The Mentor (5 page)

“OKAY.”

“And while
you were otherwise engaged, she stood there for the thirty-seven but ordered
the new
Tron
movie with the hotel’s remote and, quote,
'just to screw
me but not a for-real screwing
,' she chose the All-Day movie pass-- which
ended up costing you twenty-four ninety-five more-- and that sucked because
you’d seen the film only the week before.”

Pavan went
as quiet as I've ever seen him go.

He nearly
melted into his seat, his arms sagged a little and his chin fell far enough to
where the zipper on his hoodie was close to piercing the skin.  

Sometimes,
he would zone out like that.  All the dope.  No joke, except for the
minute or so it took him to roll up a joint just after waking up, I'd never
seen him
not
high.  I’m convinced that if you scraped an ice cream
scoop around the inside of his skull, you'd come up with a blob of resin the
size of a bowling ball.  Without finger holes.

“Hey man,
cut it out,” I said and pointed to the road through the windshield.  Behind us
a guy laid on the horn, which did the trick.  He looked at me, then turned
back to the road and shook his head real slow.

“Can’t
believe you never told me about that,” he said.  “That’s just something
people, you know, I think you tell other people about.  At least your
friends.”

For
whatever reason, he actually looked a bit hurt.  Like I’d lied to him.

I stared
out the window again and we dropped into silence all the way back to my
apartment.

"You
want to have some beers later?"

"Sure,"
he said and grinned a bit.  One positive about all that dope-- too hard to hold
a grudge if you've fried your short-term memory.

"Okay,
cool."

"Hey,"
he said as I got out of his car.  "You never said where you went
yesterday.  I covered for you and had Cheryl call the new guy in."

I looked up
to my apartment window.  Dark.

"Huh?"

"Never
mind, you don't want to tell me, so--"

"No,
no.  What are you talking about?  I was with you yesterday, Pavan."

"Not
yesterday.  Yesterday, you did your vanishing thing."

Stoners.

"The
guy screaming in the theater," I said.  "That was last night. 
Remember."

My friend
shook his head.

"Two
nights ago.  Last night, Anthony subbed in for you.  You didn't show.  I told
everyone your Aunt died," he said.  "So look real sad and shit when
you come in, okay?"

"Oh. 
Sure."

"Get
some sleep, Dexter," he said, and I watched his little Honda putter down
the street, past the Marietta Square.

Two
nights ago?

Before
going up stairs, I walked a half block to the Australian bakery.  On the
window, the owner, Mark, had written out his
G'Day-ly Specials
in white
grease pencil.  It was Thursday.

Not for me,
though.  In my world, it was still Wednesday.

"
Jesus
…"

That made
sense.  In the van… I'd briefly seen daylight before plunging into the quarry
lake.

"
I…
how?"

I stared at
myself in the restaurant window.  Somehow, I'd lost a day.

"A
whole day?  What..?" I said to my reflection in the dirty glass. 
"What did he do to me?"

THE SUN WAS
UP and already a little angry.

All I wanted
to do was sleep, but if I'm not crashed before dawn breaks it's just not happening.

The coffee
maker still had coffee in it from the day before.  Or, rather, the day before
that, it seemed.

Nothing a
quick ride in the microwave wouldn’t cure (or kill).

Waiting for
the coffee to finish its ride on the radioactive merry-go-round, I turned and
leaned against my stove, mindful of the Leaning Tower of Beer Cans on top of it.
 

As I looked
around, the room showed no signs of any struggle. 

The couch
hadn't been upended, my orange crates weren't busted, the… well, that's really
all there was to my l
iving
area. 

Hmm.  I
pay for renters' insurance, for god's sake
, I thought.

It was
clear I needed to buy more stuff that could get smashed, and then subsequently
replaced, to warrant that particular monthly expense.

Staring at
the wood crates in my living room, I tried to imagine him sitting there. 

Had he been
wearing gloves?  A jacket?

He must
have been wearing shoes.  What kind were they?  Sneakers?  Classy but practical
loafers? 
Toms
?

No.  Not
Toms.

With their
One
for One
deal, could you imagine some kid in Africa getting that asshole's
matching pair of Nautical Biminis?  "
I treasure their reinforced canvas
stitching and instep ventilation eyelets but, when I wear them, why do I loathe
myself so?
"

"Okay,
okay.  I'm going to have to lie down," I said.  "Getting a bit
loopy."

Lying on
the couch, I tried to keep my eyes closed but instead could only stare at where
he'd been sitting.

What had he
looked like?

Each word spoken,
every one, from the moment he turned the lock to the moment I blacked out,
those I could remember.  But the imagery attached to those words was
fleeting, ethereal. 

But, I did
remember the teeth.  Perfect.  Those?  Yeah, I remembered those.

Giving up
on sleep for the second time that morning, I went into my bedroom and traded
the clothes on my body for the clothes on the floor. 

An old pair
of jeans did nicely.  A knit shirt looked promising but it appeared to be stuck
to a pair of my boxers-- don’t know which had stuck to which, but this unholy
union pretty much disqualified both.  

After a
half-minute more, a black t-shirt and jeans became my morning uniform.  

I had to
stick with the same underwear and socks because I didn’t have anything fresh.
 Besides, I swam through the water in the quarry so it was
kinda
like washing them.  The undies were actually still a little damp and
unable to find some talc I seriously considered, only for a moment, the idea of
throwing a handful of baking soda or even flour down there to soak up the
moisture.  

Worried
about diaper rash, but slightly more worried about the possibility of rolling
up a twin set of baguettes in my undershorts, I decided against the flour.

My
apartment is designed in what I often describe as “late forties, mob blood-bath
cover up.”  The homestead on the square was, according to the bar manager
downstairs who rents the space out, part of the
original
square.
 Back when Marietta had been the “county seat” and cowpokes would meander
into town to get things like flour and twine and gingham.  

Whatever it
was, gingham was huge in those days.  Any story you read portraying that
time, at some point someone's going in town for gingham.  Must've been like
cowboy crack or something.

This
apartment above the bar, as it was explained to me, did not host any gingham
transactions.  It did, however, serve as a nice place for the beefy
barmaid to drag surly barflies up for a quick roll in the proverbial hay.
 Actually, I believe it was real hay.

That being
said, the next several tenants, having learned the room had been host to the
world’s oldest profession, quickly gave it the world’s newest coat of paint.
 No one, it seemed, bothered to sand away any of the old paint lest they
find, God forbid, some rustic wet spot.  

I've
thought it through and estimated (only because I don’t have a television or
computer and have to find other meaningless ways of filling the time) that over
the years and multiple coats of paint, the apartment has probably lost more
than a dozen cubic feet of space because of its thickening inner shell.

A
delightful, yet unintended consequence of this is that one doesn’t need to use
anchors when hanging photos or, say, concrete shelving—two inches of paint
holds nails and thumbtacks equally secure.

At least,
that was my assumption.  I'd never hung anything up in the apartment so
didn't really know.

Living
above a bar has many advantages.  First off, no drunk driving tickets.
 Not one.  A notable contributor to that, of course: no car.
 But no car means, also, no car payment and no car insurance.  And
with a bar just downstairs, why would you need to drive anywhere?  Darts
and flat beer are just fourteen rotting stairs away.

WICKED
LESTER'S
DOESN'T OPEN
until sometime after six in the evening, giving the soft wood and ancient
upholstery a chance during the daylight hours to shake off the stains of
liquor, sweat and sadness.  Each morning, seven days a week, an old man
everyone calls “Jerry” sets up a wheel-carted mini-bakery in the bar’s recessed
door front.  

Jerry won’t
tell anyone his name because he’s an
unlicensed
confectioner, afraid
he’ll be busted for illegally “dealing” pastries and muffins on the sidewalk.
 

It’s
doubtful the bar owner even knows Jerry is there each morning because the old
fellah is too paranoid to hang around past nine.  However, there must be
long, quiet evenings of reflection from the
Lester’s
bar staff over the
great number of poppy seeds and rainbow sprinkles that, no matter how much they
sweep away, more and more just accumulate by the next day.  

It must
seem like either some sort of diabetes-inducing fairy dust or possibly the
remnants of some alcoholic,
yet incognito
Keebler elf stumbling into the
street after last call.

An old
friend who crashed at my place for a week once asked me, “
Why do you live in
Marietta, Georgia of all places?
”  The best I could come up with was,
“
I don’t want to live in Minneapolis
.”  Which was although entirely
true, a somewhat anemic explanation.  I guess I didn't really have an
answer.

With a vague
purpose to my morning, I rocketed down the stairs faster than I should have and
nearly spilled my atomic coffee onto the paranoid baker.  

I got a
bear claw from Jerry because, this sleepy, I felt like I was ten years old and
a bear claw sounded cool.

“No
elephant ear this morning?  You didn’t like it last time?”

“Elephant
ear?  No, didn’t sit so well.  Came back on me last night.”

“Well, you
know this is shit,” he said.  “I’ve told you that before.  You know
you are eating shit, yes?”

“I know,
Jerry.”

“Why do you
eat so bad?” To emphasize his disgust with my culinary choice, he aggressively
balled up the wax paper he’d used to hand me my pastry and threw it in a small
trash can at his feet that I’ve never seen.  I only knew it was there
because I’ve heard the soft metallic thump of its lid.

“I dunno,
Jerry,” I said.  Frosting tumbled from my mouth like I had the mother of all
cases of chapped lips after getting lost in the desert a week.  “If it’s
so bad, why’d you sell it?”

“Hot
seller.  Everyone loves the elephant ear.”

I stopped
mid-bite.  “I thought this was a bar claw.”

“Sure,
that’s what I meant.  Whatever animal part it is, people like it, so I
sell it.”

Ah yes, the
journeyman laborer of the “greatest” generation.  Witness their pride,
their knowledge of craft and trade.  Drink deep, my friends.  We’ll miss them
when they're gone, I’m told.

I handed
over a couple bills and passed quickly by the well-manicured square where I
used to do the crossword every morning.  These days, however, that's no
longer a part of my morning routine.  The crossword, too often, led to
catching the headline of some awful story on the front page.  And,
obviously, the top stories are chosen by which one has the most arresting
picture.  If there’s a story about some guy who pressed three of his neighbor’s
Jack Russells into a blender and another about a local woman winning the
Pulitzer, a snapshot of the Puppirita gets above the fold, every time.
 Too depressing.

And
crossword
books
are out of the question.  Anyone who carries around
an entire BOOK of crosswords might as well shout,
I don’t have friends and
there’s a very good chance I suckle the blood of stolen newborns whilst I sleep
to keep myself eternally young!

Not that I have
many friends (nor suckle baby blood, for that matter).  Sure, there’s
Pavan, but I don’t really get as close to people as I used to.  I may be
dating Laura but we don’t go out on "dates."  We are there—as
she bluntly put it one night—to meet each other’s basic needs.  

It’s like
sustenance dating.

I only had
a few blocks to walk but wasn’t in a terrible hurry.  Catching a glimpse
of a bustle in the hedgerow, I waved at the Asian street person who’d been
hanging around the square for nearly a year.  I’d never seen an Asian bum
and was half convinced the “Marietta Football Widows” saw a movie or television
show featuring snarky homeless people and decided that bringing one in might
add some color to the neighborhood.