The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik

by David Arnold

  It was quite the trip, from what I understand.

  “After I came out,” says Alan, “Titi Rosie said it was none of her business who I dated, so long as I finished college. Said she’d move out here and walk my ass to class.”

  I’ve met their aunt a few times when she’s come to visit, and it’s not hard for me to hear this going down. “I still love that her name is Rosie Rosa.”

  “We have a cousin named Rosemarie Rosa.”

  “That’s amazing,” I say.

  “Oh, Puerto Ricans know what’s up.”

  Val is all, “You do get our point, though, yes? College, no college, different strokes, et cetera, fine. Just—”

  “Keep the whining to a minimum,” I say.

  “Well, yeah, but also remember that where you come from, figuratively and literally, isn’t the same as everyone around you. And then speak accordingly. Cool?”

  “Cool.”

  “So have you talked to them? The coaches?”

  I tell them about my parents’ Thanksgiving timeline for a decision, to which they both yell at me for not having told them about the Milwaukee offer in the first place.

  “I don’t really want to talk about it,” I say. “You guys are supposed to be my safe place.”

  “I never agreed to that,” says Val.

  “Me either, yo.” Alan punches his fists into the air like a boxer getting geared up for the big fight. “Ain’t nothin’ safe about deez nuts!”

  Val sighs. “Just once I’d like to not feel like the babysitter.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” says Alan, suddenly serious. “And I’m sure responsible babysitters everywhere are currently plotting ways to con people out of twice the usual Halloween candy.”

  “Three times, actually. Speaking of which”—Val throws her legs up on the chair in front of her, flips over the FAFSA form, and diagrams our neighborhood—“I figure we’ll start here tonight.” She points to their next-door neighbor’s house.

  “Don’t you guys think we might be a little—”

  Alan throws a hand over my mouth. “Don’t say it.”

  I pull my head away. “Too old for trick-or-treating?”

  Alan pretends to faint into Val’s lap.

  “We’ve been over this,” says Val. “Sixth through ninth grade, it’s awkward and weird for everyone. But tenth through twelfth? That’s the trick-or-treating sweet spot.”

  “Okay, well. I can’t go.”

  Val and Alan give me the exact same look, and okay: I’ve known them so well for so long, at some point I stopped thinking they looked alike, but in this moment, with this look on their faces . . .

  “You guys are freaking me out a little.”

  “Why?” says Val.

  “The way you’re looking at me. Since you’re twins, it sort of—”

  “Not that. Why aren’t you coming with?”

  A beat, then: “Homework?”

  They aren’t buying it.

  “Look, I have . . . plans. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Who is she?” asks Val, half smiling.

  “It’s not a girl.”

  Val raises her eyebrows, looks at her brother.

  “Please,” says Alan. “If Noah wasn’t tragically straight, he’d be all over me right now.”

  I kiss a bicep. “You wish.”

  “Oh my God,” says Val. “You guys with that joke. It’s like a hundred years old.”

  Principal Neusome dismisses us, and the entire senior class stumbles to their feet, zombie-eyed from all things FAFSA, and right there in the middle of the commotion, Val says, “Where were you this morning?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  Alan clears his throat in a not at all subtle way, stares daggers at his sister as we walk out of the auditorium.

  Val acts like she doesn’t notice. “Every morning since freshman year we sit in the Alcove and shoot the shit before class, but okay, go ahead and pretend like your ongoing absence is totally low-key, Noah.” She walks ahead of us, disappears into the flow of staggering seniors.

  “What’d you tell her?” I ask.

  “Nothing.”

  “From our Dean and Carlo session? You didn’t say anything?”

  Alan looks at me, suddenly serious. It’s eerie how quickly he can change masks like that. “Noah, who’s the smartest person you know?”

  All the classroom doors open at once, freshmen through juniors flood the hallway, and Alan gives me a sort of nod before peeling off toward his next block. I follow the current’s flow and consider all the things Alan just said without saying much of anything.

  Maybe conversations are more about the silence between the words too.

  41 → s’BOOk-tastic!

  Penny and I sit in the backward-facing trunk seat of Dad’s Pontiac, sunglasses on, stone-faced staring down this couple in the car behind us.

  When they first pulled up they were jamming to some song, but it’s a pretty long stoplight, so that’s all over now.

  “So,” says Penny.

  “Yes?”

  “I assume you’re still considering.”

  “Considering?”

  Penny pushes her sunglasses up her forehead, turns to me. “The pros and cons list, darling. Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”

  “Oh. Um.”

  She lets her sunglasses fall back into place. “You know, I think Mark Wahlberg was right about you.”

  It takes me a solid five seconds to realize she’s referring to our dog and not the actor. “Really committed to that name change, huh?”

  “When I asked him if he thought you would ever watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s with me, he said I shouldn’t count on it, because I can’t count on you.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Mmhmm. And then, when I asked Mark Wahlberg if he had any insight as to why you refused, he said it’s because you’re a perpetual child.”

  I couldn’t help laughing at Penny’s portrayal of our dog as something between a Magic 8-Ball and a therapist.

  “You guys excited for tonight?” asks Mom from the front seat, which from here may as well be Detroit.

  Penny sighs, all, “Can’t wait!” in an overtly bogus voice, and it occurs to me: not only is our dog not a therapist or a Magic 8-Ball, he is also incapable of speech. I can’t count on you. You’re a perpetual child. Someone thinks these things, and that someone is not Mark Wahlberg.

  * * *

  You have to respect the level of commitment it takes to combine five words—that’s, book, boo, spook, fantastic!—into one. A portmanteau for the ages, s’BOOk-tastic! is billed by the Iverton Public Library as a “trick-or-treating alternative” for those parents who question the long-established system of strangers handing candy to small children in costumes. (There was a time when my parents made fun of s’BOOk-tastic!, but then last year a bunch of teenagers in hockey masks stole Penny’s candy, so yeah—that time had passed.)

  “Thanks for being here,” says Dad, putting an arm around me. We watch Penny accept candy from a librarian dressed as a clown. So far every librarian has complimented Penny on her “costume,” not knowing they’ve been duped: she literally walked out of the house in the same thing she’d been wearing to school today.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” I say.

  Truth is, I didn’t feel like trick-or-treating with Val and Alan.

  Also, I just really like being inside libraries.

  Most of the s’BOOk-tastic! participants are between the ages of zero and seven, though a few stragglers attend, older kids whose parents can’t cope with the fact that their little tike’s all grown up. When we first walked in, I overheard a dad say, “Man, I wish I had s’BOOk-tastic! when I was a kid. This is totally awesome!”

  So like—when you become a parent, evidently you forget the
pungency of bullshit? Apparently this is like a prerequisite for raising a kid? The stork drops it off on your porch, all, Here you go, one fresh . . . little . . . sort of human thing. Cool, now I’m going to need your ability to smell bullshit. Thanks. What? Oh, no, you can keep the ability to produce bullshit, you just won’t smell it anymore. Hey, check it out, I can fly.

  “Who are you?” asks a librarian.

  “What?”

  She motions to my outfit. “What are you supposed to be?”

  “Bowie fan,” I say.

  Her eyes well up, she slow claps, and then hands me a shit-ton of candy.

  I do wonder how my parents feel knowing they can take their kids trick-or-treating at the drop of a hat, no costume changes required.

  “Hey, Mom.” I unwrap a Bit-O-Honey, pop it into my mouth. “I’m gonna wander for a bit.”

  “Okay.” Mom looks at her watch, hair falling across her face in a way that somehow highlights her scar. “Leaving in twenty.”

  42 → the tender arms of madness

  I love the intentional, aimless wander that comes from years of experience roaming the aisles of libraries, imagining all those who have tread before—some at a casual saunter, hands in pockets maybe, taking it all in; some frantically scanning the spines for that one book that might save their lives—and letting the mind delve the depths of a proper vanishing among books, just really good and fucking turned around.

  There is no kind of lost like library lost.

  Fiction, aisle G–I—scanning, scanning, there: Henry, Mila. She only published four novels (all of which, I own) before retreating to the wilds of Montana. Still, I have this compulsion. Every time I’m in a library I look for her. It’s like if you’re in an airport, and you find out your friend is in the same airport. You already know all about them, see them regularly, but you still sprint to their gate before their flight leaves.

  I stare at her shelf—with its multiple copies of all four novels—and feel comfort in the presence of a friend.

  “Rank them.”

  Turn around, and there’s Sara Lovelock, just standing there looking up at the Henry shelf.

  “Oh hey,” I say, and, in the most classic move ever, choke on the Bit-O-Honey.

  “You okay?”

  I nod, pull myself together, and can almost hear Alan’s voice in my head. Play it cool, yo. Don’t be a chump. “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I’m okay. Hi.”

  “Hey.” She nods in a super-chill way, but not overly chill like her brother. She’s wearing the hell out of this red-and-navy-checkered flannel shirt, oversized like a tunic.

  “Hello,” I say for like the fourth time, all kinds of mad fucking chill up in here, just layer upon layer of the stuff. Sara purses her lips, says, “Hi,” in a smile, and if I had to guess, I’d say she was thinking something along the lines of, This guy struggles with where to go after the initial greeting.

  “Well, now we’ve got salutations out of the way”—she points at the shelf of books behind me—“you can tell a lot about a person from their favorite Henry books. So let’s hear yours, Noah-with-an-H. Rank them.”

  Good thing about crashing and burning right up front, there’s nowhere to go but up. I hold up four fingers, tick them off as I go. “Number four, This Is Not a Memoir. Three, Babies on Bombs. Two is Augustus Third, and my favorite is Year of Me.”

  “You don’t like This Is Not a Memoir?”

  “It’s my least favorite book from my most favorite author. I adore This Is Not a Memoir.”

  “So who else do you like?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What other authors?”

  “Um, okay, after Henry—Vonnegut, obviously. Thoreau and Salinger, unapologetically. David James Duncan, Munro Leaf—”

  “I haven’t heard of him.”

  “He wrote that kids’ book, The Story of Ferdinand?”

  “Oh yeah, the bull who won’t fight. Sits just quietly—”

  “And smells the flowers,” I say.

  “Nice. Shitty movie, if I remember.”

  “Isn’t it always?”

  “True.”

  “Also, Murakami,” I say. “You read 1Q84?”

  “Meh. It was okay. But I adore Tsukuru Tazaki.”

  “That’s on my list.”

  “Well bump it up, dude.”

  “Done. What about you?” I ask.

  “What about me?”

  “Favorite authors?”

  “Okay, well, other than Henry,” Sara says. “Virginia Woolf, for sure. I love Jesmyn Ward, Meg Wolitzer, David Mitchell, Zadie Smith, and recently I’ve gotten into Donna Tartt. The Secret History sheds a whole new light on Henry’s idea of exiting the robot.”

  “I’ll put it on the list,” I say. “Surprised you didn’t mention Vonnegut. I mean, considering how much you like Mila Henry.”

  Sara slaps a palm against her forehead. “Oh right, I forgot, because we need a dude to put her work into context.”

  “Wait, what? No, that’s not . . . what I—”

  “You know what I don’t understand?” asks Sara; she digs through a messenger bag with a patch on the side that reads MELVILLE ROCKS, MOBY DICK SUCKS. “Why anyone is put off by feminism. I’m sorry, but if you can’t get your mind around equal rights for women, I have to assume you’ve lost it.”

  Pretty sure the entire library just felt the rumbling bob of my Adam’s apple. Like, it definitely registered on the Richter scale.

  “I’m a feminist,” I say, a rather feeble attempt even to my own ears.

  “I’m sure you are, Noah-with-an-H. Given the many women on your list of favorite authors.”

  There’s this feeling—when you’ve been owned—which I’ve recently become acquainted with. I swallow hard again, watch Sara as she texts.

  “You here for the kiddie trick-or-treat thing?” I ask, regretting the words even as I speak them.

  “No, I had a book on hold. But I’m guessing you are?”

  “What? No. Ha. Of course not.”

  Mom pokes her head around the corner. “Here you are. Trick-or-treating’s over, sweetie. Time to go, okay?” She shoots a quick smile at Sara—who is clearly trying not to laugh—and Mom’s gone.

  “Well,” says Sara.

  “We’re here for my little sister.”

  Sara nods, all, “Sure thing,” and then points to my mouth. “What you got there, Bit-O-Honey?”

  I am thoroughly defeated. “I gotta go. It was nice seeing you again, Sara.”

  She drops her phone into her bag, and I catch a glimpse of a book with library binding. “Nice seeing you too, Noah.”

  Sara turns to leave, and just before disappearing from the aisle, I watch a small slip of paper fall from her purse to the floor. I open my mouth to tell her she dropped something, but instead what comes out is, “What can you tell about me?”

  “What?” she asks.

  “Before. You said you could tell a lot about a person from their favorite Henry books. What can you tell about me?”

  Sara’s eyes move from my boots, to my shirt, to my hair. “You’re scared of something,” she says, and just when I think that’s that, she adds, “just like Cletus.”

  * * *

  Year of Me is my favorite Henry, and while June First, July Second, Augustus Third is widely recognized as her magnum opus, I prefer the borderline fantasy settings and bizarre characterization that Year of Me is so well known for.

  Cletus Foot is the tragic hero in Year of Me, an aspiring writer who, after receiving multiple rejections for publication in a sci-fi magazine, travels around America in a stolen clown car, pilfering people’s mail. This goes on for a while until a chapter called “The Light,” in which Cletus is driving down the road in his “truncated auto,” minding his own business, when the clouds (literally) part and a woman’s voice,
claiming to be God Herself, speaks to Cletus, urging him to return the clown car, stop stealing people’s mail, and, for the love of Herself, do what Cletus was created to do: join the Marines. And so Cletus does. In the end, he survives the war only to be shot and killed by the very clown whose car he’d stolen those many years ago. (He’d forgotten to return the truncated auto, see, which, due to the cutthroat nature of the clownery business, had driven that particular clown right out of the industry and into the “tender arms of madness.”)

  Chapter 17 is the focus of much speculation. Some critics point to this particular chapter as the perfect example of Henry’s stubborn nature when it came to editing her own work, and I get that. The chapter does seem a little wedged in or something—it has very little to do with what comes before or after, but I like it.

  Mostly conversation, the whole scene takes place in a diner where Cletus discusses the nature of art with a painter named Nathan. It begins with their mutual longing to create for a living and ends with them deciding the world is a “shitball” that wouldn’t know what to do with their art anyway.

  They leave the diner without paying.

  Henry’s books are known for their unique sketches at the top of each chapter, original drawings by the author herself. The artwork parallels the content of its respective chapter and is always done in the same signature style: a fine-point pen in a cross-hatch pattern.

  The single exception to this rule is Year of Me, Chapter 17.

  The sketch at the top of Chapter 17 is simple: two men, on either side of a booth in a diner. One has pancakes. One has a burger. It looks very similar to Henry’s other trademark drawings, identical almost. Except no cross-hatch. I’ve studied it under a magnifying glass to see if I’m missing something, if maybe the pattern used to be there but got changed somehow. I’ve scoured the Internet, but like the only forgery expert to spot some famous painting as fake, it seems I’m the only person in the wide universe to detect the stylistic departure of the sketch. Which leads me to wonder many things: Did Henry purposefully draw this one sketch differently? If so, why? And what, if anything, does it indicate about the chapter? Did Henry even draw it? If not, who did? And why?