The Mentor (7 page)

Staring at
my own face on the screen, for the moment, I forgot all about the metal chair
and the shooting pains in my back.

Chapter
Three

The two men
watched as the other looked up from a handful of notes he'd taken.  Both,
independently, wondered how the Scotsman could write so tiny into the little
book, no bigger than his palm.  

As the gray
man (they were all gray men, the seated man if just slightly more) read back
what he wrote, the tremor of his hand brushed the book through the air in small
circles, as if keeping beat to music too low for anyone else to hear.

When he
looked up at them, he said, "You needed me here f' this?  There's
little here!  
Nuh
-thing!"

"I beg
your pardon
that
is not
nothing
.  It's--"

"It's
a beginning," the shorter man chimed in.  The old Scot had only
joined the Group a few years earlier-- following a sudden vacancy-- but, while
the short man prayed (oh god, he prayed) they were successful in their singular
task, he quietly hoped the Scot was dead before that happened.  "It's
the
beginning."

"Fine. 
Fine then, go and start the inquiry process," the Scotsman said.  There's
little time--"

"Good
Christ,
no
.  You must be joking."

"It's just
the beginning."

"More
than anything, we have to be delicate.  This is it.  This is our shot,"
this other man said and wiped his lower lip with the flat of a thumb.
 "Our last shot."

"Why
d'you need me, then?  Why call me down into your wee shit-pit, here?"

So crass
.  "We need approval to expand
our consultant's…
latitude
for gathering the necessary, uh,
research," the short man said and smiled.  "Needs just a three."

"Latitude?" 
The Scot whispered something under his breath that sounded like either a curse
or a prayer.  "
Latitude
needs full consideration.  The full Group. 
All eleven, no?  We can't take it upon ourselv--"

"
Now
,
you want to delay?"  The short man said, adding a weak smile.

"I
don’t wan' this biting me if your man takes too much
latitude
!"

"It
only requires three."

"It's
just the beginning.  These protocols were established long before you
joined the group, sir.  Long before any of us did.  A Three Vote is all that's
needed to move through the minor transitions.  Otherwise, we would committee
ourselves until our deaths."  He chuckled and pulled gently at an ear
lobe, a soothing gesture.  "Then, the beneficiaries would not be any of us
but rather some later Group.  This is just a minor transition."

"We
just need three."

 A single nod
from the Scot.  He waved a hand.  "Aye, then.  Sure.
 Yes.  Get on with it."

"Approved,
then."

"How
much longer is this all going t' take?"

A shrug
from the short man.  "As long as it needs to, but not too long,"
he said.  "It's the beginning.  Finally, it's the beginning of the
end."

Chapter
Four

“Maybe it’s
a present,” Pavan said, lifting a collection of nacho cheese and popcorn from
the plastic tray with two curled fingers, and pressing it into his mouth.
 The theater was dead at the moment, between shows.

I guess you
could call Pavan a good guy: pretty honest, never stiffs you with the bar tab
and is often infected with this type of unbridled optimism.  It’s good to
have those kinds of people around to lift the spirits.  Unless you’re in
no mood for spirit lifting.

At the
theater, Pavan and I joke that we are slaves to the "dots."  Beneath
the stairs leading to the second floor is a panel up on the wall.  The
panel has two horizontal rows of small bulbs.  Each vertical pair of
"dots" represented one of the movie houses.  A yellow on top, a red
on the bottom.

At that
moment two yellows and a red were glowing.  

One movie
had just started rolling the credits and people were starting to leave.  For
the other one-- with the yellow
and
red-- the credits had rolled,
movie’s over, lights are up full.

The new
guys leap at the yellow dots-- weaving in between exiting patrons to pick up
the trash. 

Me and
Pavan wait for the red dots.

And, then,
usually a little longer than that.

I hadn't
slept much that afternoon and was still recovering from my previous night. 
Back hurt, chest hurt.  The gash on my hairline was small but still stung a
little.

We stared
at the bulky rectangular panel hidden under the stairwell.  It looked like
something Spock might have poked at on one of those early low-budget days of
the original Star Trek.

Me, I
wanted to crawl under the stairwell and sleep, but it was too early yet.  Pavan
was going on and on about the van.

"Seriously,
you go down to the cops in Fulton County and flash them your I.D. and they
gotta give you the van, right?”  His floppy hair was dancing like sea oats
in a summer storm.  “That detective said it was in your—“

“I don’t
drive.  What do I want a van for?”

“Then sell
it on eBay or something!”  Pavan had shoveled in another clawful of fake
cheese and popcorn.  I wanted to look away from the horror show he was putting
on but couldn't.

“You know
what's in that goo?”  I said frowning, not because I was angry, but
because I was trying to hold back the nausea.  He was hideous.

He stopped
chewing, made an orange letter “O” for a mouth, then he said, “Dude, don’t tell
me.”

“Well, just
know there’s no cheese in that cheese,” I said and nodded to theater seven.
 “Judi Dench film is out.”

"Yep,"
Pavan said. "I need to be mentally prepared for anything here."

Old people
don’t buy stuff at the candy counter. They sneak in way more crap than kids do.
 Two months earlier, I'd gone into one of those chatty Kenneth Branagh
films that old folks love and came out with the T-bone of a T-bone steak.
 Who sneaks a
steak
into a theater?  

The T-bone was
now hanging up in the maintenance closet and used to open import beer bottles.

We walked
slowly toward a sea of gray people.

“Listen, I
know you’re all weirded out because that dude did all the stuff to you…” he
stopped and suddenly shivered.  “Dude, he knocked you out, right?
 While you were in dreamland, maybe he did some weird sex stuff—WHOA!”

I’m not a
violent person but at the moment I had Pavan by the collar.  His feet were dangling
off the ground, his back pressed against a
Coming Soon
poster of a movie's
remake I purposely avoided the first time around.  

I wasn’t
angry at Pavan.  

Well, okay,
I was kinda pissed about the implication the Black Knight might have finger
diddled me in my sleep but, really, it was more about feeling I’d lost control
of what had been a very controlled life.

Some old
woman nearby said something, but I didn’t hear her words.  Just her tone.

Embarrassed,
the fire in my eyes drew back to a flicker, and I turned away from my friend,
slowly lowering his feet back down to the carpet.  I felt more stupid with each
passing second.

“Hey man,”
he said, shaking just a little.  “I got some little green monsters in the
ice machine.  Why don’t you just take five and have one.  I got the
Dench film.”

As I tried
to straighten his polyester vest, I saw that my little
psycho Charles
Bronson
move had smashed the tray of cheese and popcorn into his stomach.
 He looked a little like one of the victims in the first Alien movie.

“Aw,
Pavan,” I said, suddenly my voice bubbling with more emotion than I’d expected.
 “I’m sorry, man.”

“It’s all
right.”

“No, it’s
not.”

“Don’t
worry about it,” he said, walking toward where all the old ladies were coming
out, some dragging old men who looked like they’d been given a prostate exam by
a Bengal tiger.  “I got this one.  Not like there’s any soda cups or
popcorn bins in there anyhow.”

“Yeah, I
know.  Dench film.”

“Sure, just
a lot of empty plastic baggies and shit.  Kleenex and stuff.”

I nodded,
avoiding his eyes.  

Not knowing
what to do next, I just took Pavan’s advice and headed toward the Heinekens in
the ice machine.

“Hey, Dex,”
he called down the hall and I turned.  He looked so small that far away,
and I felt even shittier for grabbing him.  Some best friend I was.

"Yeah?"

 “You
know we really should go down and get your van.”

I nodded.
 “Okay, man.”

“Because,
if nothing else, we get my cousin to run the VIN; see who had it
before
you did.  Even though, you know, you didn't.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure.
 Maybe that person remembers selling to your ninja guy.  Might have a
name or something.”

I stopped
in my tracks and thought about that for a moment.  Then, I turned back
toward the theater where Pavan was standing, suddenly not willing to dump it
all on my friend.  

“Goddamn
Perry Mason, that’s a hell of an idea.”

“Yeah,” he
said, his mop of a head swaying a little.  “I thought so.”

AFTER WORK,
I HAD no intention of sleeping at my pad, but I couldn’t go another day without
fresh clothes.  

There’s a
level of stink, and I was close to it, that goes beyond rank.  The sort of
smell that makes old people weep and newborns curse under their breath.

Detective
Clower had asked if I wanted to file a report about what happened but, I
thought, what was the point?  The cop didn’t seem to really believe me,
and I wasn’t one to go crying every time somebody pissed in my Wheaties anyhow.
 Maybe it was a one shot deal.

Yeah, I
didn’t believe it either.

Clower had
given me a card with a work and cell number, and I was going to call him up to
see what it would take to get the van.   But it was after eleven.
 It could wait until morning.  

After finishing
up at the theater, we walked the three blocks back to my apartment.  Then
Pavan and I hung down at the Marietta Square for a half hour, staring up at the
windows above
Wicked Lester’s.
 We sipped a couple warm beers from the
stash he always kept in the trunk of his car.

“You think
he’s coming back?”

I looked at
Pavan, shrugged.  Two couples that looked like they’d just left the
theatre—not the movie theater, but the live
theatre
on South Park, just
off the square—were sitting on the edge of the fountain.  I couldn’t hear
them talking, but for my own benefit I imagined they were negotiating the terms
of a  wife swapping and that helped me forget about the possible terror waiting
for me in my apartment.

Pavan
belched, grimaced, and smacked his lips.

“Man, let’s
just go up there.”

“Yeah, you
first, Batman.”

Watching
the couples, laughing together like normal people, I tried to put myself in
that scene.  Couldn't.  Not anymore.

"What's
that like? Your hearing thing."  Pavan asked out of the blue.
 Knowing him as well as I do, it must've been hard for him
not
to
ask before that moment.  

"I
dunno.  Mostly, I don't know what it's
not
like, right?  I
mean, it's sorta always there.  Like some movie or TV show I just watched
and think about every now and then."

"You
don't have no TV."  

I laughed.
 "Yeah, maybe I should get one.  I need some new shows in my
head, maybe."

"So…"
he said, and I felt bad he was struggling.

"Listen,
go ahead.  I'm fine with talking about it to you," I said.
 "I'm sorry, man.  I shoulda said something.  You're my
best friend and, you know… I just shoulda said something."

"Yeah,
fucker.  I could have used you for phone numbers and shit that I’m always
losing."  He laughed.  "So, you remember it all at once
then, like all these voices in your head?  That would be crazy!  It'd be
like waiting for a concert at the Georgia Dome, right, but the band never ever
plays!  Just the crowd
blah blah blah
all the time."

"No,
not like that."

"Good
'cause that would be horrible!  All that
blah blah blah blah blah
!"

I turned to
my friend and said, "Just how high
are
you?"

"What?" 
He smiled.  "Just a little bit."

"Okay, just
checking," I said.  "It's
… it's like there's
index cards of the stuff I've heard and I just… go to them."

"
Insects
cards?  Whoa, I couldn't handle that--"

"Not
insects
car--"

"All
buzzy buzzy and shit in your head, Christ, how do you--"

"NO,
man.  In-dex cards.  Little cards you write stuff down on.  Like
filing it away."

Pavan
nodded, blinked.  "You know, I'm not a big filing guy."

"Really?"

“Yeah, I
have my secretary take care of that shit for me,” he said and tossed his empty
beer can at the trash, nearly beaning a squirrel that had been balancing on the
can.  Clay St. Claire, the Marietta Square bum, popped out from behind the
bushes.

“Hey guys,”
he said, eyeing the can in the trash.  “You got anymore of those?”

“Yeah,”
Pavan said.  “I’ll have another in about ten minutes.  You wait there
I’ll toss it to you.”

“No, not
empty
ones.”

I said, “You
can’t give hobos beer, Clay.  We'd be breaking the law.”

“True.”
 Pavan nodded, took a swig.

“And we
can’t give you dough for beer because that’s panhandling.  You’d be
breaking the law.”

“Also
true.”

“But if you
take those empties and trade them in for cash, well, our trash goes down, the
environment gets a break and after a couple days you get your beer.”

“Whatever
happened to charity?  The humble act of giving to your fellow man,” Hobo
Clay said and held his arms wide in a dramatic gesture.  “What would Mother
Teresa say?”

“If Mother
Teresa was alive today…” Pavan scratched his mop of hair with his beer can,
“she’d probably say something like ‘motherfucker get me outta this casket.’"

"
Oh,
damn
."

"Yeah,
probably something like that.”

I laughed
so hard I thought beer would shoot out my nose but it didn’t, which is good
because it’d surely burn like hell and would be a terrible waste of beer.

Clay yanked
on the lapels of his dark, dirty coat, shot Pavan a look and stumbled back into
the darkness.

"So
you've got your entire life on little cards which you can pluck out anytime you
need 'em?"

"Well,
yeah," I said and finished by beer, then added: "No, well, not all of
it.  There's some blank cards, right?  I don't remember
every
single moment
.  And I lost a big chunk of time after the accident because
of, you know, head trauma."

"Yow,
man.  Sorry."

"And,
I don't remember so much after drinking a lot," I said and popped open
another beer.  "Mucks up the synapses."

Pavan
leaned over and offered the side of his beer can, "Well cheers to that,
then, Dexter."

I clinked
his can.

"Explains
why you drink all the time.  I wouldn't want to remember half the shit
people have said to me either."

The beer
can stopped at my bottom lip and hung there.  I held it there for a moment,
thinking about what my friend had just said.  Brilliant.  And, me, I
think I’m so goddamn smart.  Brilliant.

"Hey
man," Pavan said, probably worried that I’d gone a bit quiet.
 "Hey man, I’m sorry I didn't mean to say that if it bugged ya.
 You don't drink so much.  You're good, dude."