I sat down.
“What brought you here, Julie? And please don’t tell me my ad brought you. We’re past that. What do you want? What are you doing here?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing flew out, not a single syllable. I sat there gaping for half a minute or so. Then I said, “What about the guy who was just here? Did you ask him what he wanted? Did you ask him what he was doing here?”
The gorilla did the strangest thing then. He took his right hand and put it straight across his eyes. It looked like he was going to start counting for a game of hide-and-seek. The funny thing was, he wasn’t actually touching his face. He was just holding his hand one inch from his nose, as if reading some tiny message written in his palm.
I waited.
After about two minutes he lowered his hand and said, “No, I did not ask him these things.”
I just sat there batting my eyelashes at him.
The gorilla licked his lips—nervously, it seemed to me. “I think we can safely say that I’m not prepared to deal with the needs of a person your age. I think that can be safely said. Yes.”
“You mean you give up. Is that what you’re telling me? You want me to go away because you give up.”
The gorilla stared at me. I couldn’t tell whether he was staring hopefully or angrily or what.
I said, “Don’t you think a twelve-year-old girl can have an earnest desire to save the world?”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said, though it sounded like the words were pretty hard to get out.
“Then why won’t you talk to me? Your ad in the paper said you need a pupil. Isn’t that what it said?”
“That’s what it said.”
“Well, you’ve got one. Here I am.”
We Lurch To The Starting Line
A long moment passed. I read that in a book once: A long moment passed. But this was a really long moment. Finally the gorilla spoke again. “Very well,” he said with a nod. “We’ll begin and see where it takes us. My name is Ishmael.”
He seemed to expect a reaction of some kind, but to me this was just a noise. It would have been the same if he’d said his name was whizbang. He already knew my name, so I just waited. Finally he went on again.
“Referring to the
young man who was just here—his name is Alan Lomax, by the way—I said I didn’t ask what he wanted. But I did ask him to tell a story that would explain why he was here.”
“A story?”
“Yes. I asked for his story. Now I ask for yours.”
“I don’t know what you mean by a story.”
Ishmael frowned as if he suspected I might be playing dumb. Maybe I was, a little.
He went on: “Your classmates are doing something else this afternoon, aren’t they? Whatever they’re doing, you’re not doing it.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“So. Explain to me why you’re not doing what your classmates are doing. How does your story differ from theirs that it brings you to this room on a Saturday afternoon?”
Now I knew what he meant, but it didn’t help. What story was he talking about? Did he want to hear about my folks’ divorce? About my mom’s adventures in boozing? About the problems I was having with Mrs. Monstro at school? About my former boyfriend Donnie, the famous Guy Who Wasn’t?
“I want to understand what you’re looking for,” he said, answering these questions as if I’d spoken them aloud.
“I don’t get it,” I told him. “The teachers I’m used to don’t ask what you’re looking for. They just teach what they teach.”