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

the corner payphone.
    On the train, safely speeding home, I pulled out Sketchy’s message: a fortune cookie slip that would determine my future for real . Did I really want to know? I kept it closed all the way to Stamford. Then I just couldn’t stand it anymore and shut my eyes, opened it, ready for the oracle’s wisdom:
    CAN’T EXPLAIN RIGHT NOW.
HAVE YOU EVER USED AN ERASER GUARD?
JUST ASKING. SORRY.
SEE YOU SOON.
    It was all in a cartoon speech balloon, coming out of the mouth of…Baby Laveen, pleading to the judge. Perfect to the detail.
    Perfect like I could never, ever draw him.

    “And here’s where— nuts . We’re out of atomic teat.” Tip, in a short-sleeved ash gray madras dress shirt that revealed skinny arms as pale and hairless as zucchini squash, waved the empty powdered milk box, lamenting. “Rats. I love this stuff. It makes my coffee experimental. It gives me hope. Miss Preech!” My first day, in the middle of the unofficial office tour. Mr. Spear wasn’t in yet. In fact, it was ten to nine and aside from Tip, Miss Preech, and me, neither was anyone else. Tip and I were in the little galley kitchen off the pantry, where they made their coffee. I mean, where we made it. God, it was just too amazing.
    “Miss Preech!” he shouted at the ceiling.
    “What?!” she crowed from her desk.
    “Darling, we’re out of powdered milk.” His voice was all knives.
    “No. We are not.” Hers were sharper.
    “Sweetness, we ARE.” Eyes clenched. This guy was a card, a real Franklin Pangborn Jr., but not someone I’d want to be on the wrong side of, I could tell already.
    And then, the rapid-fire click of high heels, angry on the linoleum floor. She rounded the corner, thrust out a new box, and slammed it down on the counter. Wham!
    And back to her desk.
    I offered, weakly, “You, you two don’t seem to, like each other.”
    His eyes bloomed in protest. “Nonsense. Why, there’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for her, and there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for me.” He hurled the old box into the corner trash can with considerable force. “In fact, we spend our whole lives doing nothing for each other.”
    “Oh.”
    He jimmied open the metal pouring spout and shook a small blizzard of Bessie’s Evaporated Moo Juice into his cup. “She’s the princess and the pea.” He sighed. “I’ve spent some time behind that desk myself, so I know why she’s so dreadful. But it doesn’t make it any easier. She hates that I got a rung up.”
    “Why?”
    “Oh, what does it matter? Sugar?” Pouring my java.
    “What she needs is a man.”
    “Really? She’s so pretty.”
    “So’s a poinsettia. Ever taste one?”
    The front door buzzed. In walked Sketchy.
    “Morning.”
    Tip handed me my coffee, lit up his Marlboro. “Well, I’ll leave you to your labors.” Nodding his head to Spear, “Sketch, sir? Krinkle meeting at eleven, yes? In the conference room?”
    “What? Sure.” Then, to me, “Well, hello. You made it? Heh.”
    “Yes.” God, I’d hoped so. “Yes, I did.”
    “Good deal. See ya upstairs.”
    “Yes sir.” And I bolted to the steps, took them two at a time, careful not to slosh the coffee.
    The art department. It all looked so different now—the two drawing tables scarred with countless X-Acto marks, the piles of scattered scrap artboard, wads of tape that were overshot to the trash can and dotted the wall behind it like measles. The magic of seeing it for the first time was gone, but replaced by something even more alluring—the promise of inclusion among its details. I saw a stage set that I was now invited to climb up onto. I wasn’t in the audience anymore, I was a player. Maybe just a member of the chorus, but still.
     
    And yet it was clear from the start that Sketch was uncomfortable having assistants or delegating tasks, no matter how much he claimed to need an “extra pair of hands.” What he meant was an extra pair of his own , not someone