics class we’re studying patterns in randomness, so this makes sense!”
“You’re a science major, Chip!” said Jimmy.
“It’s the same in physics on a deeper level,” Chip said. His eyes had not strayed from Pixie.
Ann remembered the Chief at La Honda speaking of physics and meditation. She said, “But it sounds a little like speed, in a contradictory way.” She thought of how Preludin made her scoop up all her random thoughts into a new arrangement.
Pixie described how the Chinese originally used yarrow stalks that fell in patterns.
“Pickup sticks!” cried Ann.
Chip, growing excited, began a spiel about the wonders of Stanford University. The greatest minds were on a cusp, change was afoot, breakthroughs were in the offing; radical shifts in thinking were in exploratory stages, in the union of the intellect with technology and ancient wisdom. The I Ching was startlingly relevant.
“Industrialization is old hat,” he said. “Computer science is in the ascendancy! We’re on the verge of postmodern, technological radical spiritual utopia! Remember that we are on a cusp. Cusp is the word.”
“I like cusps,” Ann said. “They’re like lisps.”
As if making an announcement, Chip said, “Here is my question for the I Ching: What is the alternative life of a military jumpsuit?”
“Should I go get the Ching?” Pixie asked.
No one answered, and Pixie didn’t budge from the deep reading chair she had claimed.
“Let’s do horoscopes next,” Jimmy said to Chip.
“But the I Ching is about how coincidence mirrors the subjective,” Pixie said, glaring at Jimmy.
Jimmy shook his head. “It’s like hearing a song on the radio and you realize it is your song. It is saying exactly what you’re feeling. It’s subjective. That’s no mystery. But any song that comes on the radio would work. You can make something out of it.” He pointed to the stereo. “California Dreamin’” was playing. “There. Isn’t that a song for all of us?”
“I don’t believe in magic,” Ann said. The conversation was going oddly. Although Pixie was being disdainful, Chip seemed attracted to her.
“It’s synchronicity,” Pixie said. “When things come together for no real reason and they reflect the unconscious.”
“There’s a function on your slide rule for that,” Jimmy said to Chip.
“You can’t quantify everything,” Pixie snapped at Jimmy. “Serendipity is out of bounds.”
“Let’s decorate my jumpsuit,” Chip said suddenly, as if the I Ching had just ordered an art project.
MUCH LATER, ANN reflected that a string of pivotal events began on the night they decorated Chip’s jumpsuit. It would take her years to piece together a patchwork perspective on the breakdown of her innocence. But recalling Pixie’s snottiness that evening was illuminating. That night, absorbed in a frivolous pastime, lulled by just a little tangy dried grass—it contained some seeds that popped—and blinded by her adoration of her precious Jimmy, Ann began to feel like a chick pecking its way into the world. A hatchling. She would have to tell Albert. The paratroop jumpsuit was like a wrong note in a tune.