The Mentor (37 page)

Or…

What if it
was like some sort of survival function.  These "tests" by The Mentor,
the shit he was putting me through… for whatever fucked up reason he had for
doing it… what if my mind, so clearly focused on the danger, was forcing my
subconscious to shake free the hard clumps of barnacles that had seized up
nearly two years of memory, simply to add some brainpower in hopes that I might
just survive.

A hackneyed
theory I'd heard years earlier: trauma could be used to "treat" trauma.
 That is, a new trauma could lessen or reverse the effects of another
earlier one.

Sitting
there in the safety of the Dvorak home, still, I
knew
The Mentor was
coming back for me the first moment he could.  And while nervous about
that, I was gaining confidence.  Whatever he had in store next, I was
pretty sure I could handle it.

But those
memories,
they
were coming back, too.  The ones I'd pressed down,
those months and years leading up to my sister's dying moments--
the death I
caused!
-- not sure I'd be able to handle that.  

Hell, those
horrible visions… the dreadful, heartbreaking sounds… they might actually kill
me before The Mentor ever got a real chance. 

Chapter
Twenty-two

Southern
humorist Lewis Grizzard once said about one of the oldest cities in the South:
“Atlanta is gonna be a great place whenever they get finished with it.”

Rapper
“Pimp C” (nee
Chad
Butler) once, in a very rhapsodic manner, told a
magazine Atlanta “ain’t in the South.”  That little piece of cultural
libel was not well received by the folks (read: music buyers) in Atlanta and
the surrounding area.  Mr. C later apologized and restated his case
(emphasis his): “THAT WAS A BULLSHIT STATEMENT!  ATLANTA IS AND HAS ALWAYS
BEEN THE DIRTY MTHFKN SOUTH!”

The
implication here is that the second statement is actually some sort of
over-reaching atonement for the first, however, I’m not entirely sure I prefer
Chad’s new characterization.

And,
finally, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America once named Atlanta the
worst American city for asthma sufferers to live in.   One plus: if
that designation is accepted by the group’s members, it should cut down a
little on any annoying, pervasive, inner-city wheezing.

To me,
architecture has always been some sort of civilization merit badge.
 Forget strong financial infrastructure, low crime rates or competent
governance… to me, if a city had slapped together some really cool buildings,
it had arrived.

But, it was
"
ground floor” where things
went terribly wrong in this city.

Specifically:
you take your own life into your hands when you drive in Atlanta.  Or,
more correctly, you put your life in the hands of anyone within the “killing
zone” on the interstate-- an area of, say, a quarter mile in all directions,
which increases in size dependent upon the speed of surrounding traffic.

No one does
the speed limit.  To do so would put one in danger, even.

Ironically,
everyone
in Atlanta drives as though they are racing to the hospital
with someone terribly sick in the back seat.  Given the high-caliber of
accidents this creates, some of
them
end up being driven to the hospital
before the trip is over.

Einstein
(in between long sessions of testing, seeking out an appropriate, yet elusive
hair product) said that as an object approaches the speed of light, that
object’s mass grows too exponentially.  That said, Atlanta’s traffic is, to
paraphrase the smartest man ever: heavy, man.

Pavan takes
it in stride, like he does most things, as we head to the campus of Georgia
Science Academy which-- whether good or bad-- is situated right downtown.

For
students without cars, it means most of where you want to go is available via
good, brisk walk or by bicycle (they know better than to take the bus in
Atlanta).  Everything else is OTP, as it is called, “Outside The
Perimeter”-- the “perimeter” being Interstate 285 which, being that it has
three-digits, is a loop around the city of Atlanta.  A little like a moat
or possibly a wall-- keeping the barbarians out (ie, anything deemed uncool).

It also
means that with all the traffic and few places to park, students walk just
about everywhere they go.  

“Uh, I
didn’t know we’d be walking, man,” Pavan says sucking down another Camel, “I’d
have brought a skate board or something.”

“You don’t
skate board.”

“No, but I
hate walking.  Too tiring. I could stand on the skateboard and you could
pull me.”

I looked at
my friend, briefly, then back to some pages I'd printed out back at the Dvoraks.
 In the white spaces, I'd jot notes about little bits of memory that would
seep in.  A moment here, a moment there.

Flashes of
my past were coming back to me as we drove, and it was jarring as hell.
 I’d begun to try and make an order of it-- this girlfriend goes here,
after my bike got pinched, but before I got food poisoning at the campus coffee
bar (this explains my aversion to baklava, check).

“So you
think your old professor guy he used to work at Salm... uh...”

“Yeah, no question.  That was him in
the picture.  It was taken a few years before I had

him, but he
looked exactly the same.  In fact, I’m sure I’d seen that exact ugly shirt
and tie combo several of times.”

Heading
toward the exit off the interstate, Pavan shifted lanes, and the moment he did,
a white truck loaded with ladders crossed into the spot we’d just slipped out
of.  You’re always a twist of the wheel away from “traffic fatality” in
this city.

“But you
said he don’t teach here no more.”

Up ahead, I
could see one of the three towers that the campus was famous for.

“No, he
left,” I said, sitting up, and pushing my palms across the jeans to dry them
off a little.  “After I got back from my accident, I tried for a couple
days to get back into the swing of school but I... I mean, nothing.  No
memory of course work, classmates.  Needed a map to walk the streets I’d
been walking for nearly two years.  Remembered none of it.”

“So
freaky.”

“Yeah.
 And, I was laid up for about six weeks or so and when I got back, Jepson
was gone.”

“Fired?”

“Nah, just
left, I guess.  They didn’t tell us anything-- just a new guy in his
place.”

Pavan
slowed, shot his eyes to the passenger side mirror, and got into the
deceleration lane to take the next exit.

“Freaky.
 Did you even remember the guy?  I mean you forgot most of those
years.”

“Yeah, I
had him first semester for Freshman Physics.  I remember that and that he
was a likable guy.  Loved teaching, loved that role, right?  Patches
on the elbows of his jacket, probably had a pipe in his desk.  He seemed
to really dig it.”

My friend
nodded, listening.  For a moment, I saw him stare off a little-- just a
quick stolen moment-- and I worried the talk about college was going to be a
bit of a bummer for him.

After
Pavan’s mother died, his father traded oxygen for Jack, as in Jack Daniels...
I’m not sure if it was because his dad missed his mother or that his dad missed
his mother
taking care
of the old man.  For a while, my friend took
on the role but eventually made a bit of a clean break because he didn’t want
to be dragged down into another man’s despair.  

Say what
you want about my friend (just not with me around, now), but he’s got wisdom in
that noggin' somewhere.  He can be dim as a Red Dwarf, sure, but
somehow--- hell maybe the drug use “squeegied his third-eye” as the great comic
Bill Hicks used to say-- he had life smarts in there.

Which is,
ultimately, worth far more than anything a university can teach you.

“According
to my college transcript-- and the only thing I know about most of those years
I got from the transcripts-- I had Jepson both semesters on my Sophomore year.”

“Shit, they
must be low on teachers if you got the guy all the time.”

I laughed,
“Nah, he just taught in the discipline I was studying.  Sort of a broad,
shotgun approach to physics, environmental science, chemistry-- that sort of
thing.”

Pavan
cranked the wheel, turning toward the campus.  We weren’t officially on
campus yet but all the businesses, housing-- this was student territory now.
 It felt vaguely familiar.  

We were
there because I was hoping to find something out about Professor Jepson-- and
maybe some reason why he was in that photo at Solomon-Bluth and why his name in
the caption wasn’t Jepson at all.  It was
Eller
.  The chatty
Timothy had confirmed it: the man in the photo was Wilhelm Eller, the lead
scientist who’d died in the blast and fire that destroyed the charity’s
multi-million dollar research facility.

But then
ended up as a Georgia Science Academy professor who called himself Jepson.
 
Willard
Jepson, not Wilhelm.

He’d also
disappeared from the school, albeit that time
not
in a blaze of glory.
 Why or where he’d gone, I’d hoped to find out.  I didn't yet know
the shape of it but, undoubtedly, here was my link.

Maybe, he
was still alive and could tell me something that could lead me to The Mentor--
or could help me piece together what was happening.

A printout
of the campus map in my hand, I directed Pavan where to turn to get to the
administrators’ building.

A wave of
exhilaration washed over me, as if a ghost had passed through my body, and it
left me a little chilled, buzzed.  Changing up the route, I told Pavan to
turn around, go the other way.  After a few blocks, I looked up and saw
dorms.

Hanging from
the seventh floor balcony rail at one apartment was a blanket, flapping a
little in the breeze.  Maybe the student living there had run out of
towels and used it to dry off after a shower.

Or maybe,
one drunken night, the occupants had taken in a stray and fed the dog the only
thing they had.  Official student food: pizza and beer.  The next morning, the
dreadful and nausea-inducing clean up resulted in a banister weighed down by
rows and rows of drying towels.

“Used to
live up there.”

Pavan
craned his neck to look up through the windshield, nodded.

He finally
asked, “Dex?”

Turning to
him, I asked him to go back the way we came and head to the admin building.
 Then, I could tell something was bugging him.  I said: “Okay.  What
it is?”

“Me, I live
in my father’s house most of the time and sit on the floor because the dog ate
the couch, right?  The stuff in the fridge is so old that one of the
missing kids on the milk carton is the Lindbergh baby.”

“Oh shit!”
 I laughed and nearly spit out my flat Diet Coke.  “Damn, that’s
funny, man!”

He smiled
huge.  “I used to say Jimmy Hoffa-- that got a laugh-- but somebody told
me they only put kids on the cartons, so it wasn’t as good.  My cousin
said the Lindbergh baby is good, so yeah, it gets a better laugh.”

Still
chuckling, I asked, “Do you even know the Lindbergh baby?”

“Yeah,” he
said, and I knew he could care less.  “He’s an air to a cheese fortune or
something.  Sure, it was in all the papers, I bet.”

This is why
we’re best friends.  Limburger baby?  Fucking love the guy.

It was
great to laugh but I knew, maybe inadvertently, his question got scuttled.
 Maybe because I knew what the question was going to be and didn’t feel
like answering it: Why did I go from a chem-physics major to tearing tickets at
a movie theater, getting drunk with him by the soda boxes?  

Guilt is an
easy enough, twenty-five cent street-corner psychologist answer.  Didn’t
deserve a life after I’d taken Ruthie’s.  At least, I think that had been
the plan.  Certainly, worked out that way.

THE CAMPUS,
FOR BEING squeezed into downtown had more open space than one would expect.
 Thousands of square feet that may have been put to better use as, you
know, classrooms on the college campus, was instead dedicated to common seating
areas and large, sweeping grass basins that kids, squandering their parents’
hard earned money, skipped class to play Frisbee in.

It was late
afternoon (Pavan and I had both woken up after one in the afternoon and
habitually moved slow in the morning [even when morning was an afternoon]) and
this was the lull between the midday series of classes and when the night
courses began.

This seemed
to be a good time to approach the campus staff-- a little down time, like at
the theater between rushes when movies began and let out.  Maybe the staff
would be more accommodating when not so busy.

So, I was
wrong.

“I’m sorry”
the middle-aged woman who’d given up on makeup years ago, said to me. Pavan
waited a few feet behind me, his head wrapped with ten-dollar eyewear from some
sunglasses-of-indifference
line, leaning up against the wall.  “I
can’t give you records of the faculty and staff at the university.  Did
you think we’d hand that out to whoever asked?”

“Hoped.”

“Not
happening, Mr. Daisy.”

Ugh.
 I said, “Please, just ‘Dexter.’”

"Excuse
me," she said a little too loudly, dropping her eyes and raising a bony
finger.  “
Excuse me
.  Everyone in this office, including those who barge
through that door, is a ‘mister,’ ‘missus,’ or ‘miss,’ sir.”  She said and
glanced around at two other coworkers, subordinates, who had quickly busied
themselves with impossibly stacked reams of paperwork.

They didn’t
look up nor did they raise a “sing it, sister” clenched fist in solidarity.

Strange
irony.  This person was
rudely
explaining to me the concept of
respect
.
 

Note to
all: It is one’s duty to take these types of folks down a notch.

“Fine, but
please use my original family name, if you’re going to.  ‘Daisy’ is the
last name of an abusive stepfather-in-law, and I hate it,” I lied.  “I'm
Dexter Miester, but ours is now anglicized German.  Miester into Mister.
 Name is Dexter Mister, now.  So if not ‘Dexter’, then...”