Free The Learners: A Novel (No Series) by Chip Kidd Page B

Drugstore, Murphy’s Hardware, Noah’s Diner—made me want to stop and throw rocks at them. It wasn’t right for the world to go about its business.
    Christ Episcopal Church, a granite monolith, stood out in defiance against the pristine clapboard rectitude of its neighbors. Twin doors the color of fresh blood flanked its stony facade, a block carved with the date 1838. Inside, it was marginally cooler, with four ceiling fans going like jet propellers as the sunlight ricocheted off the custard stucco walls and Pachelbel’s endless Canon oozed in and out of the organ pipes mounted to the left of the lectern. The place was jammed but few had taken their seats. Instead, a long line snaked all the way back to the vestibule in the front, leading up the left side aisle to the altar.
    To the casket.
    I got in back of a middle-aged woman in black hose with heels to match and scanned the crowd. So, who were all these people, the people in Himillsy’s life? Well, unlike the world of Spear, Rakoff & Ware, this really was the cast of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit . Except today the gray had faded to black. But otherwise here they were: the manor-born friends and neighbors Gregory Peck was coming home to, all those hours on the train. I didn’t belong here—the only person I knew was, for Chrissakes, the deceased.
    So I dredged up what I did know—things about Himillsy that they couldn’t have: Did they know about Baby Laveen, the realistic baby doll she secretly carried around with her to help her cope with the death of her infant brother De Vigny? Did they know she wanted to open a combination barbershop and restaurant called Snippets, just so she could watch the customers try to pick the stray bits of hair out of their teeth? That she wanted to create a TV show called People Are Awful , in which ordinary contestants would earn cash and prizes by doing things like kicking the crutches out from underneath toddlers with polio? Or that she had plans to make a movie short of a man being mercilessly pelted with two stiletto-heeled pumps and call it These Shoes Are Killing Me ? The strange fruits of her imagination, confided during the dark hours of our school days—they gave me entree, entitlement that this entire throng, with its perfect teeth and padlocked jaws, did not have.
    And then, as the line inched further, I realized…
    No. It couldn’t be. My imagination playing cruel tricks in the suffocating heat. The casket was…open.
    No. Unthinkable.
    And I could just make out—there she lay, hands crossed over her chest. Oh. Oh. I snapped my head away, clamped my eyes shut.
    How could they? Ghouls. Ghouls do this.
    I can’t. I will bolt from the line, right now. Excuse myself, back out of the church, onto the street, and run, run and not stop until none of this existed.
    Himillsy: Not so fast, Happy. Old chum. You’re not going anywhere. You will wait patiently in line. You remember lines don’t you, from school? Registration, frat parties, lunch, graduation. This is just another one. And you will wait in it, like you always have.
    For me. You have a promise to keep.
    She was right. As ever. I was powerless to do anything other than her bidding. The queue inched forward. Dread. Sick dread. I kept my attention to the rear of the church, to the doors, to the plaque on the wall honoring the congregation’s World War II dead.
    What on earth compels allegedly civilized people to do this, to desecrate not just bodies, but our memories? I can’t remember her this way, I can’t. Please someone, something, make this go away.
    A dead body. The first I’d ever see. And it has to be you, Mills. This was not how it was supposed to go.
    Endless, terrible minutes, drawing forward until I couldn’t avoid it anymore. The time had come. I was too close, there were people watching, I had to do the right thing, what was expected, I had to turn and look, look at—
    And a burst of something like relief popped in my heart because,