The Learners: A Novel (No Series) Read Online Free

filled in. Or just slits. And how close they are to the nose. But you know all that. Don’t you think Harold Gray changed everything, with Orphan Annie?”
    A grunt. “He got a lot of it from McCay. Most everyone has.”
    “Who?”
    “You don’t know Winsor McCay? Little Nemo?” Scandalized. Stern with me: “ In Slumberland. ”
    “Oh, our paper at home doesn’t carry him.”
    He very politely and ineffectively tried to look like I hadn’t just said something really, really stupid. Then he pretended I hadn’t said anything at all, and turned the page…
    …to my sketches for ketchup and mustard dispensers. Shaped like torsos.
    “Those would be molded out of soft plastic,” I said.
    “Like what they use for Frisbees, only more flexible? People should be able to squeeze them—I think that’s the future. We shake things—bottles, now, because they’re glass. But at some point I think they won’t be, because glass breaks and doesn’t give. Plastic’s the opposite. I think things should be squeezed. I’d rather be squeezed than shaken. Wouldn’t you?” Good Lord, what was wrong with me?
    Our eyes locked in an ersatz standoff, and his crippled smile and his eyebrows reaching for his scalp betrayed the thought that one half of me was starkers and the other was the sanest person in the world.
    “Heh, yep.” He closed the leather flaps.
    “I-” I stammered, desperate, desperate, “Mr. Spear, is there any chance that, you could—”
    “Well, like I said,” gazing at his shoes, “I could use the help, and we’ve got a desk.” He looked over at a small drawing table in the corner I hadn’t noticed before. It was smudged with ink and dotted with mummified bits of masking tape and it was all I ever wanted and its beauty mocked me. My pulse went from 45 to 78 rpm. “But I’ll have to teach you how to use a ruling pen. You’re holding it wrong. You a lefty?” I nodded. “Thought so—you’re overcompensating, and the uniformity of the line thickness is suffering. Need to keep your elbow down, close to your side.” He gestured and dropped his head again. “But Mrs. Rakoff’ll have to approve a new hire. She’s the boss lady. Can you,” hesitant, slightly tensing, “can you come back tomorrow morning?”
    Rats. Another four hours up and back in the train? Come on, I’m so close . “Actually, is there any way I could see her today? I’ll wait however long. It’s just that tomorrow…I have another interview.” At my dentist’s, where he would inevitably ask me why I haven’t been getting at the backs of my rear molars, so it wasn’t a lie.
    “Hmm.” Even tenser. “Wait here a sec.” He took my portfolio. After five minutes, he still hadn’t returned, so I screwed up the nerve to stand and look at what was on his drawing table.
    Holy smoke. The work surface itself was filthy, but taped to it was a pristine piece of illustration board, emblazend with a new pen-and-ink full-page Krinkle Kutt layout. Near completion. To say it was only a newspaper ad was to say that the Bayeux Tapestry was simple reportage. Under a script banner that read KRINKLE IS KING!, this time His Highness Potato Chip loomed over an enslaved realm of hundreds of mini-pretzels, a networked multitude, each in a tiny harness connected to a massive chariot bearing their enormous conqueror, beaming in tater triumph. It was the snack version of Exodus, a panorama of—
    “Don’t look at that.” In the doorway. Not angry—no…embarrassed. Embarrassed to be alive. “I can’t draw.”
    Right. And Sinatra can’t sing. Was he serious?
    “Please.”
    Oh. That face: a rictus of apology, shame. Yes, he was. It made me want to fix the world. For him.
    “Uh, sorry. I was just sneaking a look. This is…incredible. Just breathtaking. I mean…”
    It was like I’d slapped him.
    “She can see us. I think,” he said, not at all convincingly, and motioned for me to follow. We went downstairs, to the second floor.
    I’d