The Learners: A Novel (No Series)

by Kidd, Chip

  Nicky hustled Greene to the door. “So, can I take you to lunch and go over things?”

  “Sure, sure.” Greene wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and blew his nose, “You folks are a pip, I’ll tell you what. First the dog and then the ad with no shoes. Jumping Jehoshaphat!”

  Minutes later, Sketch brusquely shut our office door and bolted it. I slumped in my chair, exhausted. He emptied and re-lit his pipe, trying to remain calm. “Well, that was a damn fool thing.”

  Words didn’t come easily. “Look, I—”

  “No, you look.” His tone was bitter, sharp. He’d never spoken to me like that. Ever.

  “You can’t just go off half-cocked like that. Screaming at the client. What the Sam Hill were you thinking?”

  What was I thinking? What wasn’t I thinking by that point? Too much to think about. The train was coming. I couldn’t run much longer. “He. He said that I was…” Soon I’d be able to sleep. It seemed like months since I’d had a decent night’s sleep. “I…”

  The phone rang. Sketch put it on intercom. “Speak.”

  It was Nicky, calling from the Quinnipiac Club, to tell Sketch to tell me that the only reason I wasn’t fired was that I gave Greene such a good laugh. Bastard was still cackling like a tickled bitch.

  But if I ever tried that again, I’d be shining shoes, not doing ads for them.

  Sketch gave me a darting glance. “I hear ya.”

  “Another thing,” Nicky’s voice flattened, sober, “I just heard from Judy at Krinkle.”

  “Yeah?”

  “…Stankey’s been let go.”

  “What?”

  “They’re calling it an early retirement.” He sighed.

  “He’ll get most of his pension.”

  “But that’s—”

  “Sorry, gotta run.”

  Click.

  Sketch looked like he’d just taken a full-force gut punch. “Son of. A. Bitch.” He unbolted the door and tramped down the stairs.

  The shock of the news brought me around, at least enough to function. On the docket for the rest of the afternoon was, wouldn’t you know it, laying out the next month’s Krinkle ads. It had to be done.

  So I made myself do it—four half-pagers and five full. And I felt each scarlet keyline I drew mapping out Dick Stankey’s sorry fate, each photo-stat I cut and pasted in place as another brick in his tomb. Don’t think it, don’t think it: “I am only following orders.”

  At six, I’d just stacked the finished layouts on Sketch’s desk for inspection, when there he was in the doorway. He seemed hesitant to enter.

  “Is it true?”

  He crept over to the window and stared out at the fire-lit sky. And nodded. “Almost forty years in the business. Two kids still in college. That’s how they thank him.” He tore himself away from the sunset and looked over the boards with mechanical disinterest.

  “Nice job. Thanks for doing that. You hungry?”

  Not for food. “Starving.”

  Draft Hull’s and burgers at Saluzo’s, in Sketch’s favorite booth, the one next to the jukebox. Not that he ever played it, he just liked the design—“An igloo of chrome and glass, with its own Northern Lights.” The beer was helping. Our ties loosened, the tension eased. The lilt of the Duprees poured out of the machine, a serenade: We belonged to them.

  “Sorry I yelled at ya.”

  I needed to hear that. “It’s okay. I deserved it.”

  “No, no you didn’t. I was letting off steam. Hell of a day.”

  “Yes, but not all a bad one, right? You and Tip really scored a hit.”

  “We’ll see. They haven’t exactly written the check yet.”

  “They will. Nicky’s at least good for that, right?”

  “Humpf.” He pushed his plate away, suddenly smiling. “Heh. Heh-heh.”

  “What.”

  “You standing there, next to that crazy thing. Trying to sell it.”

  I winced. “Pretty funny, I guess.”

  “It reminded me of—”

  “Mortimer Snerd.”

  “Of Lars.” He emptied his mug and motioned for another round. “He used to do crazy shit, too, crazier than that.”

  “Like what?”

  He considered it. “Well, the battiest was when he tried to convince the Wrigley people that they should only sell Doublemint gum using twins. I mean, not just cartoons—they were already doing that—but actual, identical twins. Real people.” Snickering. “So he brought ten pairs of them, young and old, to the pitch meeting. Can you imagine: twenty folks lined up, mirror images of each other, chewing gum like Holsteins?”

  Of course I could. How could I not?

  “They laughed at him. He insisted on it. And they dropped us, like that. For good. Our biggest account. Ware almost killed him.” Two of his meaty fingers plucked the pen from his shirt pocket, loosened the cap, and let the nib run free on the paper tablecloth. “But he never regretted it. Lars took risks.” This was how it always started. I never got tired of watching it. He didn’t seem to be entirely aware of what he was doing, as if he were just a conduit for a restless god who needed to keep creating his own universe with pen and ink.

  “Risks.”

  First a circle, six inches across. What would it be this time—the Sun, the Earth, Saturn, an orange, a wagon wheel, a baseball, a giant dime? Two…eyes, dots for a nose. A face? Grease stains were transformed into…craters.

  The Moon.

  The man in it: incandescent with sorrow, eyebrows arched high to the north, mouth open and curved downward into a crescent arc, eyes narrowed against an uncaring world.

  “Risks are risky things.”

  Attendant stars, faeries in astral garb, orbited their master in a spiraling pinwheel phalanx of sparkling pity.

  “Better left to the young. They can afford ’em.”

  And on Earth—townies going up and down upon the land, scowling with ignorant, steadfast indifference to the magnificent spectacle of lamentation hovering above them.

  Look at what you can do, Sketch. You can make the world. Do you even see it anymore? Will you just walk away from it, again? How, how can you let this go to waste?

  “I’m tired, Hap.” Who wouldn’t be? He’d just created the universe. For the umpteenth time. It took God seven days, and it took Sketch seven minutes.

  “And old. No time left for risks. Ask Stankey.” He rose.

  “Time to shove off. I’ll get the tab. Lift?”

  “I’m going to stay and have another, thanks.” I wanted the drawing, for myself, and was too embarrassed to ask. When I tried that last time, he eyed me with scarcely concealed contempt. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Yup.” He pulled on his coat, paid the bill at the cash register, and made his way out the door, the creator abandoning his flock to its fate.

  I carefully ripped the drawing clean from the table, rolled it tightly, and slipped it into my knapsack. My prize. I moved to the bar. I couldn’t leave yet—I needed the booze as much as I needed the time, to think. The train was coming. It was almost here. Soon I would put my plan into action. Only two more nights of Wallace screaming at me in agony. Then I would—

  “I shouldn’t even be talking to you, you know.” A finger poked my shoulder. I spun. Tie askew, collar unbuttoned, it was Tip—in that space somewhere between sobriety and semi-cognizance.

  How long had he been here? I didn’t expect this. “Hey, I’m—”

  “What happened to you?” He cocked his head up, the words spitting out of him like buckshot. Furious:

  “There used to be…a sweetness about you. A light. And then BANG, it just went out.”

  Don’t articulate it, please. “Hey. I really don’t want to talk about it. I can’t talk about it.”

  “Try.”

  And presto: Milgram was sitting across the bar from us, in plain sight, in his white lab coat. His eyes locked hard into mine. How could I ever disobey him, even if I wanted to?

  And I didn’t. “I
’m sorry about what happened today. I’ve been out of sorts lately. Let’s just say…that recently, I found out something, about myself. Something that I don’t really like.” I bit back the tears. “Something I hate, actually.”

  That did it—Milgram vanished like mist.

  “I see.” Tip’s expression relaxed. His tone betrayed a glimmer of recognition. A sense of understanding that sounded like Welcome to the club. “Let’s ditch this place. C’mon.”

  “To where?”

  “It’s Monday.” He paid the tab, grabbed his coat. Of course I followed him.

  He was mute in the car. I fiddled with the radio knob, the heater, anything to distract.

  We turned into an alley off College Street and parked. A purple lightbulb jutted over a recessed stairway, glowing like a radioactive plum.

  Down concrete steps to a heavy iron door, windowless.

  A speakeasy. Tip gave three sharp raps on the door with his keys. It creaked open.

  Acrid smoky air, wrapping soft music: Ella Fitzgerald crooning “Isn’t It Romantic?” through a filter of phonograph scratches. Cheap plaster-of-paris knock-offs of Michelangelo’s David lurked in dimly track-lit niches recessed into the walls, astride midget Greek plinths and looking frankly embarrassed.

  This bar: not so much frequented as haunted.

  At the far end a leather-lidded patron—slumped over his brandy sour, clad in a mauve turtleneck, gaudy silver chain, and a tragic toupee—eyed us with dull and ravenous expectation. Another secluded denizen, slouched against the far wall, tapped his cigarette into his empty martini glass and fluttered his hand in our direction.

  Only men here. And longing. Exquisite aching for kindred souls—pervasive as an invisible, choking gas. Unbreathable. And dangerous—didn’t these guys know what was at stake, the risks they were taking?

  This is what Tip thought I meant?

  Preston, smirking across from me with superior disdain: “He’s a flit.” And what about me? Was he describing me, too?

  No. Maybe.

  But too soon. There was too much else to face. Maybe somewhere down the road, another time. But not now. The train could only bear so much freight.

  “Tip. I should go.”

  “Relax, Hap,” he said groggily. “It’s just a night out with the boys. Nothing to worry about.” He turned to the bartender. “Swifty, two ’tinis, up.”

  For a tenth of a second, he had me talked into it. It would have been so easy. But this had never been easy. Not for me. I didn’t have the strength. “No, Tip.”

  “But you said—”

  So uncanny, that things converged this way. “Not this. It’s not what I meant. I’m sorry.” I bolted out the door, up the steps. Panting, sweating in the chill air. Halfway down the block, something caught my elbow.

  Tip. Desperate. “Look, I didn’t mean to presume. It doesn’t mean a thing to me, really. I thought you’d get a kick out of it.” Fake dismissal. “Old queens, always good for a laugh.”

  Nice try. He knew I wasn’t buying it.

  So he tried anger. “I mean, I don’t know what you want, but I know that you’re miserable. Happy. Why won’t you talk to me about it? I know how you feel.”

  I hoped he didn’t. I hoped he wouldn’t, ever, know he was capable of the kind of darkness I was. For his sake. “I have to go.”

  “What’s the difference where you ride it out? You shut everyone out. Why?”

  Does anything matter anymore? Yes. My plan matters. And this wasn’t part of it. “I’m not trying to shut you out, really. I’m just tired. I’m—”

  Tell him.

  I can’t. “Look, you have to trust me. Please. Something…happened to me. I can’t tell you more than that. But I am trying to solve it. And I will.” Or die trying. “Now I’m going to walk home. I need to clear my head. Good night.” I left him, heading toward Chapel Street.

  You’re a fool. You always were.

  Shut up. Shut UP.

  I heard his car start. He pulled up next to me, rolled down the window. “Look, you won’t…” He tried to toss it off casually, scarcely hiding his terror. “You, won’t tell anyone about this, at work, will you? Please?”

  So this is what it had come to. That he didn’t trust we were friends, that he couldn’t assume he’d never have to say anything like that to me, ever.

  He put the car in park. Got out, approached warily. “I mean, I was just trying to give you a taste of the dark underbelly of New Haven. It was just a tiny shock. In the interest of science.”

  A tiny shock? In the interest of science? He knew. He was mocking me. I growled, fiercely, “Why did you say that?”

  “Say what?” His astonishment. No, it was a coincidence. Had to be.

  I didn’t know anything anymore. “Nothing. Forget it. I, I won’t say anything. Don’t worry.” I took a deep breath and shook his slackened hand. “You were great today. Congrats.”

  “…Thanks.”

  “But.”

  “But?”

  At least tell him what you feel. Do it.

  “You, you’re better than this. Better than this town, than the firm. You’re squandering your talent. Don’t you see that? I love working with you, I really do, but,” I paused, near spent, “it’s different with me, I’m just getting started, but with you, it’s like I’m watching Sinatra play sock hops. It’s like you’re…oh God, Sketch, thirty years ago. When he should have left the business to become a real cartoonist. Is that what you want, to be trapped in—”

  “Trapped?” He glowered at me. “You think I’m trapped?”

  “Well, aren’t you? You should be on Madison Avenue. Not Main Street. You know it.”

  “Who’s to say—”

  “You did,” pleading, “the first day we met. Your whole idea was that not being able to have potato chips made you want to have them. And you know what? You were talking about yourself. You were talking about everything that you’ve ever wanted but you don’t have. Because you won’t let yourself have it. At least in New York, you wouldn’t have to skulk around like this—”

  “Enough!”

  A terrible silence. Breathing hard.

  Then he got back in his car, lowered the passenger-side window. “No, really,” he said, with stony curiosity,

  “tell me—what’s the first word that pops in your head when you hear it? Or the last? Go ahead.” Our eyes fought each other to a standstill. “Enough.”

  I didn’t know how to say it. So I let the tears do it instead, no point in holding back this time. He gunned the engine, put it in gear, and tore off down the street before I could answer. When I could, I said it anyway, into the void.

  “Good-bye.”

  Sketch called the first thing the next morning. I’d been given a week-and-a-half mandatory vacation, beginning that day, Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I was going to protest, but then realized: It all fit perfectly with my plan. I called the train station and changed my reservation to the 12:07 Atlantic Coastal Line Southbound, then phoned home to let Mom and Dad know I’d be coming a day earlier than scheduled. Mom was, naturally, delighted.

  “What a great surprise!” Her bubbling joy shot through the phone line, its girlish keen a white-hot knife to the heart. “Are you all packed?”

  “Yuh, yep. I think I got everything.” Oh yes, everything: The timetable, the calculations, the pint of whiskey, the pills. “Now, you know where to pick me up, at the south end of the platform.”

  “Oh yes, yes. We’ll be there early. We’re getting everything ready. You can help me set the table! Bring your special pens, you can do the place cards! I just did the potatoes, putting them in the fridge right now. And Aunt Soph is fixing the applesauce, with raspberries, just like you like,” she paused, catching her breath, “we can’t wait to see you. We’ve missed you.”

  “Me, too.” More than you know. “See you soon.”

  And I mean it. And I am as sorry as I’ve ever been, for what you will see: your murderer son, his fate in
your hands.

  I have my place card. The others will have to wait.

  Sketch drove me to the train station at eleven thirty. “Look, it’s been a rough couple of weeks,” he said, easing his big old Packard into the dispatch lane. “But things’ll lighten up with the holidays. Heh. You’ll see.”

  “Thanks for dropping me off. Look.” The upholstery in the front seat, practically a sofa, smelled of stale pipe smoke. I didn’t want to leave it. “I know I’ve let you down. Let you all down. I’m sorry. I’ll do better, I promise.”

  “Oh, come on, you’re doing fine. You’re too hard on yourself. Ease up.” He opened the driver’s side door, came around to mine, helped me out of the car. The predicted snow had started, the air quiet and crisp. “You’re a lot like that Winter fella, actually. I remember now. He pushed himself too hard. You need some rest. It’ll be good for ya.”

  He shut the trunk, set my bags on the curb. A big, glorious bear hug. “See ya in December.”

  Would I? God, please, I hoped so.

  Sketch. Would you ever draw upon how much I love you?

  His great sedan chugged through the glittery swirl of polka-dot flakes, out of the parking lot and onto State Street.

  A half hour early, I planted myself at the bar in the station. I wondered if Himillsy had ever been here. She must have.

  I’m just trying to do right by you, Hims. Please don’t hate me, I just don’t know what else to do. I’m at wit’s end. Like you were.

  But, Sweet: I don’t exist anymore. I’m just in your head. That’s where I live.

  If you can call this living.

  Forget me. For good. Let me die. It’s your only chance.

  No. Never. How could you ask me to do that? How could you?

  Because that’s what you want.

  You’re so wrong. You’ll see. To forget you, to lose you forever, I’d lose all hope. And that’s not what I’m doing.

  Oh, really?

  I know how it looks. Trust me. I’ve got this figured out. Goddamm it, I do. You of all people should know: I am in control of my undoing.