The Mentor

by Sebastian Stuart

“What problem?” Anne asks.

  “You got a phone call that seemed to upset you. I think it was my second day working at Home. Anyway, it was raining.”

  Anne looks at Emma for a moment. Who is this girl? She walks past her, into Charles’s office. She picks up his pack of Marlboros and takes one out, but doesn’t light it.

  “Unfortunately, many calls upset me these days. Home is about to go on-line. Getting there hasn’t been easy. I probably should have kept you. You were good.”

  “It was a wonderful opportunity for me.”

  “Yes. And now you’re here.”

  “I’m here.”

  Emma looks as if she’s about to say something more and then thinks the better of it. What the hell was she doing skulking about in Charles’s office?

  “I was just on my way out,” Emma says, gathering up her things. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” Anne says. As she watches Emma walk down the hallway, Anne decides she wants her out of her house.

  Back in the kitchen, Anne pours herself a glass of wine and finishes it in three sips. One glass won’t hurt the baby. Hell, her mother swears she drank two gin and tonics every night when she was pregnant with Anne. She opens the fridge and checks on the chicken she’s marinating in beer and curry and horseradish. They’ll eat at the small table in the library, at the window overlooking the park. She’ll put on Coltrane. And after dinner she’ll run Charles a hot bath…

  The kitchen phone rings.

  “Hello.”

  “Why haven’t I heard from you, Annie? I’ve left three phone messages and two E-mails.”

  “Need you ask?”

  “Don’t give me that crap. You think my job is a day at the beach? I’m a vice president of a television network, cookie honey sweetie baby.”

  Anne laughs-who else could make her laugh at this moment?

  “I miss you, Kayla.”

  Kayla Edelstein is Anne’s best buddy. They were roommates at Stanford, two eighteen-year-olds from opposite ends of the continent who joyously discovered that they shared a sense of humor, passionate liberal politics, and enough drive to light Cleveland. After graduation they moved to Manhattan together, shared a basement apartment off Riverside Drive, dated and sometimes bedded a series of gorgeous young men, and dived full-tilt-boogie into their careers. Anne got her first job as an editorial assistant at Vogue, Kayla hers as an agent’s assistant at William Morris. Within three years Kayla relocated to L.A., where her rise has been steady and sure. She’s currently head of development for the country’s second-largest cable network. The two friends speak at least once a week and make sure they see each other three or four times a year.

  “So how are you?” Kayla asks in a voice that says, Don’t try to bullshit me, kiddo.

  “Good.”

  There’s a long pause.

  “All right, it’s been a lousy couple of weeks.”

  “I’ve seen the reviews. Is he totally flipped?”

  “Pretty much. I know you think he’s a bulldog, and sometimes he is. But he feels things more acutely than most people. He can’t help himself. It’s part of what makes his work so good. And so difficult for him.”

  “Why don’t the two of you come out here, lie by the pool in Santa Monica for a week? You need to get out of that town.”

  “Charles is throwing himself into a new book. It’s the best thing. He knows he’s capable of more than Capitol Offense. I don’t care about his sales anymore. I just want him to tap into that magic again; I want him to be great again.”

  “So do I, Annie. What about your website? Am I going to love it?”

  “You’re going to way love it. It’s the coolest. Sales are going to go through the roof.”

  “Why do I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me?”

  “Because you have a very vivid imagination.”

  “If I had a very vivid imagination, would I be in television? What I do have is intuition, and it tells me you’re holding back.”

  Anne drums her nails on the countertop. Should she tell her best friend about the shards of glass waiting for Charles on the bathroom floor?

  “Maybe I should come out there for a couple of days,” Anne says.

  “Pretty please. I could use you right now. I just dumped Fred.”

  “But you adored him.”

  “I adored his demented sense of humor and the way he nibbled my inner thighs. What I didn’t adore was the fact that he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.”

  “You told me he wasn’t like that.”

  “ He told me he wasn’t like that. But my intuition didn’t believe him. So I made some discreet calls and met this fabulous call girl-slash-private eye, Sorbonne grad, could be running Paramount but has this Jane Bond lifestyle she loves. Anyway she lured old Freddy into a zipless fuck, and believe me, it wasn’t hard. Best five grand I ever dropped.”

  “I’m sorry, Kayla.”

  “I’m not. I’m thrilled. Saved by the babe.”

  “But you really liked the guy.”

  There’s a long pause and Anne can almost hear Kayla’s bravado fizzle.

  “Yeah, you’re right, I did. He was so funny. And nerdy. I guess even geeks can be shits. Oh, Anne, I’m thirty-seven and I’ve never had a stable relationship,” Kayla says in a voice that’s starting to crack.

  “You will, honey, you will. And, hey, what about our friendship?”

  “You’re right. And fuck it-self-pity is the biggest bore.”

  “Damn straight. Remember our solemn oath: We will never feel sorry for ourselves. We will always have a cleaning lady, and-”

  “Sex is for our pleasure,” Kayla finishes. The two friends break into laughter.

  “Oh, God, Annie, I miss you.”

  Anne hears the front door open. “Listen, I should run. I’ll call you in a couple of days. Love you.”

  “Oh, the genius just walked in? You’re still a lovesick pup at heart, aren’t you? Charles Davis uber alles.”

  Dinner doesn’t go as Anne hoped. In spite of the Coltrane and the candles, the mood is about as romantic as a trip to the dry cleaners. Charles is tense and uncommunicative; he has three drinks and only picks at his food. Anne tries-a little too hard-to keep things warm and lively, bringing up the latest movies and political gossip, but it’s obvious that he’s bored and distracted. When she raves about her website she’s rewarded with a condescending “Terrific.” She feels like telling him he’d better hope the website is a success because his royalties on Capitol Offense sure as hell aren’t going to pay for the apartment. She curses herself for buying into his sulk, is too wound up to eat, keeps flashing on the shards of glass, and her left foot won’t stop twitching.

  “Charles, why don’t we get away, maybe down to Saint Bart’s, even just for a long weekend?”

  He finishes his drink and looks out the window. “You’ve got to stop crowding me, Anne.”

  “I wasn’t aware that I was crowding you.”

  “You can’t help it. You’re just so full of enthusiasms. Sometimes they’re hard to take.”

  “Our marriage is one of my enthusiasms. Perhaps it’s a misplaced one.”

  “At the moment it may well be.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that right now I’m consumed by my own struggle and incapable of giving you the attention you deserve. Maybe I should rent a little apartment in Rome for a year.”

  Wonderful-the great novelist spends a year in a garret overlooking the Tiber while she sweats it out in New York.

  “Don’t expect me to be here when you get back,” Anne says.

  Charles gets up and crosses the room. He lifts a painted Balinese monkey off the mantel and stares at its screeching face. “Only one thing is going to save me, to save us, Anne, and that’s a great book. We have to work as a team. I need your help.”

  Anne goes around the room turning off the lights until the only illumination is the reflected
glow that pours through the windows from the city outside. She stands in the middle of the room and steps out of her dress. Charles is watching her. She slips out of her bra and stands there in her soft cotton panties in the beckoning light. She knows that he still loves her body.

  “Let’s make love,” she says.

  Charles just stands there, looking at her. She can see it in his eyes-desire, faint at first, but building.

  She goes to him and kisses him. “Please, darling, let’s forget about the world for a little while. Let’s get back to you and me.”

  She pulls off his jacket and runs her hands down his shoulders. Then she unbuttons his shirt, her fingers trembling lightly. She can smell his pine soap, his sweat, the wine on his breath. She pushes his shirt open. She touches his chest, his neck, the warmth under his arms. His eyes are half closed.

  Slowly, very slowly, he moves an index finger down the curve of her breast. “You and me?”

  “Yes,” Anne whispers.

  Charles leans in to kiss her, slipping his hands down the back of her panties and pushing them off her hips, taking control.

  They met at a benefit softball game in Bridgehampton. She was twenty-three, winning raves from her bosses at Vogue, besieged by suitors, adoring the East. He was thirty-six, tanned and famous, and when he hit that triple and slid into third base, she was gone. They had a few cursory dates, but they both knew what those were about-prolonging the tension, foreplay basically. When they finally fell into each other’s arms-in a bedroom that looked out on the endless dunes of the Hamptons, the Atlantic glistening beneath a billion stars-it was what she’d been waiting for all her life.

  They got married three months later-at City Hall in Asbury Park, New Jersey, just for the hell of it. The first years were bliss. And it wasn’t just the sex. It was exploring hidden corners of Brooklyn on windy Saturday afternoons, arguing over conceptual art at the Whitney, laughing at each other’s imitations of dull or pompous people they met, spending long winter nights reading on the overstuffed sofas in the living room of their Turtle Bay apartment.

  Charles was a red-hot ticket in those days, and he made furthering her career a personal crusade. Lunch with the president of Doubleday; dinner parties to introduce her to editors, photographers, and writers; high-profile literary and cultural events- New York magazine named them one of the city’s Ten Most Glamorous Couples. They got a good laugh out of that one. But it all paid off: within a year Anne had a contract to do the first of her popular coffee table books on the “art” of entertaining.

  Anne thought their happiness would last forever. Although the erosion has been slow and steady, she has never looked at another man. Still does not want another man.

  After their lovemaking-a fierce, greedy, almost impersonal bout-Anne gets up and walks to their bedroom. She brushes her teeth, being careful not to step on the broken glass. She suddenly feels guilty and ridiculous, almost bends down and sweeps up the shards-but no, she must know; it’s that simple. She lies on the bed and pretends to study a contract. Where is Charles? The apartment is so quiet.

  Then he materializes-like a ghost-in the doorway. Anne starts.

  “Scare you?” Charles asks. He’s naked and has a drink in his hand.

  “You’re so quiet.” Even from across the room Anne can smell him, his after-sex smell, pungent and moist.

  “Thinking. Thinking is quiet.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Shhhh.” He puts a finger up to his lips. “Loose lips sink books.”

  “Ah.”

  “Going to go do some work,” he says.

  “Don’t you want to shower?”

  “Do I stink?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, I do. I stink.”

  “Well, if you stink, why don’t you shower?”

  “Probably because you suggested it.”

  Anne glances over to the bathroom. She gets out of bed and goes to him, puts her arms around his neck and kisses him softly on the lips. She presses her body, her hips, against his. “Or we could take one together. Who knows what might develop?”

  “Oh, no, I’ve had too much to drink. You’re right, though, I do stink. A nice long shower and I’ll be good as new.”

  Anne stops breathing as she watches him walk into the bathroom. His feet cross the black-and-white tiles, he’s heading right for the glass-he misses it. Her breath escapes in a rush.

  Then he turns to grab a washcloth.

  “Shit.” He turns his foot up and blood is running from the cut.

  “What is it, darling?” Anne says, going to him. “Oh, no.” A shard of glass is sticking out of the sole of his foot. “Let me get it.”

  She kneels and pulls out the thin shard and then squeezes his foot, watching as large drops of blood fall onto the tiles. “I dropped a glass earlier, I was sure I got it all up. I’m sorry. You get in the shower, I’ll clean this up.”

  “ ’Tain’t nothin’,” Charles mutters before stepping into the stall. Anne opens the closet door, ostensibly to reach for a sponge. She leaves the door open, blocking Charles’s view, and retrieves a vial. She gingerly uses a piece of glass to push several drops of blood into the vial, her heart hammering in her chest. She puts the stopper in the vial and quickly wipes up the rest of the blood. Then she walks quickly to the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, takes out her box of Maison du Chocolat chocolates-Charles hates them, eats only Hershey bars-and slips the vial under the top layer. Then she savors a cocoa-dusted truffle.

  17

  Anne Turner is murdered-stabbed to death in broad daylight by an escaped mental patient, right on Fifty-seventh Street in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers. The Post prints a front-page photo of her body lying on the sidewalk, blood pooling beside her, the wound on her neck dark and hideous. In the wrenching months that follow, Emma is there for Charles. He comes to depend on her, at first to handle all the prosaic details of his life, but slowly his need becomes emotional. And then one day it goes further-they make love, fall in love. He takes care of her, she nurtures him, his writing regains its former power. They rarely go out; it’s just the two of them in this beautiful apartment. Marriage becomes inevitable. On a perfectly ordinary morning, a Tuesday, they go down to City Hall for the simple, poignant ceremony. She becomes Mrs. Charles Davis-Emma Davis, Emma Davis, Emma Davis…

  Emma drags herself back to reality and takes the rubber band from around the thick pile of the day’s mail. Suddenly there’s a jangling beside her ear. She looks up to see Charles standing in the doorway, holding a single key on a metal ring.

  “See this key?”

  Emma nods.

  “I want you to take it and lock me in this room for six hours.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I don’t want you to let me out, no matter how hard I scream, pound, or wail. Understood?”

  Emma looks from the key to Charles. He actually wants her to do this. “All right,” she says.

  She takes the key. Charles walks into his office and turns. They look at each other. There’s something in his eyes, something yielding, teasing, that excites Emma. She slowly closes the door, inserts the key, and turns it. An unfamiliar sense of power pours over her, of having control over another human being. She likes it. She sits down and attacks the mail.

  Emma is completely absorbed in making notes to herself on a yellow legal pad when she hears a rapping on the door behind her.

  “For Christ’s sake, jailer, have you checked the time?”

  Could six hours really have passed? Emma slips the pad into her bag and unlocks the door. Charles stands in the doorway, hands gripping the lintel above him, looking like an athlete who’s just stepped off the field.

  “How was it?” Emma asks.

  “Excruciating… strange… maybe a little exciting.”

  Emma feels a blush rush up her body. She turns away from Charles and busies herself with some papers on her desk. “Your wife called. She won’t be home for dinner.”


  “Then you and I will go out.”

  “Oh, no, that’s all right, really,” Emma says, making a great show of finding a letter on the desk and taking it to the file cabinet.

  “Do you have other plans?”

  “Well, not exactly,” she says, searching through the file drawer for the right folder.

  “Emma, we’re going out to dinner.”

  The way he says it, that tone in his voice, the finality, the command. “I’m not very hungry,” she mumbles, still paging through the drawer.

  Charles leans in, forces her to meet his gaze. “Would you feel better if we went Dutch?”

  “Probably.”

  “Dutch it is, then,” he says, going to get his coat.

  Emma closes the file cabinet, crumples up the letter, and drops it in the trash.

  About twice a year Charles rides the subway, as much to remind himself that it still exists as to get to his destination. So when Emma insists that they not only eat on her turf but take her means of transportation to reach it, he’s willing. Sitting beside her on the train, Charles feels loose, slightly ecstatic. The six enforced hours were good ones. The truth is, he didn’t spend them writing. He pulled down a first edition of Irreparable Damage — the book that Emma loved so much-and reread it from beginning to end. He was caught up in the book in a way he hadn’t expected to be, and now he feels inspired. But is it by his own words? Or by the young woman sitting beside him on this rocking train?

  The Lower East Side, that city of ancient tenements, is a foreign land to Charles. As they walk down the battered streets, past old Jews, young Hispanics, and downscale artists, Charles is reawakened to what a huge and wondrous city he lives in. Emma leads him to a bare-bones Cuban restaurant tucked away on a teeming corner. They take a window booth and she orders for the two of them: avocado salad, black beans, yellow rice, and chicken that’s been cooked in a chunky tomato-onion sauce until it falls from the bone, as tender as love. After savoring the earthy food, they sit and look out the window, slowly eating dessert-silky flan with a burnt-sugar bottom.

  Charles feels that he’s in a different world somehow, a place where he isn’t Charles Davis, where he shucks that mantle, that burden, and is just another face on the street, just a man. He loves being led into this new land, eating this simple food. He can’t remember the last time he’s felt so unencumbered, as if he might be getting back to something important. He thinks of Portia, of how much she would enjoy this neighborhood, this restaurant, and, he ventures, this young woman.