The Tutor by Peter Abrahams

thoughts that coming out of nowhere had the ring of truth.
    “It won’t work,” Linda said, “us teaching him. He won’t cooperate. And we’re not teachers.”
    “Then what?”
    “We’ll have to find someone, a professional, just till we can get him into one of the courses.”
    Scott opened the yellow pages. “What should I look under?”
    “Tutor.”
    “Lots of them in here,” Scott said. “ ‘One-on-one instruction in your own home, affordable hourly rates.’ ”
    “We need to do some research first. I’ll talk to people in the morning,” Linda said. “Make some calls.”
    “Me too,” said Scott.
    She glanced at him, about to say,
I’ll take care of it,
but he wasn’t looking. Instead he was cracking open a fortune cookie, reading the message. He passed it to her.
    Happiness is all around.
    Scott ate the cookie;
crunch crunch
and it was gone.

5
    J ulian’s phone rang. He was watching a huge flock of starlings, thousands of them, flying nervously back and forth between two groves of bare-limbed trees in the distance; at the same time, he was enjoying the first drag from his first cigarette of the day. Smoking was so pleasant, a perfect harmonizing of the physical and mental, even spiritual. But Julian wasn’t stupid, understood the health risk, had even at one time encouraged the growth of nicotine-inspired tumors along the spines of white mice in a biology lab, and therefore limited himself to three Dunhill Internationals a day: on awakening, after dinner, and a third whenever he wanted it, usually when he was feeling especially good, but sometimes the exact opposite.
    Julian half sucked a smoke ball over his tongue, letting the smoke absorb his moisture, held it, still a ball, at the back of his mouth, breathed in fully, then let the smoke lazily find its curling way out through his nose and mouth. Tantric smoking. Through the blue-tinged plume of his own making, he saw the starlings rise as one from the tree crowns of the westernmost grove, wheel toward the east, all banking at the identical angle, about forty-five degrees. In their uniformity of movement and solid black coloring was something undeniably fascistic. That thought was pleasant too, intimately associated with the smoke in a way hard to define, although Julian had no doubt he could make the connection crystal clear, given time. Already he knew it had something to do with the utter lack of vulgarity in nature.
    The phone, still ringing, or ringing again. Julian picked it up. A woman. Paulette, Pauline, Paula, something.
    “Settling in yet?” she said.
    Ah, yes, the woman from the front desk at the office. He recalled two shallow horizontal lines, not deep—not deep yet—at the base of her neck and a cheap ornament on a chain, gold-plated head of some bland breed of dog; not much else.
    Julian glanced around his Spartan quarters. “Yes, thank you.” He was nothing if not polite.
    “Had a chance to take in much of the town?”
    “Unfortunately not,” Julian said.
    “I’m sure you’ll like it,” said the woman. “Everyone does. I’m from Indianapolis originally.”
    Was this the woman he’d glimpsed in the glass of the front door as he’d left, giving him an appraising look from behind, or had it been the other one, her boss, who’d hired him? Julian didn’t mention where he was from originally, just watched the starlings on their metronomic flight path. At that moment, the sun shone through a tiny gap in the clouds making the flock gleam like an armored column. He took another drag, deeper than the first, breathed it noiselessly into the phone.
    “Um, the reason I’m calling,” said Paulette, Pauline, Paula, “and I know it’s late notice, especially on a Saturday, but one of our people called in sick, and I wondered if you could fill in, just for today.”
    It wasn’t in his plans. Not that he had plans: he didn’t require them. He’d always been good at keeping himself amused. Breakfast, a long walk, perhaps