The Learners: A Novel (No Series) (19 page)

Mimi squinted. “You mean like a taste test?”

“Exactly. I—”

“Ri-DIC-ulous!” roared Preston, suddenly incensed. I hadn’t even thought he’d been paying attention.

“Why?”

An anguished grimace, as if this was a personal attack. “No one wants to eat a SHOE. It’s outrageous! We haven’t had to do that since the Depression!”

Sketch, hand over mouth as if suppressing a cough, vibrated with noiseless laughter. Miss Preech hastily got to the business of erasing the last four lines from her steno pad. Hamlet’s tongue started in on Mimi’s left foot, slathering it with slow, long laps.

“Poop, I don’t think that’s what he means.” Mimi was almost apologetic. Then, with just the slightest doubt, “
Do
you, Tippy?”

Tip rubbed his eyes, in that I-would-KILL-for-a-drink-and-lunch-is-hours-from-now way of his. “Of
course
not.” Weary but determined. “What I mean is, let’s see what they think. Let’s try to establish an actual dialogue with potential customers. It’s something I’ve been mulling over a lot recently, and this would be the perfect chance to try it. I mean, why doesn’t anyone do this? It’s like we’re flying blind all the time. It’s one thing to do a handsome, nice-looking ad, but what if it doesn’t connect with its audience? Shouldn’t we endeavor to find out what, exactly, they want?”

Sketch didn’t look to be buying it, but kept mum.

“What
they
want?” Preston slammed his paper onto his lap. “They want a
shoe
! We already know that. Jesus, leaping, Christ.” Ware was prone to these occasional outbursts. Tip learned quickly to let them roll off his back, once he established the theory that they represented Preston’s redirected anger toward his wife, whose warmth and generosity of human spirit was rumored to make La Goddessa look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

Tip’s parents were psychiatrists.

“I beg to differ,” he countered, cool as a cuke, not ceding ground, “they want the
right
shoe, for
them
. We never know what they want until they’ve bought it. Or haven’t bought it. And then it’s too late.”

Ware met him head-on. “And how are we going to
find
these exalted shoe mavens, just dying to beat down our doors, imparting to us their heraldic wisdom on footwear?”

However bombastic, he had a point. Sketch stayed out of it, using the back of a Krinkle job ticket to doodle a masterful little scene of Hamlet drenched with blood and devouring Mimi’s right leg. So he’d seen it, too.

“They’ll find
us
.” Tip turned to Mimi, excited. “We’ll put an ad in the paper. That’s what we do, remember? Shoes are the great unifier. Everyone
has
to have them. Everyone has an opinion on them, whether they realize it or not. Our job is to pick their brains about it.”

I thought Tip was right on the money. Here is one very simple but incredibly important thing I figured out, even as a little kid: What people
really
want, no matter who they are, is someone to listen to them. Young or old, loaded or penniless, genius or simpleton, from the celebrated to the hopelessly obscure, from popes and kings to the scum of the earth—people have a
lot
on their minds, however trivial, and if you’re simply willing to sit there like a sack of dirt and let them yammer, they will tell it to you.

I am very good at listening. There’s a lot to be said for it, so to speak. For one thing, it’s much easier than having to think up anything on your own to say.

“Opinions are like lips,” spat Preston, opening his paper to the Bridge column. “Everyone has them.”

Mimi hesitated. “All right, Tips.” Victory. “But don’t get too spendy. No more than a C-spot on this. Total.”

“Gotcha. Thanks, Mrs. R.”

It ran the next day:

“So what are the refreshments?” I didn’t see any on Tip’s desk.

“Very, very special,” he said, dragging a spare office chair behind the card table he’d set up next to the window. “I have a fly swatter that’s been dipped in tar and gravel. After the interview I’ll give them a quick smack across the face with it. Who wouldn’t be refreshed by that?” Just then his intercom squelched to life. Miss Preech: “Your five o’clock is here. The respondent to the shoe ad. A Mr. Harshbarger.”

“Send him up.” Tip rubbed his hands listlessly. “Oh, I’m just
filled
with antisappointment.”

“Pardon?”

“Antisappointment. Anticipation colliding head-on with the certainty of its own doom.”

“Oh, don’t be so pessimistic.” I wished I meant it.

“Can I stay?”

“Please do. I’ll need a witness.”

“Ahem.” Outside the doorway, Miss Preech’s head bobbed up behind a large, ungainly fellow in a porkpie hat, red-and-black–plaid hunting jacket, and wide-wale caramel duck-patterned corduroys. Wisps of red hair peeked out behind each ear, and freckles dotted his alabaster cheeks, crimson-ringed by the crisp fall day.

“Marvin Harshbarger,” he bellowed amiably, removing his hat and thrusting out a hand the size of a bear trap.

Which was how Tip regarded it. “Pleasure.”

“Is this where I get the free shoes?”

Tip gleamed, with mild alarm. “I’m afraid that’s not in the offing, sir. You
are
here for the ad?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, with confidence, “but I thought I’d get shoes.”

“My dear fellow. What you will get will be far more valuable than a mere pair of dog sleds.”

He held his hat to his barrel chest and looked a little sad. “Like what?”

“Knowledge! The sustaining certainty that you have helped your fellow man, so selflessly.”

“Hmm.”

“What we are interested in, my colleague and I,” he nodded to me, “is to engage you, as a valuable potential customer, in a dialogue. We’d like to get your thoughts on shoes, in an effort to inform the direction of a current related project here. Okay? Do have a seat, please. Make yourself comfortable.”

“Okay, I guess.” Marvin Harshbarger released his sizable frame from the confines of the bulky woolen coat and draped it on the chair, swallowing it whole. Then he planted himself with a grunt.

Tip snatched the pencil from behind his ear. “All right, sir. First, we’re just going to do some simple word association. I’m going to dictate a series of words, then with each one, you just say whatever word pops into your head. Okay?”

“Does my word have to be about shoes?”

“No, of course not. It can be about anything. Whatever pops into your head.”

“Gotcha.”

Tip sat on the edge of his desk, legal pad in hand. “Ready?”

“Shoot.”

“Comfort.”

“Apples.”

“Hmm.” Tip jotted it down. “Feet.”

“Apples.”

“Durability.”

“Apples.”

“Style.”

A pause. “Apples.”

“Flexible.”

“App—”

“Mr. Harshbarger,” Tip cut in.

“Apples. Oh—Marvin, please.”

“Marvin,” he said, with gentle authority, “when I told you to say a word, I didn’t mean it had to be the same one, every time.”

“Oooohhhh. I git’ya. Right.” He flushed a bit. He was kind of sweet, actually, in a Baby Huey sort of way.

“So let’s try it again, yes?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” A breath. “Arches.”

“App—oops! Uh, artichokes.”

“Laces.”

“Lemons.”

“Value.”

“Vegetables.”

“Soles.”

“Sprouts.”

“Heel.”

“Horseradish.”

“Loafer.”

“Lettuce.”

“Buckle.”

“Beets.”

One could see where this was going. “Mr.—I mean, Marvin, if I may ask, what is your profession?”

“I own a produce business. Twelve years now.”

“Aha. Wonderful.” He shut his eyes in thought.

“Now let’s try something else.”

“Yessir.”

“Tell me, when you’re selecting a new pair of shoes, either in a store, or from a catalogue or an advertisement, what is it you look for most?”

“Steel toes.”

“Uh-huh.” Tip waited for more.

And waited. “That’s it?”

“Yup. You ever drop a fifty-pound crate of musk-melons on yer foot?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“Well, try it sometime.” With no warning, Marvin Harshbarger hiked up and extended his left leg and let it slam onto the table with a deadening clunk. He scrunched in the cuff of the corduroys to fully expose his shin-high tan leather rubber-soled work boot, laced tightly with black suede cord all the way to the tip of the tongue and festooned with a network of brass-fitted eyelets. From the size of it, it could have been one of Paul Bunyan’s. “LOOK at that craftsmanship.” His eyes shown with new, unwelcome enthusiasm. “Isn’t that something?”

Tip pretended to take notes. “It, it certainly is.”

“John Deere. Best tractor boot money can buy. Wanna see how much this sucker can take?”

“Oh, that won’t be necess—”

“Hah!” Marvin’s hand darted into his coat and removed…“Watch this.”…a small .22-caliber hunting pistol. He aimed it squarely at his left foot.

“NO!!” Tip erupted. “Mr. Harshbarger!!”

I instinctively dropped my notebook and ducked behind the filing cabinet.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Marvin said matter-of-factly, “I got a license for it.”

“THAT’S.” Tip cowered and held out his hand, as if staving off a beating. “That’s
not
the issue.” Gulping for air, “PLEASE put the, put it away. Please.”

Harshbarger rolled his eyes and pocketed the gun. “Okay.” He dropped his massive leg to the floor. “Now what?”

“Well, I think,” Tip looked at his watch and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, the cloth fluttering as he shook, “I think that about covers it, actually. Thanks.”

“Really? Already?”

“Oh, yes. We’ve accomplished so, so much. I can’t really think of anything else.” He glared at me, with post-traumatic élan. “Can you?”

All I could do was shake my head.

“Right. So.” Tip made like he was tallying up the data on his legal pad. “We have a very busy schedule, as I’m sure do you, Mr. Harshbarger. My sincerest thanks, you’ve been OH so helpful. You are a gentleman and a scholar.”

“Much obliged.” Marvin stood, pulled on his coat and hat, and began to lumber out. Something stopped him. “It said there’d be refreshments.”

I pictured the fly swatter, swiped swift and sharp across Marvin’s ample cheeks. Then, Tip and I face-down on the floor. Bleeding to death.

“Oh, yes,” replied Tip, his calm restored. “You have your choice: Kools or Lucky Strikes.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Kools, then? They’re filtered.”

He took the Kools.

If anything, it was downhill from there. The following two days’ worth of respondees consisted of: a toothless septuagenarian who smelled like an old bar rag and communicated exclusively with clicks of his tongue, high-pitched wheezes, and spasmodic sign language of his own invention; an out-of-work commercial truck driver from Mississippi named Ferd who responded to the ad because it had the word “discriminating” in it and declared, “I totally agree with y’all that it’s all the nee-grows’ fault” while manicuring himself with a rusty switchblade; and Ursula—a forty-three-year-old self-described ex-semi-professional wrestler-housewife and mother of four cats, who, when faced with the word association game instantly and without the slightest provocation burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably, full-on, for five minutes.