The Learners: A Novel (No Series) (8 page)

The ad had been running every day now for three weeks, and no order to stop it—by far the longest life of anything I’d worked on. Shamelessly, I’d hunt it down each morning in the
Register
like a parent looking for his child on the crowded stage of a kindergarten play. Where was it? Next to the Red Sox scores? Above the movie listings? Below Dear Abby? No…there it is, by the horoscopes! Yoo-hoo! Daaaarling!

I’d clip its entire host page, fold it in fours, and add it to the growing stack next to my tool tray. In case I needed them for reference, to study how it looked in the context of the other ads next to it. At least that’s what I told myself.

Ridiculous. It was just a dumb solicitation, a type-heavy, glorified want ad. Forget it. Let it go.

And for a while, I did.

“So, what you’re telling me is, you lost my rhinoceros head. Is that what you’re telling me?”

By the beginning of July things were going pretty well, so I guess it was inevitable: Himillsy Dodd chose then to come back into my life. In her own special way.

“You said importing it through you guys would be no problem. That’s a three-hundred-dollar rhinoceros head, pal. They don’t grow on
trees
.”

Now, some of you might be wondering why I haven’t mentioned her before. There are many reasons, but for those who are unfamiliar—she takes over whenever she’s involved. Or, as she once put it (muttered in sotted distaste at a Phi Delt mixer back at school):
“I am the corpse at every wedding, I am the bride at every funeral.”
And this was to be no exception.

“Three centuries, buddy. Cough him up.”

We’d met my freshman year at State. She was a junior. I was captivated. And she was, too—at least that’s what she led me to believe. Together we went through an art school bootcamp the likes of which neither of us expected, and we came out of it booted—me out of every preconception about art and design that I ever had, and she from sanity (and the school) altogether. Our parting was not an easy or coherent one, chiefly because of what I’d perceived, over the phone, to be her total nervous breakdown. Which I admit I played a part in, however unwittingly. For Himillsy, living dangerously was the only way to live. And me, I’m practically a crossing guard. More than once I’d spoiled her fun, rescuing her from something she didn’t want to be saved from. And who is ever forgiven for that? I was her unwanted conscience, the Jiminy Cricket to her Pinocchio, forever doing her good turns. For that alone I suppose she had every right to hate me.

Then nothing, no contact for the next three years. But she was never far from my thoughts, from the moment of our first meeting.

“What do you mean, ‘We know where it is’? I know what that means: On Earth. Somewhere between here and the tiny Republic of Togo.
Jesus
.”

Here’s what I did know, long before I ever came to Connecticut: Himillsy had grown up just twenty minutes away, in Guilford, and her family still lived there (they were listed). I’d mused that with any luck she might even be still living with them. And I had an eye on getting in touch once I got my feet on the ground, as it were. Once I got the nerve.

And now the nerve had gotten
me
.

“Enough of you. Where’s your supervis—” She turned, and finally saw me, standing in the checkout line of the campus Art Depot, clutching six jars of fluorescent egg tempera to my chest on a summer Saturday afternoon. Neither of us could believe it. Our eyes met, vaporizing three years in three seconds. “Oh. My. God.” Her face hadn’t changed—Betty Boop meets cute with the Dragon Lady. Ditto her figure, size zero in a sleeveless linen cocktail dress the color of dried mustard. A tiara of Ray-Bans perched over her forehead. Mascara applied with a trowel and a quivering hand.

“Uh—” I replied, a reflex.

“Since
when
,” she started, staggering toward me, her eyes dark with horrified concern, “have you been painting with
fluorescent
colors?”

“Since
when
,” I countered, leaving the queue, “do you have a rhinoceros head?”

“I
don’t
have it. Haven’t you been paying attention? The simpletons in charge of this salvage sale have lost it.” She clicked her tongue in disgust. “Can you imagine? It’s the size of a large dwarf and weighs two hundred pounds. It’s like losing the front end of a DeSoto.”

The manager eased toward her, cautiously. “Ma’am, I…I keep telling you, it’s not lost. It’s being held in Customs.”

Oh, I thought, you poor man. You have no idea who or what you’re dealing with.

“
Cus
toms? What, are they waiting for the
rest
of it to show up?”

“Miss Dodd,” I said, calmly, “science has shown us that the severed rhinoceros head is the breeding ground of choice for the notorious and deadly tsetse fly. One nostril alone could comfortably house an entire colony. Surely this would be of grave concern to our government.”

The manager gaped at me, desperate with gratitude for any explanation, however untenable. “Yes! That’s it exactly.”

She shouldered her slate Chanel purse and smoothed her ebony Lulu helmet of hair. “You were always like that,” she sneered at me. “Always.”

“What, right?”

“No.
Infuriating
.” Her scowl melted into a sly grin and she made for the door, pausing to address the manager. “I’ll be back in a week and that head had better be here. Or I’ll have yours.” And, jerking
her
lovely head in my direction, out she went.

I hastily abandoned the paint jars to the nearest shelf and followed. As I did in the old days.

My whole body was smiling. Himillsy, you’re here.

You’re really here.

The proprietors of Pepe’s Pizza on Wooster Street boldly claim that they, and only they, originated this most ubiquitous of delectations here in the United States, and more specifically, in New Haven. Which may or may not be true, but this much is indisputable: they are not open for lunch. Dinner only, the bastards.

So Himillsy suggested (proclaimed, actually) that we go to Modern Apizza (pronounce “Abeetz”), their biggest rival in town for the crust crown. They start serving at noon.

“Besides, it’s better,” she said, gunning the engine of her Corvair, “the sauce has more tang. Everyone’s afraid to say it.” The “but not me” went unsaid. It always did.

I was still in a kind of shock—were I to wake up in my bed in the next second, Himillsy gone like a smoke ring, I would not have been surprised.

But there she sat, as real as three years ago when we used to cruise down College Avenue: head scarcely clearing the dashboard, lacquered ebony fingernails orbiting the stick shift, the world behind her racing past, ever trying to keep up.

God, Hims. If there’s a word for how much I’ve missed you, it’s not in my vocabulary.

“Stop staring at me. I’m not the Hottentot Venus.”

“Sorry. It’s just that—”

“And what happened to your neon paint? Lose your nerve?”

“I put it on hold. Something came up.”

“Did it. And that would be…?”

“The human equivalent.”

She chuckled dryly, pulled over onto State and into a spot across the street from the restaurant. After she turned the engine off, she hesitated, chortling: “
In
human, darling.”

She didn’t bother with the menu. “We’ll have a large red, light on the motz, quarters: sausage, mushrooms, onions, pepperoni. Extra sauce. And two Rocks.”

We got the last booth before the rush. Dean Martin oozed “That’s Amore” over the loudspeakers. The impasto paintings of the Ponte Vecchio and the Leaning Tower of Pisa were fifth-rate, but the perfume of broiled garlic and simmering San Marzano tomatoes wafting from the ovens was perfection. A waitress in a red-and-white–checkered gingham number that matched the tablecloths planted the beers in front of us.

Himillsy shook out a Lucky Strike and returned her sunglasses to their upright position. “Did you ever think about brains?”

“What?”

“I’m in a brain phase. Brains are
just
amazing. I’m crazy for them. I’ve been making scads of brains, whole regiments, out of Plasticine.”

“Brains.”

“In all sizes. And colors.”

“Except fluorescent.”

“Especially NOT fluorescent.” She flicked open her Reddy Kilowatt Zippo and sparked her cigarette. “Too much to bear. But you really ought to consider brains. Dangerously overlooked. You’re missing out, trust me.”

“How so?”

“Well, first of all,” she was really fired up now, a martinet on a mission: “did you know that we only use ten percent of our brains? It’s totally amazing. One. Tenth. The rest is pure mystery.”

We hadn’t seen each other for a third of a decade. Why were we talking about
this
? “And just how was that proven, exactly?”

“Easily. Look at all of human history.”

“You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Why? Mankind sure hasn’t. We’re a bunch of lunkheads! I mean really, just look at the past ten years—Styrofoam, McCarthy, Disneyland, the Korean War, Liberace, frozen spaghetti. Come
on
. I seriously doubt we use even ten percent, most of the time. It’s the geniuses that can tap into the rest—
that’s
what’s interesting. I’ve been doing brain exercises.”

“Have you now.”

“Don’t laugh. I’m very serious.”

Should I say it? “Actually…it’s bunk.”

It was as if I’d just spilled the beans on Santa Claus to a five-year-old. “What is?”

“The ten percent thing. We learned it in second-year Psych. There’s still a lot they don’t know, for sure, but it’s a common misconception, since the turn of the century. When they were finally able to study it with any accuracy.”

She was not liking this. Not one bit.

Might as well continue. “See, the fact is that only ten percent of your brain cells are
neurons
, the key cells used in learning. And of those, only ten percent of your neurons can fire at any given time, or else your head would explode. When someone has a seizure, that’s what’s happening.”

I could practically see the steam shoot out of her ears. Instead, smoke issued in mighty plumes from her nose—she the dragging dragon.

“It’s not fair to be actually
informed
on the subject,” she hissed, crushing out her smoke for emphasis. “You have no manners.”

“Well, I’m—”

“ANYway, brains are my thing right now and that’s that.” She threw back a healthy slug of brew. “I think they’re beautiful. I’ve changed the name of our cat to Bulbous Medulla. He’s having none of it, but tough titty, kitty.” Then: “All right, smartyboots. So what are you doing here?”

“Having lunch, I hope.”

“Cretin.” She fired off two matches together from the side of a Modern’s tinderbox, lit up, inhaled. “To what does the godforsaken necropolis of New Haven owe your divine intervention?”

“Can’t you guess? I got a job. At that advertising agency. Spear, Rakoff and Ware, on Trumbull Street.”