The Mentor

by Pat Connid

  "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 living 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 elep
hant 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.

  In my book, there’s nothing wrong with walking. As I said, I had no car and liked it just fine that way. Now, you might think my waistline would reflect my car-lessness, but a steady diet of grain beverages keeps those trendy toned muscles and six-pack abs at bay.

  In my city, without a car and no ride, the only real choice was to walk. That's because the mass transit system in the Atlanta area is about as useful as a rainbow fright wig at a Klan rally.

  It seems the only place you can really get to is, strange enough, the bus depot. All lines lead to the bus depot but, as far as I can tell, nowhere else you'd care to go. I’m pretty convinced the only people that ride the bus are transit employees going to work.

  Luckily, my walk was short because the Cobb County sheriff building is just a couple blocks off the Marietta Square. Even though I’ve never been busted for anything, at least not in Georgia, it felt strange walking into the cops’ hive.

  After a few minutes inside, I noticed everyone just waits in line for the lady behind the glass, just like at the post office. And just like the post office, some of these folks are armed.

  The desk sergeant wasn’t happy to see me. Her mood did not improve once I began to tell her my story. Once I got to the part about waking up in the submerged van she held her hand up.

  “Okay, enough.”

  “There’s more,” I said, leaning my forehead against the glass.

  “Yeah, I don’t want to hear it,” she said and motioned over to the wall where blue, plastic seats were linked together like huge, discarded ice cube trays. Three chairs were occupied. “A detective will be out in a while and call your name.”

  “He’ll be able to help me?”

  She looked me up and down and said, “He’s a cop, not a barber.”

  Next to her, an officer built like a fire hydrant with a gray military-style buzz cut laughed, looked up from the accordion file he was sifting through, and shook his head.

  I asked him, “Is she always this nice?”

  “Why’d you think she’s doing this job up here?” The seated woman punched him lightly on the hip. He plucked out a single sheet of paper and began walking to an open door at the rear. “We’re too scared to have her back there.”

  Two of the people sitting near me were filing complaints about their neighbor’s dog, as it was a bit of a night owl. These guys lived on either side of Ol’ Yeller and, they told me at length, had been down here twice before. Third time, the dog’s owner gets a fine. Nice neighbors. If I’d had a dog next door it would have gone ape-shit when the black ninja came to visit me; seems a fair trade to give up a few sleepless nights to not end up in a cargo van at the bottom of a lake. These guys had no idea how good they had it.

  The third person, an older woman, said something about Jay Leno having a wicked mind and blue sense of humor, and she wanted to see about getting Johnny Carson back on television. She thought maybe the proper authorities could help that along. After explaining to her I was pretty sure Johnny was dead, she said that would still be an improvement over Leno. Couldn’t really argue with that.

  After about twenty minutes, I heard my name. Looking up, I saw Detective Firehydrant, again. Strangely, this time he’d come from the opposite end of the building… and since there was glass on both sides of the waiting room—one side looking out to the parking lot, the other to a small garden atrium— I had no idea how he’d gotten over there. Cop voodoo.

  The two anti-doggites had been called but the Leno woman was still there as I walked away. I wished her luck but had a feeling she’d be waiting for a while. Too bad because I was pulling for her.

  Detective Clower told me he was a CAPers detective, Crime Against Persons, as he wound me around through clusters of cubicles. I was surprised, for some reason, to see cops have knickknacks and pictures at their desks like everyone else. A glass-encased memorial laden with metals and a badge was on the far wall, a modest shrine for a cop who’d worked there. This being Marietta, though, he probably went down in some squabble over baked goods or off-day water usage.

  I’d gone over the previous evening in my head a couple times, yet as I told Clower my story, halfway through he stopped taking notes. That made me a little nervous, so after about a minute I skipped some of the dramatic detail and got to the end as quickly as I could. Looking back now, I think this was probably what he’d hoped to accomplish anyhow when he’d put his pen down. Cop voodoo.

  “Dexter, what’s your last name?”

  I eyed him and crossed my arms. “Why?”

  “For the police report, you can’t fill out a report without your name, man.” It was odd to hear a cop say ‘man.’ “What’s your last name?”

  “Daisy.”

  He started tapping away on his keyboard then stopped. Leaning back in his chair, he put the edge of his thumb to the corner of his eye and gave it a good rubbing while he seemed to mull over that one.

  “Dexter.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Dexter Daisy.”

  “Detective, trust me when I say if I had the money, I’d have changed it a long time ago.”

  Stone-faced, he said, “That one might be worth picking up a paper route.”

  Leaning forward, he banged away, hard, on the keyboard. He obviously had learned to type on an old manual typewriter or maybe got typing lessons from a family of masons. Guy must go through a keyboard a week.

  “They found the van, by the way,” he finally said. “Dredged it up.”

  “How’d they…” I started, and then said: “Oh. The homeless guy I talked to must’ve said something.”

  Clower didn’t look at me. “He wasn’t homeless. Neighborhood watch.”

  “He was drinking out of a bag, detective.”

  “If you did neighborhood watch in downtown Atlanta, you'd be drinking out of a bag, too.”

  He had a point.

  Spinning the computer screen toward me, he pointed to a digital photo of a white cargo van. The cement around it was darkened by quarry water, and the wheels were mucked with black, oily silt. Chains dangled from its grill like a dog’s br
oken muzzle.

  “That the van?”

  I studied the picture. “I don’t know. I was just inside.”

  “With the pen.”

  “Yes, with the pen.”

  For a moment, the only things that moved on his doughy face were his eyelids. Then, he said: "Can I see the pen?"

  Shit.

  "Uh, you don't have one of your own? Doesn't each day only start after you've been handed a pen and your bullet?"

  He spun the screen back toward himself and resumed punishing the defenseless keyboard.

  "No pen."

  "I was, you know, swimming up and up and--"

  "No pen."

  "Dropped it."

  For the next few minutes, he worked the computer. Occasionally, he’d stop to read the screen for a moment, and I wondered if he was going over what’d he just typed or checking the Braves’ box scores. Atlanta was playing an afternoon game against Philly, the only team ahead of them in the division.

  I couldn’t watch the games without a tube at home, but I’d rather listen to it on the radio any day. If you close your eyes, you feel like you’re actually there… except the price is better and there's far less drunks.

  Another detective came over, handed a file to Clower and said something which, amazingly, I couldn’t hear. I was three feet from the guy and couldn’t catch it. Must be some cop language they teach them at the academy. Or— Cop. Voo. Doo.

  The other detective flashed a blank smile at me as he left, and I noticed his teeth were the color of the water third-graders rinse paintbrushes in. Either too much coffee or not enough milk.

  “Your visitor, this African-American male--”

  “Black guy,” I interrupted. “Dunno if he was from Africa.”

  The cop slowly blinked and when his eyes came open, they were looking at me in a way that affected my heart rate. I decided to just listen for a while.

  “Can you describe him in any way? Tattoos?”

  “No.”

  “Piercings?”

  “We never got that friendly.”

  Clower sucked in a breath and blew it at the computer screen. “You know, for a guy who says he was a breast stroke away from death, you’re taking it pretty good, Mr. Daisy.”