The Learners: A Novel (No Series)

by Kidd, Chip

  Sketch simmered, pipe clenched tightly in teeth. Reining it in. For now.

  Because here was the thing about Sketch: He could and would denigrate his own work savagely, mercilessly, nearly out of existence. But if someone else did, look out. We had a lot of other accounts that were just busy work and we all knew that, but Krinkle was special. Krinkle was his valve—feeding his heart and releasing its boiler room’s buildup of considerable steam. The Krinkle ads were sacred, untouchable.

  Weren’t they?

  “Look,” Lenny said, wearily pragmatic, “we’ll go with a couple of these for now. We’ve got to run something starting tomorrow,” shooting Dick an annoyed glance, “we’ve already paid for the space.” He perched his hat on his head, signaled for Stankey to hustle up. “But I want this re-thought. And soon. Let’s meet again in a week.”

  Maybe I was imagining it, but a thin, invisible fog of fear seemed to descend over the office. A hastily assembled, closed-door meeting in Mimi’s office—to which I was not summoned—bore this out. No doubt about it: Lenny Plupp was trouble.

  An hour afterward, with the phonograph cranked and Jelly Roll Morton restoring the calm, Sketch ruled up a board and scoffed. “Just another giggle-shit account rep in his tighty whites, doing cartwheels for Daddy. Seen a million of ’em.”

  Tip wasn’t so sure. We discussed it the next day after Sketch left for lunch. “I’d agree, except Stankey is deferring to him. It would appear Pluppy’s in charge. And if so, not good. The Meems will call in a cease and desist, but I don’t like it, not one bit.”

  “Well, I—” My phone rang. Miss Preech: “There’s a call for you on line one.”

  “Who is it, please?”

  “A Mr. Dodd. He said it’s important.”

  Whoa. I signaled to Tip that I needed to take it. He bolted. “Put him through, thanks…Hello?”

  “Hi there.”

  “Levin.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you at work. I lost your home number. Is this an inconvenient time?” I’d given him my card before we parted. He sounded completely different now than at the funeral. Composed, sturdy, confident.

  “No, not at all.”

  “I just wanted to apologize.”

  “Heavens, what for?”

  “I made a damn fool of myself at the funeral.”

  “Oh, nonsense. Please, I mean—”

  “Look, I’ve been thinking. It’s not just that. I’m not going to be here much longer. I’ve got to get back to Cambridge for the fall. There’s something I want to talk to you about. But.”

  “What.”

  He hesitated. “Not over the phone. You’d said about getting together. Let’s meet for a drink?”

  “Of course. Can you make it into New Haven?”

  “That’s fine. How’s your Thursday?”

  “Thursday’s good. I get off work at six.”

  “Aces. Let’s meet at the Taft. See you then.”

  The Tap Room at the Taft Hotel, on Chapel Street, was like every hotel bar at a university in the off-season. It reflected the gloom of lonely, well-heeled souls who take single rooms for the night. Deserted and bracing itself for the impending fall semester deluge. At six fifteen on Thursday, Levin was waiting for me in a booth in the rear. As he stood and we shook hands, exchanged muted greetings, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was meeting a ghost. And that weird familiarity about him, I just couldn’t place it. Maddening. After we ordered drinks I gathered the strength to speak before he had a chance to. “I need to ask you a very strange question, forgive me.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you and Himillsy have a little brother, named…De Vigny?”

  All he was able to say, with squinted eyes, was, “You mean like the French poet?”

  Well, that answered that. Would I have the guts to follow through with this, to tell him the truth? As in: “Bingo! You see, Levin, in case you didn’t know, at school your sister, that lovable kook, invented your death as an infant in order to fetishize you as a piece of uncannily molded rubber in the shape of a human baby, with which she then became psychotically obsessed. Yes, she was quite a card.” Oh God. I would never have that kind of strength. Instead: “Yes, the French poet. Never mind. Uh, how about…”

  “Hmm?”

  “A rhinoceros head. Did she mention a rhinoceros head?”

  That really, really alarmed him. And not because he knew what I was talking about. “A what?”

  My line of questioning was not helping me. “Sorry, skip it. So, you were saying, on the phone?”

  “Right. Well, I know this is going to sound bonkers. But.”

  A pause. I didn’t dare interrupt.

  “I really thought about this. It’s been all I’ve been able to think about for days, Christ knows. And I want you to keep this quiet. Not that you’d.” He was keeping the tears at bay. Just barely. “I mean, I have reason to believe…” Then he brought himself to look me in the eyes.

  “…Himillsy wasn’t trying to kill herself. Not really.”

  Uh-huh. She just locked herself in the garage and gunned the engine of her Corvair and went to sleep forever in order to live life to the fullest. Levin, you poor thing.

  I did not say this. I didn’t have to.

  “Look, I just thought you should know that.” Reversion: He was the distraught little boy at the funeral again.

  “But what. I mean, why do—”

  “Because Mums—I mean, my mother—was due home that day at six. From tennis. She always is, on Fridays, like clockwork.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not being clear. I really don’t know who else to talk to about this. I’ve just been so frazzled, and here I nearly tackled you after the service.”

  “Please, not another word about that. It was perfectly natural.” Sort of. But regardless, it bound us together, and I needed it. I’d grown deeply grateful for it, actually. In the past week since the funeral I’d convinced myself that Levin and I were the only two people there, the only two in the world, who really mourned her properly. The only ones who understood.

  “Thanks.” He absentmindedly took the salt cellar from its little wire cage. “I don’t know how much you know, but I take it Millsy’s death really hit you hard, too, so I wanted to tell you this.” And shook a thin layer of white crystals onto the table next to his glass.

  “The cops estimate she started the engine sometime between five thirty and six. Mums should have walked right into it. It’s so obvious.” He slowly ran his finger through it, forging a path. “But she didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Christ. Bunny Williams asked her over for postmatch stingers to see her new dahlia beds. With Pops away at a conference, and me gone to the Cape for the weekend, she didn’t see the harm.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “She didn’t make it home till eight.” Scarcely a whisper: “That was that.”

  Silence.

  Which I then broke. “So you think that…”

  “I think she wanted,” he closed his eyes, made himself say it: “Himillsy wanted to be saved. By her.” There was more than a little anger coursing through that last sentence. As in “not me.”

  I knew exactly how he felt.

  So much for staving off the tears, which he dabbed with a napkin. “I truly believe that. That’s what’s so unbearable. They were always at each other’s throats, and I think this was her way of saying, ‘I want to start over.’ I know that sounds crazy.”

  “No. Not…” Not for her. How to say it with any tact? “Not…completely. I wonder…”

  “What.”

  “Well, had they fought recently? Was this a response to something like that?”

  “No, you see, that’s the thing. They hadn’t had one of their dustups in an age. And yet,” he stumbled over the words, “at the same time…something was eating at her. I could see it. In the last couple of weeks. Something more than usual.”

  And that was saying
a lot. Upon reflection, during the remaining years of school it became obvious that Himillsy was fueled as much by demons as she was by her considerable creative fire. What exactly they were and where they came from I couldn’t say, but there was definitely some kind of perpetual war she was waging. With her teachers, with her boyfriend Garnett, ultimately with me. No one was spared, not even herself. And now I saw: That went double for her family; Levin, too. That was the origin of his ineffable sadness. To look at him was to visit the sorry source of doomed devotion itself. To recognize what a glorious pinprick it was to love Himillsy.

  Like looking into a mirror. “Do you have any idea what it was?”

  “No, I’ve been racking my brain.” He lit a Lucky Strike, offered me one. Which I took, for consistency’s sake. “If anything, things were looking up. She was doing a little painting again. She was enrolled in some correspondence art courses, which we’d been at her to do for years. She was finally back on track to get a degree.”

  I am dirt. I am the worst person in the world. I have failed you, Hims. Again. I would have been there at six on the dot. I swear. I would have eagerly trampled Bunny Williams’s dahlia-choked corpse to get to you.

  Ahem. So why didn’t you, exactly?

  Now wait a minute. That is not fair.

  “Um, would you like another?” Levin’s voice rang like a referee’s bell, signaling the end of this round. He waved to the bartender.

  “Oh. Sure. Sorry about that. Drifted there a sec.”

  We needed to talk about something else. I asked him what was in Cambridge. He was about to start his second year at Harvard Law, with a concentration on copyright legislation. He was as sharp and focused as Himillsy was adrift. At close to eight thirty he looked at his watch.

  “Shoot. Gotta run.”

  Rats. There was so much more I wanted to tell him. I gathered that Himillsy led a rather segregated life, and he didn’t seem to know much about anything that happened to us at State. I thought he’d get a kick out of hearing about it. Perhaps another time, which probably meant never. He paid the tab, ignoring my protests to at least split it, and I walked him to the parking lot.

  We stopped at a storm-sky blue MGA roadster. Leather interior the shade of bricks in the late-afternoon sun. Another world. I shook his hand. “Listen, thanks. Thanks for telling me that. It.”

  He waited for me to continue. I think he knew where this was going.

  “It helps me,” now I was going to cry. Don’t, don’t. “Helps me to forgive her.” I wiped my eyes as inconspicuously as possible.

  “Yes, that’s it exactly,” he said, sniffling. “That’s what I was hoping.” He fumbled with his keys, opened the door. “Keep in touch.” The way he said it, I rather doubted I’d ever see him again. Everything about him said he was eager for a life away from here, now with more reason than ever.

  And as he folded himself into the driver’s seat of the compact, I finally figured out who he looked like, why he made me so sad, who he reminded me of. A mirror, yes.

  It was me.

  At the office a week later, I was just about to dash out for a quick bite at Louie’s Lunch when Tip stuck his head in the door and announced, in his best Jeeves voice:

  “La Goddessa would like a word with you.”

  Miss Preech. If it was ever true that a woman could be beautiful only when she was angry, then Miss Preech was absolutely ravishing, twenty-four hours a day. Tip had christened her “the Goddess of Love,” which eventually evolved into “la Goddessa d’Amor,” then just shortened to Goddessa. Hers was a realm ruled with exquisite displeasure.

  Damn. What did I do now? When I got to her desk she was polishing off a tuna sandwich with the crusts trimmed and scanning TV Guide. She leveled her gaze at me with mild irritation and plucked something up from a pile of grocery circulars.

  “Do you want me to mail this? You forgot to put postage on it.” A standard letter-size envelope, with a “return to sender” mark where the stamp should be.

  My head, jammed with a catalog’s worth of layout schemes for next week’s circular for the Food Clown’s Bulk Bargain Blowout, alloyed with the ever-present desire to escape the piercing plain of the Goddessa’s thoughts altogether, led me to issue a terse, “Sure. Thanks.”

  But by the time I was halfway to George Street, my brain was filing the catalog away for safe keeping, and underneath it lay the envelope.

  Which I had no memory of.

  One of the simple perks of working at an office is personal use of its services, of which I almost never took advantage. As opposed to Tip, who would have had every tooth in his head ripped out and replaced with filed and polished shards of platinum if he thought he could charge it to the Sparklebrite toothpaste account. But I hadn’t yet grown the guts to send private correspondence through the agency. So what was that letter? I hadn’t studied it carefully at all, but the addressee and the return address had been handwritten. Which…I had seen before. I knew that now.

  I was already turned back, pace quickening exponentially, as I tried to make sense of things. Something about it was registering panic. I had to see that letter again. I had to.

  I sprinted the last block. Breathless, buzzing my way in. “Miss Preech, have you sent that letter?”

  Dictaphone clinging to her head for dear life, fingers dancing on hot coal keys, she announced, not deigning to look at me, “It hasn’t been picked up yet.”

  “Thank GOD,” I said, too loudly. “I mean, could I take a look at it? I need to check something.”

  She tilted her frosted pate at the out mailbox. With a sense of guilt whose origins I couldn’t name, I plucked it, for inspection. And my blood became ether.

  The handwriting was Himillsy’s.

  The return address read my name, care of the firm. The addressee was:

  H. DODD INDUSTRIES, INC.

  Guilford, Conn. 06378

  I staggered up the steps to my desk. How, how could this be? I laid it on my drawing table gently, like it was a Fabergé egg. Or a time bomb. Was I supposed to send this back to her? No wait, that didn’t make sense. No, this was her way of sending something to me. But what?

  The impulse to just let it lie there and remain forever unopened held the allure of vicarious superiority.

  Right. Like you’re going to do that.

  Damn. I took my X-Acto knife and tremulously slit it up the right side, opposite the return address. I bowed the envelope and shook out the contents. Two pieces of paper floated onto the desk. One was folded.

  It was the ad. My ad, for the Yale psych experiment, clipped from the Register. The other was a recipe torn from McCall’s magazine, with the headline “Lemon Sandies to Die For!” Under which it had been scrawled, with a red pen, in Himillsy’s unmistakably manic hand:

  IT’S TRUE!!

  That was it. No note, nothing else.

  So much for forgiveness. The questions took over.

  How did she send it to me without paying postage? And from beyond the grave?

  Self-explanatory. Our fine postal pushers aren’t exactly smart enough to send Sputnik into orbit. I sent this weeks ago. Then they bounced it back to where they thought it came from originally. I knew it would take those chowder-heads forever to process it. And I wasn’t supposed to croak in the first place, remember?

  What did it mean, what was I supposed to do with it?

  Well now, that’s for you to figure out, isn’t it?

  Was this just a dumb joke, or was she trying to tell me something? And if so, WHAT, for Chrissakes?

  See above, dick stain. Besides, you’re only imagining all of these answers anyway. Adios for now! Vaya con queso!

  Bitch. Unforgivable bitch.

  My first thought was to call Levin. And I almost did. But with my finger hovering over the dial I thought better of the idea. It wasn’t like I’d received a coherent, impassioned good-bye letter, which wouldn’t have been her style anyway. It was a confusing, baffling, reminder of her questionable sanity. A
nd Levin’s life was troubled enough. Why inflict this on him? No.

  I decided: This gesture, whatever it meant (probably nothing), was between Himillsy and me, period.

  It would be best that way. Best forgotten as soon as possible.

  “Here’s to you, maestro of the marking pen.” Tip clinked his martini glass into Sketchy’s frosted mug of Rheingold ale.

  “Hear hear! Many happy returns,” I followed suit with my gin and tonic.

  “Skol,” he said, quietly.

  Sketch famously hated any sort of fuss whatsoever on his birthday, but Tip managed to talk him into allowing the two of us to take him after work to his favorite dive bar, Saluzo’s, on Wooster Street in Little Italy. Great burgers, white paper tablecloths just perfect for doodling, and best of all for Tip—the perfect name. “It sounds like some juiced-up lush trying to pronounce ‘sleazy losers.’ Genius.”

  “Lookin’ good, Speary.” Billy Saluzo Jr., the bar-keep, gave us the thumbs-up. “First round on the house.”

  “Yes, I honestly don’t know how you do it, Sketcher,” purred Tip, “you look like a million lire.”

  “Don’t listen to him.” I gave Sketch’s arm a gentle nudge. “How does it feel to be fifty-seven?”

  “Heh. Just a smidge better than it will feel to be fifty-eight. If I live that long.”

  “God, and I’m going to be forty any minute. It’s tragic.” Tip frowned. “Do you realize that when Mozart was my age he’d already been dead for five years?”

  I couldn’t resist. “And you’re going to join him soon if you keep chain-smoking like that.”

  “Oh, tosh. Do you want to know something?” Some people spoke volumes. Tip spoke leaflets. “You don’t actually live longer by giving up smoking. It just seems longer.” He ignited the end of a Pall Mall in defiance. “Honestly, if I read one more thing about the possible effects of smoking, I’m going to give up reading.”