The Mentor

by Pat Connid

  "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."

  I took a sip. "Nah, it's fine."

  Pavan exhaled a huge breath. "Okay. Just forget I said that."

  Couldn't help it, I just laughed.

  "Oh fuck-oh-fuck, I'm a dick. Sorry, dude, seriously, I didn't mean, you know that you would because, or, anything just--"

  "It's okay. Funniest damn thing I've heard in weeks."

  One of the women I’d seen earlier by the fountain laughed, too, engrossed in her own conversation. When she did, she tossed her head back like some movie star in a shampoo commercial.

  Yep. This was a group effort thing.

  Me, I’ve never had group sex. I’m lucky for those rare times Laura has a lapse of judgment and spends the night. My version of a three-way, unfortunately, is when I’m by myself but I get tired and switch hands.

  “We just can’t sit out here and drink warm beer all night staring at your apartment, man.”

  “Fine, fine. I just wanna make sure he’s not up there waiting.”

  “What do you think he’s got against you?”

  I said, “I dunno. Don’t have the first clue.” I stood and stretched my legs, took the first tentative steps toward my apartment. Lester’s was pretty quiet, a weeknight, so my plan was to put an ear up to my door at the top of the steps and listen for a while. Just to be sure.

  Pavan trailed right behind me as we crossed the street to the door that led to my stairs. I yanked on the dirty brass knob and we were inside.

  No thumping through the walls this time but, to be honest, I wouldn’t have minded it because at least it would have drowned out the sound of my own heartbeat. I could feel it too, up in my throat, and I tried hard to swallow it back down.

  The afternoon had been hot and that always cooks up a fetid beer smell in the stairwell. My gut was already doing flip-flops trying to digest my own fear. The warm, gut-rot of week-old Old Milwaukee wasn’t helping.

  The top three steps always creek, so I took a big step over them and sided up to my door. I wondered for a second if they’d made noise the previous night but with the bar downstairs hopping as it was, I never heard a thing.

  Pavan stopped a couple stairs down, and I glared at him.

  I whispered, “Man, I thought you were in on this with me.”

  “Yeah,” he whispered back. “But I got little legs, man. I can’t do that Plasticman stretch you just did over your squeaky stairs.”

  He had a point. I thought for a second and decided this might actually work out for the best.

  “Okay, I’ll point at you, and you start running for the door, then I’ll fling it open,” I whispered, mouthing each word slowly. “Be in a half step behind you.”

  Pavan’s hair wagged, his face less convinced than his coif. I turned back to the door and put my hand on the knob. Raising my arm, I held up three fingers, and then counted down.

  When I got to one, I gave him the point and twisted the knob. It twisted easily and I gave it a push, but it didn’t open.

  “Abort!”

  Pavan’s hair flopped at the door as he stopped one step back, his hands clawing at the walls, desperately trying not to go ass over teakettle down my rickety stairs.

  “What the fuck, man?” he hoarse whispered at me.

  “Locked.”

  Once we got the door open, I flipped on the light next to the entryway and the kitchen glowed dingy yellow.

  The corners of my apartment were dark as black holes as the two of us stood at the threshold, surveying the lay of the land. With my left hand I reached out and grabbed two empty beer cans from the top of my stove and felt only slightly more confident now I was armed.

  I took the first step forward and Pavan was elbow to shoulder with me. From the door to the living area, where my couch is, there’s a short wall there and it makes for a truncated hallway. We both headed toward the couch, keeping an eye on the swirls in the shadows.

  No one was sitting on the orange crates this time. I looked at the couch and saw no one there, too.

  “Okay.” I let out the breath I’d been holding and lowered my beer cans.

  "What the hell are you doing?”

  Like Drunken Master Bruce Lee, I spun down to one knee, launching my beer cans in the direction of the voice as if they were throwing stars. Both of them sailed harmlessly over Laura’s shoulder, and she just stared.

  “Dexter? What’re doing?”

  “Nothing, sweetie,” I said and faked a smile. “I didn’t know you’d be over tonight.”

  Dressed in her nightshirt with the stain that suddenly reminded me of the structure of some metal carbonyl cluster I'd had to memorize for a midterm years ago, she crossed her arms over her chest and plopped on the couch.

  Pavan was looking a little too hard at her. I’d never known the guy to have a girlfriend. I got the feeling he was recording the image for later use and that earned him a flick on the ear.

  “Ow, asshole,” he said but didn’t look at me.

  Then, for a brief moment, something struck me. The stain on Laura’s shirt, I’d seen a dozen times but this time it reminded me of something I’d studied in college.

  Those years, those memories, I’d lost them after the accident.

  I was told it was "retrograde amnesia." And I'd said at the time that sounded like something Meredith Baxter-Birney would have on any number of various Lifetime network made-for-TV movies.

  After the crash, my head was bashed up pretty good. Those memories, I was told, were probably lost for good. Yet, here was an image bubbling up from the void. Strange.

  I sat on the orange crates, looked down at Laura. This is how the guy had been looking at me. She glared back at me, eyes burning a hole in my head.

  “You going to tell me why you’re sneaking in your own apartment?”

  “I had an intruder the other night,” I said, leaning to the right and peeking out the living room window. “Just making sure—“

  “Hell, you could have told me.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you, babe,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you let me walk right into your place after somebody breaks in? What if he came back?”

  “Oh,” I said, crossing my arms. “I’m sure he’s long gone.”

  “Yeah? So, why did you two piss yourselves when I came in the room?"

  Pavan went to the fridge and nabbed a cold Bud. He held one up, and I shook him off. I wanted one but I was going to see if he started getting groggy in the next couple minutes before I indulged.

  Sue me.

  Hell, he'd probably enjoy the light show.

  As Laura looked around the room, her short bleached hair looked like a meringue pie on a spinner at a bakery. “Who would break in here? You don’t have anything to steal.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know that.”

  “I still wish you would have said something.”

  “You worried about me? I can handle myself.”

  Pavan looked okay, so I got up and crossed into the kitchen. I grabbed a beer from the back of the frid
ge, on the right.

  “No, I wouldn’t have been so casual about opening the door for your landlord to dig around under the sink if I'd known somebody had broken in here.”

  My kitchen sink leaks and always has. The landlord is too cheap to get a plumber so he knocks ten bucks off my rent if I don’t use the kitchen sink. I have a tube sock on the faucet held fast with a rubber band so I don’t forget.

  “Why was he here? You didn’t turn the sink on, did you?” I said and looked in the basin.

  There’s a breach in one of the pipes, and the water drips behind the wall between my place and the bar. The water attracts roaches, some of which eventually die. That attracts rats, which eat the dead roaches and then stray cats that go after the rats.

  The landlord hates cats.

  “What’d Angelo say? Was he pissed?”

  “No, the other guy. He seemed okay about it,” she said, sitting up, and then settling her rump onto her feet, arms draped over the back of the couch. From where I was, I could peek straight down her nightshirt, and it was the nicest thing that had happened to me all day. Women have no idea the true power they have over us men.

  After flicking Pavan’s ear (“Ow, asshole”), I started to walk toward the couch, tired. Then it finally registered.

  “What other guy?”

  Yeah, I know. Friggin’ Kojak, that’s me.

  She lifted her shoulders. “Nice guy, must have apologized a hundred times for barging in.” Spreading her arms and stretching like a cat, she scooted to the edge of the couch and said, “Still, I had my mace in my hand, in my pocket. Can’t be too trusting.”

  I looked at Pavan, and he quickly covered his ear. Then, I raised my eyebrows and looked toward the orange crates. He looked at the orange crates and then he raised his eyebrows. He had no idea what I was trying to tell him.

  “This new guy, how’d you know it was the landlord?”

  “How'd I know? You mean other than he had a key for your apartment, a tool belt around his waist and wanted to fix the sink? He told me.”

  “Oh yeah, that guy.” I nodded. “Looks like a black ninja, right?”

  Laura laughed, hopped up from the couch and shuffled toward my bedroom. “I don’t know about the ninja part,” she said and stopped at the door, leaning on the thick paint of the molding. Whoa, I loved her calves. When she shaved her legs, I really loved her calves. When she didn't, I still did.

  She added: “He had really great teeth.”

  Yeah, I knew those teeth.

  Pavan looked at me and shook his head slowly. “You coming?”

  “Where?”

  “Not here,” he said, padding toward the door. “You said you didn’t want to stay here tonight.” I turned and watched Laura walk into the bedroom, her body slipping into the velvet darkness. He said in the hoarse whisper: “Man, that guy was here again, right?”

  “Yeah, I gotta check under the sink. Wonder what he was doing under there? Maybe he put some sort of…” I said and popped open the cabinet. A moment later, the room was suddenly split with the sound of buzzing and I lifted my head out from under the sink. “Yep, looks fine under there.”

  “How can you see? You need a flashlight,” he said and started rummaging through my junk drawers.

  “Nah, I’m cool,” I said, my eyes flashing toward the bedroom. “You head home. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “Dude, he might have put something—“

  “Listen Pavan,” I said pushing him toward the door. “If I don’t get in there within the minute, she’ll be done before I can get undressed.” Opening the door to my apartment, I pushed him out. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” He craned his neck, trying to look around me as I closed the door and locked it.

  I caught sight of the sink and stopped. What had he been up to down there?

  Then, I heard the first loud sigh from my bedroom and realized it could wait.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I tried to roll over but my body was sore and that thought made me smile a little.

  I craned my neck up and looked out the window, upside down— it was barely dawn. The sky was slashed along its edge, and a hazy orange glow bled through the wound.

  Next to me in the dark, Laura lay motionless, deep in sleep. I closed my eyes again and tried to join her.

  “What a waste of the day.”

  My eyes popped back open.

  Had I fallen asleep so fast? Dreaming?

  Sure, possible.

  “I mean, Dex, you’re already awake. You should go for a run, maybe.”

  But not likely.

  Lifting my head, I saw the black man sitting on my dresser across the room. The light was very dim, but I could see that his feet hovered a few inches above the floor.

  “You could stand to lose about twenty-five, thirty pounds.”

  Looking over at Laura, I was surprised when she hadn't woken up. Maybe it was just a dream?

  I squinted, trying to draw his features out of the darkness.

  “Don’t worry about your girl there, Dex,” he said and slid off of the dresser to the hardwood floor. He made no sound.

  The way he walked, like a predator or a big jungle cat, was smooth and precise. That slow, aggressive motion instantly put me in a full-boil panic.

  I shuffled toward the headboard and leaned back up on my elbows. In an instant, my mouth had gone dry. Not wanting him to see how scared I was, I forced an angry face.

  “You drugged her, you crazy fuck?”

  “And, I would suggest you start reading again,” he said, twirling something between his fingers. “Your vocabulary is suffering.”

  As if he held the reins of both darkness and light in either of his gloved hands, something flashed in front of his belly.

  My body started to hum as my panic began to transform into something more useful: rage.

  This time, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  I looked around the room for a weapon. Any weapon.

  In the dim light, I saw Laura’s “Pocket Rocket” vibrator poking through the folds of the duvet.

  Not ideal.

  I’d certainly never get close enough to him to use it and would need at least two or three minutes, if experience were any guide, before it had any sort of brief, debilitating effect.

  Had to find something heavy. Or sharp.

  I went to stand, pushing the covers off my body, but my visitor shook his head and gave me a tsk-tsk-tsk.

  “No, no,” he said. “This would be easier for both of us if you didn’t move.”

  “What if I don’t want it to be easy?” I shouted, in part because I had hoped it might wake up Laura. I could have used the backup.

  He moved around the room so fast, I lost sight of him and covered my head to protect it from a blow. He chuckled from a dark corner. We both knew how this was going to end.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Dex, I don’t want anything from you,” he said, his voice smooth, even playful. “Just a man putting in a hard day's work.”

  “What?”

  “Listen, now. Air velocity can be judged by relative objects on the ground—“

  Oh. Damn.

  “—but don’t rely on their size as any sort of barometer because often you don’t know their size. Instead estimate their distance and use static objects for your computations.”

  I screamed at him: “Man, I don’t need this!”

  “You understand the Archimedes' principle, and you’ll need that if you want to survive. Also, the emotional response will be a problem. Your instincts… you’ll have to fight that because that would be your downfall,” he said and I could see movement in the corner of the room, flashing again. Terrified, I pressed my back against the headboard and craned my neck, trying to see down into the square below me.

  “Goddamn it, help me!”

  No one was down there this early in the morning, and mine was the only apartment on the block.

  Despite my yelling, Laura hadn’t stirred, and I
was sincerely worried about what he’d done to her.

  “You know Newton’s second law of motion, his most powerful, and it will allow you to perform necessary quantitative calculations of dynamics,” he said and I saw a wide set of teeth. “A little while back, some Japanese eggheads believed they disproved parts of that theory—theoretically— using electrolysis upon a molecule in a specially prepared liquid. But, trust me; you won’t be applying this within liquid.” He chucked again and the strange winking light in front of him stopped for a second. “You hit liquid, and your skin will boil off your bones, Dexter.”

  Then he was right there, right in front of me, dressed all in black again, and briefly I saw a silver or gold ring as his hands came toward me, then the golf club, which landed between my right cheek bone and my ear with a thwack!

  Purples and blues swirled, the world folding in upon itself, my body falling back into the bed, my head buzzing loudly… and through that din I heard:

  “Lesson begins.”

  I'M TOO SCRAMBLED FOR Ruthie’s funeral, and I hate myself for secretly not wanting to go. I can take pain. My whole body’s been on fire for a week and I've got these headaches that roar in then retreat just as fast.

  What I can't take is the pity. The look of it. The smell and the stain of it.

  And, I don’t deserve it even if I could.

  “Dexter,” the young nurse says as a greeting. “How’s the head?”

  “Fine. My guts got scrambled not my head."

  "Good," she says. "Then your memory's coming back? Such an amazing gift, it'd be terrible if you lost it. Terrible."

  "Oh," I say. "Yeah, slowly. Bits and pieces."

  "Good because they're coming for it," she says, her painted-on smile unwavering.

  "What? What are you talking about?"

  She looks down at her wrist watch casually, as if she hadn't heard me.

  “You want me to dial up the church? Service starts in a few minutes. You could listen to it on speaker phone if you’d like.”

  If she’s wanting to change the subject, she knows right where to hit.

  “Funerals are for the living, so the folks left behind can feel better,” I say then stop, waiting until she looks at me. “I don’t want to feel better.”