The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik

by David Arnold

  I have a lot of questions, but no answers, which I guess is what places it squarely in the camp of strangely fascinating.

  * * *

  I pretend not to see my family waiting for me by the front door of the library.

  At the help desk, I nod at a librarian, who is, quite possibly, typing at the actual speed of light.

  “May I help you?” he asks.

  More out of curiosity than anything, I picked up that slip of paper Sara had dropped. To anyone else, what was scribbled on it—TINAM, Coll ed.—might have seemed random and inconsequential. “I’m looking for the collector’s edition of This Is Not a Memoir, by Mila Henry,” I say. “I didn’t see it on the shelf.”

  The librarian gives me a look like I’m trying to pull one over on him. He leans across the counter, whispers, “Is there, like, a Mila Henry scavenger hunt I should know about? Because I want in on that shiznit.”

  “What?”

  “All right then, play it cool. But somebody’s one step ahead of you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve worked here four years, kid. Until today, no one has asked specifically about the collector’s edition of that book. And now two requests in the span of ten minutes. Anyway. It’s gone. She got it.”

  “Who?”

  The librarian’s face turns suddenly serious. “I can’t tell you that. Breach of policy.” He turns back to his computer, types like the wind, points to the screen. “There’s one at the Harold Washington Library—it’s the central Chicago branch. Want me to put a hold on it?”

  I’ve read This Is Not a Memoir a couple times, have a copy of it on my shelf at home. The story recounts, in first-person, Bigfoot’s battle with loneliness and depression. Given Henry’s subsequent reclusiveness, some speculate it may be more of a memoir than first believed. I remember hearing about a collector’s edition once, but it was either super rare or super expensive or both.

  So I say yes, and decide I’ll drive into the city on Saturday.

  On the ride home I opt out of the rear-facing bench seat, choose instead the privacy of the middle row, pull out my phone, and do some research. A couple rabbit holes later, and I find an expired sale on eBay with a slight description at the bottom:

  MILA HENRY’S FINEST—This Is Not a Memoir: A Memoir, COLLECTOR’S EDITION. Fringe imprint, only a few thousand published. 40+ page appendix. Never-before-seen pics of Henry and family. Beaucoup BONUS MATERIALS.

  Saturday can’t come fast enough.

  PRESENTING → PART FOUR

  Mod: You certainly have a way with words, Ms. Henry, silent or otherwise. In fact, some have called you the “female Kurt Vonnegut.” How do you like that title?

  Henry: Probably about as much as Kurt would if you called him the “male Mila Henry.”

  Partial transcript from “A Conversation with Mila Henry”

  Harvard, 1969

  (Henry’s last known public appearance)

  43 → Mark Wahlberg has a very refined palate

  “Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound saying that?”

  “It’s true, though. Remember, he used to eat anything? Even his own”—Penny scrunches up her nose and mouths, Poo. Then she grabs a piece of bacon off her plate. “Mostly fat, see? Here you go, Mark Wahlberg.” Penn drops the bacon onto the floor, where our dog sniffs it, tilts his head, and looks back up at Penny, leaving the bacon untouched.

  “Okay,” I say. “Yeah, that’s weird.”

  “Now watch,” says Penny, grabbing another piece of bacon, this time an especially meaty bite. She drops it onto the ground, where Fluff—or Mark freaking Wahlberg (what is my life)—gobbles it up immediately. “Crazy, right?”

  Mom joins us in the kitchen, pulls OJ out of the fridge, and pours herself a glass.

  “Mom, watch this,” says Penny. She does the bacon thing again, and the three of us watch Mark Wahlberg turn his nose up at the fatty piece and then eat the meaty piece. Mom seems more perplexed by Penny than anything, though.

  “Why are you calling him Mark Wahlberg?” she asks.

  “You know,” says Penny. “He just doesn’t seem like a ‘Fluff’ anymore, what with him not limping around and stuff.”

  “He has a limp?” asks Mom.

  “Well, no,” I say, eyeing Penny. “Not anymore.”

  Mom nods, clearly not on the same page. “So what’re you guys doing with your Saturday?”

  Penny stuffs the rest of the bacon into her mouth, talks through it. “‘I’m writing a check. You must have seen me write checks before.’”

  Mom looks at me for help; I shrug and shake my head, and she’s all, “Okay then. What about you?”

  “Driving to the city. I have a book on hold at the main library.”

  Penny’s eyes light up. “Can I come?”

  “No,” I say.

  Mom gives me that classic Mom look, the one that says, We know how this ends, don’t we? Thing is, I’ve genuinely been looking forward to the solitude. It would give me anywhere from forty-five minutes to an hour and a half (one way, depending on traffic) of solid think-time. Throw Penny in the mix and that’s out the window.

  “What about all those checks?” I say. “Those things don’t write themselves, you know.”

  “It’s a line from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which you wouldn’t know anything about.”

  “Fine,” I say. “You can come.”

  Penny jumps out of her chair, does this series of windmill motions where both arms simultaneously spin in opposite directions, the whole thing wildly out of control, until she brings her fists together by her chin and says, “Yaaaaasssssssssssssssssss.”

  I honestly don’t know how my sister survives middle school.

  * * *

  Penny insists on bringing Mark Wahlberg, and while I feign reluctance, I’m actually fine with it. Even before morphing into Fluff 2.0, he was too senile to really know what was going on when we put him in a car.

  “What’s that for?” I ask, watching Penny toss a suitcase into the trunk. It’s bright pink and has a giant skull on the front.

  “Nothing,” she says, climbing in the passenger seat. “You’ll see.”

  “Penny.”

  “What.”

  “Need I remind you of the last time you attempted a Mrs. Basil E. Frankfurter? When you tried to move into the skating rink?”

  “Frankweiler, darling. And no, you needn’t. That’s not what the suitcase is for.”

  A few minutes into the drive, when Penny mentions how weird it was that Mom didn’t remember Mark Wahlberg’s limp, it occurs to me that if Penny notices changes in our dog when no one else does, there’s a chance she’s noticed other stuff too. It would only make sense: if she is a constant, then it stands to reason she might recognize the variables.

  “So, Penn. What do you know about the scar on Mom’s face?”

  Penny calmly turns from the dog to me. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, like—has she told you about it?”

  “Uh. Right.”

  “What?”

  “Like anyone ever tells me anything.”

  “Okay, well. Do you know how long she’s had it?”

  “I don’t know. Not long, like . . . a month? Two, maybe?”

  Even though Penny can’t say how the scar came to be, the fact that it’s a new development to her is huge. That, plus her recognition of Mark Wahlberg’s miraculous evolution, has to mean something.

  “Have you noticed anything different lately, like sudden changes with your friends, or . . . stuff like that?” I ask.

  Penny doesn’t answer, just shifts in her seat to look out the window. “What’s going on with you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re asking some freaky questions, dude.” From the backseat Mark Wahlberg gi
ves a yip, to which Penny nods and says, “Took the words right out of my mouth, Mark Wahlberg.”

  “You know, we don’t always have to use his full name.”

  “What—we should call him Mark?” Penny giggles.

  “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  Penny rolls down her window, stretches her arm into the rushing air outside, lets the wind push it back and forth, up and down. “Strange weather,” she says. “You ever remember a November this warm?”

  I say, “I don’t, actually,” and then roll down my own window, stick my left arm out, and it’s like we’re little kids again, pretending our arms are wings, propelling our vehicle skyward.

  We don’t talk the rest of the flight into the city.

  44 → to the Wormhole, through the Wormhole

  The exterior of the Harold Washington Library is the opposite of the Iverton branch in almost every conceivable way. Namely, it looks less like a library and more like the architectural love child of an old museum and a maximum-security prison; I could see someone thinking it’s ugly, but I love it. And the inside is even better, with its Thoreau and Eliot quotes on the wall, its ten stories of bookshelves, nooks, and offices, and massive windows bathing the floors in natural light. And the rooftop terrace garden, my God, the rooftop terrace garden!

  Talk about getting library lost.

  We park a couple of blocks away and walk the distance in no time, which is good because it’s suddenly freezing outside. Seriously, like that—one minute we’re talking how strangely warm it is; the next it’s balls-to-the-wall cold, as if the weather gods simply needed a reminder.

  Penny waits outside with Mark Wahlberg while I run in to pick up the collector’s edition of This Is Not a Memoir. It takes a little longer than expected, because for some reason I get turned around. I’ve been here before, but when I go in what I thought was the front entrance, I find myself in the back hallway. Through the window I see traffic on State Street, which I could have sworn the library faced, but I must’ve been mistaken. I get straightened out, and five minutes later I’m back outside, book in hand.

  And now it’s snowing. Like, seriously.

  We hustle back to the car, where I crank the heat. “Confession,” Penny says, holding her hands up to the vents. “I had ulterior motives for wanting to come today.”

  “Okay.”

  “So there’s this coffee shop called—”

  “Penny.”

  “It has rave reviews, darling. Check your phone if you don’t believe me, and you know you love a good macchiato as much as the next guy.”

  “I don’t know what a macchiato is, Penn.”

  “Plus. Are you ready for this?”

  “I’m very sure I’m not.”

  “It has a DeLorean.”

  The déjà vu hits hard, followed by that flush-faced rush when reminded of something best forgotten.

  “It’s the car from Back to the Future,” says Penny, and I tell her I know, and she says something else, but Penny’s words swirl into the air, and it’s that peculiar sensation that so often accompanies me when I exit the robot, and the thing is: I am sure I walked in the front entrance of the Harold Washington Library.

  “Noah,” says Penny, her voice soft and here again, and now her tiny cold hand is on mine. “You okay?”

  I fold myself up like a piece of paper, edges and corners properly aligned, now back inside you go. “The Wormhole, right?”

  “Yeah,” Penn says. “You’ve heard of it?”

  I pull up the address on my phone, start driving in that direction, and try to block out the voice of an inebriated kid I met, a kid I foolishly followed home, a kid responsible for the ever-widening chasm in my brain. What I would do, the voice says, for immediate transportation to the Wormhole right now.

  * * *

  So as it turns out, the coffee shop does not allow dogs inside, which of course Penny already knew, because she’d called ahead.

  Enter: the pink skull suitcase.

  “No way,” I say. Penny unzips her suitcase and ushers Mark Wahlberg into it. “Penn, you can’t walk around with a dog in your suitcase.”

  As if to prove me wrong, Mark Wahlberg hops inside. I found street parking; we’re currently on the sidewalk a few doors down from the Wormhole.

  “Now take a nap, Mark Wahlberg,” Penn says. “We won’t be long.”

  He’s small, so there’s actually plenty of room, but that’s not my primary concern. “Can he even breathe in that thing?”

  “Don’t be dramatic, Noah.”

  “I doubt Mark Wahlberg would consider it a dramatic question.”

  She zips up the sides of the suitcase, leaving the top part open. “You good in there?” she asks, peering down inside.

  A little yip.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  And so my twelve-year-old sister wheels our dog into a coffee shop where she orders a quad Cuban-shot espresso macchiato like it’s nothing, all while wearing a pink Marilyn Monroe tee and mismatched Toms, and I’d say the look on the barista’s face sums up my own feelings at the moment: Where did this girl come from?

  I order a cold brew, and we sit on a green leather couch. The Wormhole is easily the coolest coffee shop I’ve ever seen, like the eighties exploded and landed in little pieces everywhere: it’s all Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice posters, Millennium Falcons and time-travel paraphernalia, a wood-paneled TV with a Nintendo game menu on the screen, an ancient boxy computer next to the sugar, a catalog of floppy disks next to the half-and-half, and yes—an actual DeLorean. I’d had a hard time envisioning a car—any car—inside a coffee shop. But there it is, parked on top of a high platform right next to our couch like it owns the place.

  “I was born in the wrong decade,” says Penny.

  “You may have been born in the wrong dimension, Penn.”

  “Appropriate you should bring that up here.”

  “Appropriate how?”

  She sips her macchiato from a tiny mug. “We are in the Wormhole.”

  “Of course you know about wormholes.”

  “Noah. Darling. I’m not a complete barbarian. I’ve read A Wrinkle in Time.”

  “Well, I’m a complete barbarian, then.”

  “Wait, you mean . . .”

  “Never read the book. Never saw the movie.”

  “You are shitting me.”

  “Don’t say shitting, Penn.”

  She sets her mug on the coffee table by our couch. “Okay, so I’ll just explain wormholes the way they explain it to Meg in A Wrinkle in Time.”

  You have to love a kid who shrugs off someone’s understanding of a concept if that understanding doesn’t come from their favorite book.

  “In the book they call it a tesseract, but it’s really just a wormhole.” Penny points to a little square napkin on the table. “If a bug was at one end of the napkin and wanted to get to the other end”—she points to the opposite corner—“in three dimensions, it would have to walk the length of the napkin. But if you do this”—Penn picks up the napkin, folds the two corners together—“suddenly he’s there. It’s way more complex than all that, though. Einstein and some other guy came up with it. It’s just a theory, completely impractical, obviously.”

  I sip my iced coffee to hide the smile on my face. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why do you like Audrey Hepburn so much?”

  She thinks on it for a second. “Why do you like David Bowie so much?”

  “He was completely fine being himself no matter what.” What a rarity that a knee-jerk response would also be the truest. “Musicians evolve, but no one evolved like Bowie. Don’t get me wrong—not all his evolutions were for the better. He had some terrible phases, but they’re forgivable because that’s who he was at the time. And I thin
k people are drawn to that. True Bowie fans aren’t really fans—they’re believers.”

  “So you’re a believer?”

  “Yeah, I am. The man was a walking revolution, decades ahead of his time on things like gender identity and sexual identity and just general identity, which is probably why that’s the first thing I thought when you asked the question.”

  “He was fine being whoever he was.”

  “Pathological authenticity. That’s the goal. And I mean, the music was just . . . When Bowie was good, he was better than everyone else.”

  Penny nods, a loose strand of wild hair falling in her face. “Do you think I’m . . . pathologically authentic?”

  That smile breaks through, and strangely, I feel the impulsive urge to cry. “Penn, any more authentic and you’d be too real to handle.”

  And now she can’t stop her smile. She polishes off the last of her macchiato and then checks on Mark Wahlberg, who is, apparently, napping happily. “I think I like Audrey Hepburn because of what I said before about being born in the wrong decade. I don’t know if life was like that, like in her movies. I don’t know if people really talked that way. Or dressed like that. But I like to think so. Because if things were like that then, maybe they can be like that again.”

  Sometimes talking with a sibling is like hiking in a foreign country only to round a corner and find your house. Penny and I are so different in so many ways—and yet, I know this place well.

  “How do you do it?” she asks.

  “Do what?”

  She clears her throat. “Never mind.”

  “Come on.”