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

never seen an office door quite like it, not in the art department at State or anywhere else. It was pink. Even the lettering on the rippled glass.
    MILDRED MITCHELL RAKOFF
    PRESIDENT
    And I mean PINK. A pink like we could get irradiated from standing here for more than five minutes. Sketch knocked gingerly, as if he was reading my mind.
    “Yes?” From inside. Muffled yet piercing.
    “It’s me.” He shyly turned the knob, cracked the door, eased in, closed it. In the hallway, I strained to hear, but could only make out parts of her end of the discussion. Which were not encouraging. The phrases “second thoughts,” “I know what I said but,” “we don’t need to,” and most oddly, “talk to the shoe!” told me I’d be on the 2:58, one-way after all. Crap. I was almost there.
    Dammit.
    Then the door opened and a beet-faced Sketch came out and was about to say something when another face—a furious roil of matriarchic agitation and withered glamour—appeared behind him, shrieking, “Oh, and Milby, Dicky says someone named Lenny from Krinkle said that—”
    I almost gasped. Almost. But Mom raised me better than that. I just gaped.
    “—in that last thing you did, the thing from Tuesday? In the Register ? He said—”
    And stared. And you would have, too, because:
    “—could we make the pretzels look less salty this time? He says they look saltier than the chips, and—”
    1) An adult, especially of what appeared to be her advanced age and breeding, just should NOT venture out in public with that many Band-Aids on her head.
    “—that sends the wrong message. It doesn’t say—”
    2) Once it’s become clear that the sun is destroying your skin, it would probably be a better idea to wear a turtleneck. Not a sleeveless V-neck Dior paired with pink and green flower-print pants.
    “—‘eat me’. It’s just going to make people thirsty and they’ll—”
    3) Expensive, flawlessly tailored clothing will only throw your…appearance into sharper relief, especially when you’re starting from somewhere between Barbara Stanwyck and The Thing.
    “—turn the page and buy a Coke. Okay?”
    and 4) Logic dictates that presidents of advertising agencies must make enough money to buy extravagant luxuries, like food. Right? She was going to have to try some. Soon, before collapsing into a bone pile.
    “Oh. Oh my.”
    Oops. This, this Lily Pulitzer wraith, had me in her sights. I had to get out of there.
    “Is this, is…?” And she, whup , clutched my chin and turned my head from side to side, like it was a crenshaw melon she was inspecting at the IGA. “Is this the boy ?”
    Bloodless claws. I wasn’t sure. Was I? Sketch must have nodded.
    “Oh, that’s…marvelous,” she hissed, and un-handed me and turned her laser eyes on Spear and yanked him back into her office. The door snapped shut to furious murmurs.
    And then, like a jack-in-the-box he popped out—years obviously gone from his life, and he said, like magic:
    “C-can you start Tuesday? Seventy-five a week?”
    Oh, could I. He led us down the hallway.
    “Mr. Spear,” I started, as we plodded down the staircase, “can you tell me why—”
    No words left in him, he stopped on the landing and took a moment to write something down on an index card from his front shirt pocket, folded and handed it to me—in a scrupulous grab, behind his back, out of view of the secretary. Who wasn’t looking anyway.
    “Read it on the train. We’ll talk.”
    I palmed it. “Right. I can’t thank you enough. I—”
    “Miss Preech will get you a cab.”
    She was typing again. Now, obviously she was a stranger to me, but I already suspected that even if I were to lie on the floor in front of her with a meat axe growing out of my head, in a pool of my own hot hemoglobin, the probability of Miss Preech calling me an ambulance would be remote in the extreme—much less a cab, right now. “Thanks, thanks, Mr. Spear,” I said groggily. I rang one for myself from