The Learners: A Novel (No Series)

by Kidd, Chip

  On Monday morning Sketch called in sick. Which was ironic, because if anyone should have, it was me. Something was wrong. Not physically, not really, I just wasn’t…myself. Or maybe that was the problem—maybe I finally was myself and couldn’t get used to it. Oddly, it didn’t keep me from functioning. If anything, it made me work even harder. Distraction was precious now. Nights when I wasn’t working I was either camped out at the Sterling Library with my nose in the OED until closing; or home staring at old movies on the Late-Late Show. And then the test pattern.

  Anyway, that Monday, over the phone, Sketch asked me to work up some new Krinkle preliminary layouts, a dozen one- and half-pagers with display type, leaving space for him to do the illustrations. His plan was to switch from his cartoon style to a more naturalistic but extremely detailed type of drawing he called “Norman Rockwell after a half-pint of Old Grouse.” “Maybe that will make that Plupp bastard quit grousing,” he coughed. This was a big step for him, to switch gears so drastically on something he’d done for so long. I was really looking forward to seeing it.

  “No sweat,” I assured him. “You take it easy now.” Lenny Plupp was due in on Thursday to review Krinkle’s “bold new ad direction.” I had everything ruled out and lettered by three that afternoon. With the extra time on my hands, I thought I’d surprise Sketch by going up the street to Grasso’s Art Supply and having blowup photo-stat prints made of some stock shots of bowls of chips, as positioning reference for the drawings. They’d make his job a lot easier and the repro budget would more than cover it.

  I’d just cemented the last of them in place on tissue overlays when Sketch’s intercom buzzed. I got up from my desk, stabbed the “talk” button.

  “Hello?”

  Miss Preech, frantic: “I tried to stop him. He’s coming up.”

  A chill surged into my spine. Who on earth could could shake her up?

  “Who is? Wha—”

  “I apologize for the interruption.” Lenny Plupp strode into the room, urgent. I could hear Dick Stankey lagging in the distance, huffing and puffing up the stairs.

  Jesus. “Uh, I’m sorry, Sketch is out sick today. We were expecting you Thursday. Can you—”

  “Yeah, sorry for the drop-in.” His eyes went everywhere, as if this were a raid. “It’s just that now I can’t make it Thursday. We were in the neighborhood and I wondered if you had anything worked up yet for—hey, THAT’S it.” He lit upon the board on my desk.

  “THAT’S what I want.” Snatching it up, giving it the once over, grinning. “I just had a feeling. And I was right. Photos, finally. People want to eat chips because of photographs, not cartoons. This is great.”

  Oh my God. “No, Mr. Plupp, you don’t understand, these are preliminary set-ups, for Sketch to work from. These aren’t the finals.”

  “They are now, m’boy.” He flipped through the stack of them. “Good work! This is swell.”

  Stankey lurched in the doorway, panting. “What’d I miss?”

  Everything. The end of everything. Help me, help me, you big Stanking lump. “I—”

  “Listen. Got to scoot. Many thanks!” Plupp tucked the boards under his arm. “C’mon, Dicky. Hop to.” Hat on head. “Be in touch.” And out he went.

  Stankey stared at me, helpless. “What, what?”

  “I just ruined everything. You’ve got to talk him out of it. Sketch is going to kill me.”

  “Geez.” He wiped his brow, spat into his chew cup.

  “Christ on a cracker.” Then he raced back down the stairs to catch up with Plupp. As if he ever would.

  What to do? Hot panic. I bolted down the steps to Nicky’s office, rapped on the door glass.

  “Come in.”

  Tip was there, seated and taking notes. I’d interrupted a meeting.

  “I,” I was on the verge of tears. “Something’s happened.”

  “Hey, calm down. Sit. What is it?”

  I explained it all, as best as I could.

  “Well, well, well,” Tip snickered accusingly. Then he chimed, in a weird, Bette Davis voice: “Don’t give it a thought, Karen. After all, you didn’t personally drain the gasoline out of the tank.”

  What the hell did that mean? “No! It was a mistake! I didn’t mean for—”

  “ALL that matters,” Nicky intervened, “is that the client is happy. Happy.” A pseudo-sly wink my way.

  “I’ll give them a call. This is great news. Really. I was worried as hell.”

  “But how are we going to tell Sketch,” I pleaded,

  “he’ll be—”

  Tip set his eyes on his shoes and kept them there. Not laughing now.

  “I’ll handle that.” Nicky chuckled, oblivious. “He ought to be relieved, is what. It will be a lot less work. For years he sat drawing those damned things till all hours. It wasn’t healthy.”

  Healthy. What would you know about that, Mr. Nine Iron? What did healthy even mean to you? A ten-stroke handicap?

  Nicky exchanged a triumphant glance with Tip, nodding at me. “While he’s here, Skikne, tell him the news.”

  News.

  “Brace yourself.” Tip lifted his head, not quite believing it himself. “We’re actually going to do a Buckle pitch. For real.”

  “Hee-HAH!”

  Nicky had, amazingly, swung it. No, Buckle was not looking to change their national advertising, as he suspected. But they did want to see what we came up with in an effort to bring a sense of goodwill to its future community businesses. The idea that we could represent them locally seemed to be a potential reality. Astounding. The ante was upped.

  “It’s not your fault. Now c’mon.” Sketch was doing his best to console me, as if I were the one who’d just lost the most fulfilling work of my days, because of him.

  It was nearing six, roughly twenty-six hours after Plupp’s Purloin, as I called it. Sketch had Buckle’s latest catalog splayed open to his right, next to a half-inked drawing of one of the company’s calf-skin men’s dual-clasp slip-ons.

  “But it is. I’m so sorry.” I said it for something like the twentieth time that day. “If I hadn’t made those damn photo-stats—”

  “Hey. That’s enough now. It sounds like it was a good thing you did.” He put a Henry Burr 78 on the Victrola and cranked it full. “There’s a Spark of Love Still Burning.” Its sweet, sad, tonal flood underscored everything perfectly. Which is to say, drenched us in sonic melancholy. Perhaps unconsciously, Sketch was letting the music mourn for him—for Krinkle Karl, for Pucky Pretzel, for…Dick Stankey?

  I couldn’t not respond to it. “I—”

  “You don’t worry about me. I have plenty else to work on,” he said, stern with concentration, “and so do you, young man, so get to it.”

  That afternoon he’d given me the Food Clown’s entire Thanksgiving “We-Gather-Togetherthon” supplement to lay out and paste up, a real bear of a job and a huge responsibility. I was flabbergasted he’d entrust it to me: the half-dozen cranberry recipes using Sea-Spritz’s finest jelled-from-concentrate; the “Do’s’ and ‘Don’ts” of Shell-eeze brand oyster stuffing; the Activity Fun Page’s “how-to-make-a-drawing of a turkey” by tracing around your hand, splayed flat on a piece of construction paper—your thumb assuming the head, your fingers the plume. Just add a wide-open beak and a “gobble!” speech balloon.

  Eighteen pages. They wanted it completely revamped from last year. All of it had to be figured out, pleasingly typeset, accented with charming illustrations. I was more than grateful for the opportunity.

  We worked the next hours in silence, Sketch drawing shoe after shoe, changing the records on the turntable. I loved anticipating what he would play next.

  When he put on Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies, I felt for the first time that day that he actually was forgiving me. He knew that was my favorite. I couldn’t hold it back anymore: “Sketch?”

  “Yup.”

  “Why did Mimi let you hire me?”

  “What?”

  “You nev
er told me.”

  “You never asked.” He grinned despite himself, determined to keep his attention to Buckle, its newly acquired place in our lives, front and center.

  But I was asking now.

  He blew his nose. “I needed the extra help. She knew that.”

  I didn’t reply. That just didn’t explain it and he knew it. Knew that I was standing outside of her office that first day, when she was shrieking at him that they couldn’t afford it. Afford me. He knew I’d heard. But then something changed her mind. Immediately.

  Now he was betraying his own explanation, laughing. It was close to ten. He cleaned his brush in the mason jar of cloudy water, rubbed his hands with the damp cloth he kept next to it.

  “Let’s grab a beer.”

  We took two seats at Saluzo’s, at the bar. Sketch looked uncomfortable. Normally he loved explaining things, usually about drawing or comics. But he also harbored a secretive side, fiercely private. Once we’d each had a good swig, he announced, head bowed:

  “Look, I’ll tell you something if you tell me something.”

  “Okay.” What could he possibly want to know? There was nothing about me worth knowing. Nothing I could tell him, anyway. Just a typical middle-class American kid who just learned he’s capable of unspeakable evil. “What.”

  “Why’d you wanna work here?”

  Wow. Out of left field. But of course it would have occurred to him, to wonder. “I needed a job.”

  “Aw, don’t shit a shitter. You came from two states away. New Haven isn’t exactly a destination, unless you’ve got Yale in your sights. And you don’t.”

  “True.” I did now, but not the way he meant it. “I don’t.”

  “So?”

  Just tell him. “One of my teachers from school, well, my most important teacher. Used to work for you.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Winter. Winter Sorbeck.”

  A puzzled look. “Who? I don’t—”

  This is what I was afraid of—that he wouldn’t remember. I reminded him of when, three years ago, I’d phoned him in an effort to find out who designed the wrapper for Wrigley’s Doublemint gum. It was an assignment Winter gave to me specifically, and the answer, ultimately, was Winter—he’d done it himself, when he was a feisty young stringer at none other than Spear, Rakoff & Ware. “Anyway, I know it’s corny, but I wanted to start where he started. And look, I was actually able to do just that. I’m so, so lucky, and it’s all thanks to you.”

  “Well, not entirely.” He took another swig. Something about this was embarrassing him.

  “What else, then? Mimi didn’t even see my portfolio. I don’t mean to make a big deal out of it, it’s just something that’s been nagging at me lately. Look, you’ve been so great to me, I don’t want to—”

  “You have Darwin’s tubercles.”

  He didn’t say it like a disease, but it didn’t sound normal, either.

  “I have what? Darwin’s what?”

  “Tubercles. Heh. These things.” He reached out, his great, thick hand at the side of my head; the fingers—fat as candles and stained midnight blue at the tips— gently plucked at a small part of my left ear, along the outer edge. It was the first time he’d ever touched me.

  “This flap of skin, that juts out, here.”

  His chapped thumb eased over it, this thing that until two seconds ago hadn’t existed at all—back and forth, one, two, three times. And oh. Sublime. Oh my God: This is what it was like to be happy again. Happy. To be the old me. The Before me.

  Please, please don’t stop. Sketch, if only I were able to tell you: You could touch me like that for the rest of eternity. I could become Happy again.

  “Not many people have ’em. They’re called Darwin’s tubercles—he thought they represented a higher level of human development. Not sure exactly what a tubercle is, but you get the idea.” He pulled his hand back, taking my Happiness with it. “Mimi read that in Reader’s Digest once, and ever since she’s always looking for ’em. Tip’s got ’em, too. Heh.” Staring into his beer. “That Mimi. She’s a pip. But listen.” He became serious. “She was right. You’re a damn good assistant, one of the best I’ve ever had. I mean it.”

  If I could only believe that. “Thanks.” My great gift: mutant ear flaps. That’s why she kept staring at me. But not at me, at my ears. Because my ears were going to get her the Buckle Shoes account.

  Normally, Before, that would have given me a good, long laugh.

  WHO’DA THUNK?

  CONTENT AS IRONY.

  Hi-dee-ho! It’s time for me. Irony!! Now, if you’re anything like me, you probably don’t quite grasp the concept. Isn’t that ironic?

  Let’s see, how to explain…well, it’s easier by example than definition. Say you came upon a neon sign, brightly lit, that spelled out I HATE NEON. Well, the reason that would be very ironic is because it’d be telling you one thing while showing you the opposite. Confused? Sorry, but you really should get used to me.

  Because you know what? Right now, I’m pretty obscure and relatively unused in the culture, but I’m about to, as they say, “hit the big time.” Bigger than anyone could imagine. Soon I’ll be everywhere. Look for me as the artless paintings of Campbell’s soup cans that sell for millions (I’m not kidding!); the automobile ad with the picture of the tiny Volkswagen Beetle with the word LEMONprinted underneath it; the album cover for a record called TWO VIRGINSthat depicts a nude man and woman who’ve just had sex. And in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, when Bette Davis taunts Joan Crawford because she’s a cripple, I’ll be right there with her. You see: Joan is in a wheelchair as a result of previously trying to run over Bette with a car—but in the process she ended up turning herself into a parapeligic instead! Whatta scream.

  But I’m nothing new. I’ve been around forever. Consider the idea:

  Shakespeare dies of cancer of the tear-duct.

  Puccini, cancer of the throat.

  Get it?

  Get ME?

  At 4:00 a.m. the next morning, I woke with a start to the mosquito drone of the TV test pattern, and in a moment of revelation its true identity became dreadfully clear: stoking, growing, gaining speed; it was the front end of a distant but oncoming locomotive, mightily bearing the terrible freight of my unforgivable crimes, piled one on the other—Himillsy’s death, murdering Wallace, erasing Krinkle Karl. It was far off, yet heading straight for me. I was outrunning it, for now. But I was losing ground, and tiring out. At some point it would catch up with me. And what then?

  I kept waking up every day and Himillsy was still dead. Because of me. Because the ad I designed led her to doom. And how many others?

  My goodness, such drama.

  I kept going to the bathroom, taking showers, wiping and washing my body…with murderous hands. I kept telling myself I’d get over the aftermath of the experiment, like a stubborn case of flu, but the symptoms persisted, intensifying. Eye contact in the mirror was now out of the question. I just wasn’t getting better.

  The train could not be stopped.

  What I needed was impossible: I needed to take the experiment again and do the right thing this time. To reverse it. Erase it.

  Ridiculous.

  And yet. There was no alternative. I at least had to get back into that lab, I had to. If I could just see it again, be in it, talk to Milgram, maybe I could divert the train. I had to try.

  It wasn’t hard to conjure an excuse; what crippled me was making the call. I picked up the phone five times before I was able to dial the number.

  “Dr. Milgram’s office.”

  “May I speak with him, please?”

  “I’m sorry, he’s in a meeting. Can I help you?”

  I explained who I was. To my surprise, he remembered me. And I remembered him. Williams.

  I tried my best to sound like I wasn’t a nut case. To sound normal. Whatever that was. “Dr. Milgram had said to call, if I had…if I needed anything.”

  “Yes?”
/>   “I’ve been thinking a lot about the experiment. I’m kind of fascinated by it, actually, and I know this will sound strange, but I can’t help but wonder…”

  “Yes?”

  “I mean, I keep picturing the room. Where the experiment was.”

  “The room.”

  “Right. I just can’t figure out how. How did Dr. Milgram observe me? He was nowhere in sight.”

  Silence, then, “Can you hold a moment?”

  “Certainly.”

  There was a muffled discussion in the background. A short back-and-forth, “You’re not with the press, are you?”

  “Oh, no sir. I’m in the design business, and I’m just curious as to how your experiment is…constructed.

  It’s really just for my own edification.” Such as it was.

  More discussion. Finally, “You could come back for a brief visit. We can show you the set-up.”

  “Oh thanks!” Did I sound too eager? “That would be great, thanks. Thank you so much.”

  Williams, ever spindly in his ash-gray lab coat and wire-frames, met me at the bottom of the basement steps. It was nine o’clock on Saturday morning, a half hour before their first appointment.

  I stepped cautiously into the lab. The scene of the crime—there was the shock generator, the microphone, the sheets of word pairs. It all looked so innocent, like a hobbyist’s ham radio. Unthreatening. “In through here.” I was led to a small office recessed from the side of the test area. One entire wall was a window, looking into both parts of the adjoining room—a cutaway view of the teacher’s station and the other side of the partition where the learner would be “shocked.”

  No, not a window. A two-way mirror. Of course. How could I have been so stupid, so unobservant?

  “Hi there.” Dr. Milgram rose from his small makeshift desk. “I’ll admit I was hesitant to have you back.” He looked a little tired, but the trace of exhaustion was alloyed with an underlying excitement. Almost a giddiness. He motioned for us to sit. “Keeping what we’re doing here a secret until we can publish our findings has me a little paranoid. But then I remembered your question at the end of your session. That was very clever. So I’m trusting you.” He scanned the room—Wallace had just come in, removing his overcoat—then back to me. “Why did you want to come back here? You said you had some questions?”