The Mentor

by Sebastian Stuart

  “Hard to say.” He walks over to his closet and puts on a worn denim workshirt.

  Anne stands in the bathroom doorway. “But you want to keep her around?”

  “It’s nice to know she’s out there staying on top of things.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “A little.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t trust her.”

  “What’s not to trust? She’s just some highly efficient, highly insecure girl.”

  There’s a moment of silence.

  “It’s a nice night out,” Charles says.

  “Are you on to something?”

  Charles nods but doesn’t elaborate.

  “Well, that is exciting. Although it’s not easy being a literary widow.”

  “Think how much fun it’ll be when I return from the grave.”

  21

  Walking down the hallway that leads to Charles’s offices, Emma takes several deep breaths and tries to put a casual, everyday expression on her face. She walks into the outer office and there he is, sitting at her desk, her pages in front of him.

  “Do you know the ending?” he immediately asks. He looks as if he’s gotten very little sleep.

  “I think so.”

  “Don’t tell me.” Charles looks down at the pages for a long moment, then crosses to Emma and takes her by the shoulders. “It’s extraordinary, Emma.”

  Emma feels light-headed, as if all the blood has drained from her body and been replaced by a rush of pure oxygen. “You don’t have to say that.”

  “How long have you been working on this?”

  “About two years.”

  “Have you taken writing classes?”

  “No.” He’s looking at her so strangely, holding her shoulders so tightly. “I wrote in school. I won a story contest in the eighth grade.”

  “When do you write?”

  “Whenever I can.” Emma makes a small move to get away. “Shall I make coffee?”

  He gives a little snort, as if coffee is the most insignificant thing in the world. He finally lets go of her and walks across the room, rubbing his hands together. Then he spins around. “I’d like you to finish it here.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to finish your book here.”

  “But the job-”

  “Your job description just changed. This would help me a thousand times more than all the answered letters and returned phone calls in the world. I want these two rooms to be charged with electricity, with creative fire.” He gestures to her manuscript. “This is the whole fucking ball game.”

  “But, Charles…”

  He crosses back to her and lifts her chin. His voice becomes low and intimate and warm, like… like a father’s. “Listen to me, Emma. When I was just about your age, someone helped me. I’d like to give it back. I don’t want you to think too much about what I’m going to say-I just want you to keep on doing exactly what you’re doing-but you have a gift, a wonderful gift.”

  Emma feels a sudden urge to lay her head on his shoulder and have him stroke her hair. She wants him to take care of her, to guide her, to make the world a safe place, finally, at least for a little while.

  “What do you think? You and me, these two rooms?”

  Emma nods.

  “Good. Let’s get to work.”

  22

  Charles and Emma are walking across Central Park on their way to the movie theater. After a week of nonstop work, he’s insisted they take the afternoon off, feels it’s important for her to see Rashomon. He leads her along his favorite path, the one that winds through the Shakespeare Garden, planted with flowers mentioned in the plays, and then up a hill to Belvedere Castle. There’s a courtyard beside the castle and they lean against its low stone wall and admire the view of northern Manhattan and the little lake that sits below, beside an outdoor amphitheater where Shakespeare is performed on summer nights.

  “Next year we’ll go to one together,” he says.

  “Won’t that be a midsummer night’s dream,” Emma says and then wishes she hadn’t.

  Charles smiles. “Come on, we don’t want to miss the beginning of the movie.”

  Emma loves sitting beside Charles in the dark theater-the forced intimacy, their shoulders touching, the large bag of popcorn they’re sharing. She’s enthralled by Kurosawa’s artistry, by the story, the stories, he’s telling. Charles is like a little boy showing off a treasured possession.

  “He uses the camera like a paintbrush-it’s masterful.”

  Emma notices that nearby moviegoers are shooting him glances. Normally, she would have been mortified, but with Charles she doesn’t care. She’s never seen him so adorable. When she looks over, his eyes are dancing in the screen’s reflected light.

  “Every single frame has a purpose, just as every sentence should. You have to direct the reader’s eye!”

  “Shhh!” someone hisses.

  Emma laughs nervously. Charles is momentarily chastened. They watch the film unfold in silence for a few minutes and then Charles can no longer contain himself.

  “This is the kind of control I want you to work for. By the way, your rewrite of the first chapter is brilliant. I’m going to show it to my agent.”

  “Hey, c’mon,” someone admonishes.

  “All right, all right,” Charles grumbles.

  Emma sinks down in her seat, charmed by Charles’s enthusiasm, embarrassed by his outburst, and stunned by his statement. Nina Bradley is going to read her work! In the darkness, Emma smiles to herself.

  After the movie, they ride uptown in a cab. It’s Emma’s first taxi ride, and it feels luxurious, almost decadent. Outside the window the city passes by as if it too is a movie, unfolding for her personal pleasure. Charles has turned to face her and has an arm on the seat back. He keeps touching her lightly, on her knee, her shoulder.

  And then, in a quiet, serious voice, he says, “Emma, the story you’re telling-that young boy, his abusive mother-where did it come from?”

  Emma doesn’t turn to him, but keeps looking out the window as she speaks. She’s been expecting this question. “There was this woman who lived with her son above the stationery store downtown. She was clearly disturbed. They were always dressed in dirty clothes, he was skinny and sad. Everyone in town talked about them, made fun of them behind their backs. One day I saw the two of them sitting at the lunch counter in Woolworth’s. She was talking to herself while he sat there eating his grilled cheese sandwich, trying to pretend everything was normal. But there were tears in his eyes.”

  “Most writers put a lot of themselves into their first books,” Charles says gently.

  “I’m probably no exception. After my father left, my mother started drinking and taking pills. I’m sure I saw myself in that little boy.”

  They ride in silence for a few blocks. Emma can feel Charles studying her as she looks out the window.

  “Is your mother better now?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “You’ve gotten inside the boy’s head. But don’t back away from the horror of the situation. The mother may be sad, but ultimately she’s a monster.”

  “But I want her to be a human being first.”

  “She is a human being, a human being who is destroying her own progeny. You can’t pull back on that.”

  Emma turns to him abruptly. “I have no intention of pulling back.”

  They’re both surprised by the power in her voice.

  Emma laughs uneasily. “I just mean-”

  “You don’t have to tell me what you mean… Emma, I’ve enjoyed our day together.”

  Emma looks down at her hands and for a moment she’s afraid she’ll cry. Or throw up. She takes several deep breaths. “Thank you for everything, Charles.”

  “Look at me.”

  Emma slowly looks up.

  “You’re crying.”

  “No, I’m not. I am not crying. I’m not.”

  And
then they’re both laughing and the taxi feels like a boat on a starry-night sea and Emma, as she discovers a part of herself she didn’t know existed, an elation as pure as light, almost stops watching herself, but can’t quite, and so stores the moment for future remembrance.

  23

  Ignoring the dash to each season’s trendy new restaurant, Nina Bradley can be found-winter, summer, spring, and fall-at her prime table at the Four Seasons. She understands the value of being seen and of seeing, and she enjoys the homage that she’s paid by the steady stream of media, publishing, and entertainment people who come through the restaurant. A brief stop at Nina Bradley’s table is a well-known New York ritual.

  Nina, whose marriage to a much-too-dull businessman was, in her words, “a six-year cruise to nowhere,” is far too set-and content-in her ways to waste time looking for another man. She spends most weekends at her farm up in Columbia County. She loves the place, which she has willed to the Nature Conservancy. She maintains it impeccably and is proud of the cattle her farm manager raises organically. Nina has an occasional affair, but at her age eligible men are hard to find, and frankly, she sometimes thinks they just aren’t worth the trouble.

  As Charles finishes up his steak, the waiter sets down Nina’s black coffee and removes her half-eaten grilled vegetable terrine. It’s been a good lunch. Something is definitely happening with Charles. She hasn’t seen him quite this animated in years; his recent bitterness seems to have evaporated. If she didn’t know better, she’d suspect he was in love. But it isn’t that. He’s being very cagey about his work, which is a good sign-he likes to surprise Nina.

  “Thank God for our lunches. Anne never serves steak anymore,” Charles says, savoring his last bite. Nina loves the unabashed pleasure he takes in food. She can appreciate good cooking, but as for swooning and swaying over the latest Moroccan cheese or Ecuadorian roast-goat recipe, well, count her out. At least Anne has a sense of humor about all the culinary chatter.

  “I hadn’t eaten a steak in two years when I bought my farm. Then I got to know a few cows and realized that any animal that dumb had to have been put on earth for man to eat,” Nina says.

  Charles looks at Nina with unabashed affection. The man is feeling good about something. “Any industry gossip?” he asks.

  “Vera Knee just got four hundred grand for the paperback rights to Honey on the Moon.” As soon as the words are out, Nina curses herself. Cows aren’t the only dumb creatures, she thinks ruefully, and quickly tries to recover. “Of course, her book is completely unreadable. And I don’t care if she got a cool million, I’m not interested in representing any of this recent crop of so-called writers with more personality than talent. I’ve got a stack of manuscripts this high in my office. I’m sending them all back unread.”

  “But what if there’s one at the bottom of that stack that’s the real thing?”

  “Then I hope it lands on the desk of someone who cares,” she says. “Will you excuse me, Charles.” Nina gets up and heads toward the ladies’ room to reapply her signature scarlet lipstick. She’ll be good goddamned if she’s going to switch to purple, no matter how hard MAC and Essence push it for black women. She thinks it looks like a bruise. Charles watches as Nina walks across the restaurant, watches as heads turn ever so slightly. In a black silk blouse and tailored black slacks, she is unarguably the most striking woman in the restaurant. Charles wishes he could tell her about Emma. But Charles and Nina’s relationship ends at a certain place, a place they both recognize and tacitly acknowledge, but never discuss. Friends to the death? Absolutely. Intimate? Never. Sometimes Charles wonders if she ever aches for someone to see her through the long night. But Nina knows what she’s doing, knows all about trade-offs, knows that no one-least of all a black woman of her generation-reaches her level of success without paying a price. And it’s a price Nina Bradley pays without a whimper or a whine.

  Charles reaches into his briefcase and takes out a manila envelope. He opens it and lifts out a sheaf of manuscript pages. He reads the title page: Chapter One from

  The Sky Is Falling

  A novel by

  Emma Bowles

  Charles thinks of Emma, imagines her up in his office at this very moment, bent over her desk, writing. He removes the title page and tucks it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Then he puts the pages back in the manila envelope. He wants to make sure Nina gives the chapter an unbiased reading. There’s no way she’ll miss Emma’s talent and promise.

  A ruddy-faced man in an expensive suit approaches the table. “Charles, how are you?”

  Charles blanks. What is his name?… Arvin? Publicity director for a rival publishing company. A notorious boor.

  “Hello, Arvin,” Charles says, hoping Arvin has the class to heed his indifferent tone.

  No such luck. “I thought you were treated very unfairly on Capitol Offense. It’s a helluva book.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know, I heard Vera Knee-”

  “Fuck Vera Knee.”

  “Good luck. She’s gay.” Arvin walks off, but not before favoring Charles with an oily smile.

  Charles feels his mood curdle. He reaches for his wineglass and knocks it over, spilling its dregs on the white tablecloth. His stomach clenches and then burns.

  Nina returns and sits down. “Charles, are you all right?”

  “Fine. I spilled my wine.”

  “That means five years of good luck. It’s an ancient African-American superstition I just made up.” She signals for the check. “Back to the salt mines. We should hear about the paperback sale of Capitol Offense within the week. Should be three or four bidders.”

  “I should hope so,” Charles says.

  The waiter appears and as Nina signs the check, he slides the envelope across the table.

  “What’s this?” Nina asks, a glint of excitement in her eye.

  “Just read it and give me your honest opinion.”

  “Have I ever given you anything but? Listen, Charles, I know Capitol Offense has been a rough haul, but hang in there. You’ll prevail. You always have.”

  Charles walks Nina out and sees her into a cab. He stands on the sidewalk and realizes to his surprise that there’s only one place in the world he wants to be at this moment: with Emma.

  24

  It’s a sparkly sort of New York evening, slightly breezy and cool, and Charles leaves the cab idling on Ninth Avenue while he and Emma dash first into a little market where he picks up an avocado, mushrooms, red pepper, onion, and garlic, and then to the deli next door where he grabs eggs, cheese, and a loaf of Italian bread. He looks casually handsome in his chinos and beat-up work shirt, and Emma loves watching him as he feels the avocado for ripeness, the pepper for firmness, asks how fresh the eggs are. He’s insisted on coming to Emma’s apartment to make the two of them his famous huevos rancheros for dinner. Anne is off giving a speech at a dinner celebrating women entrepreneurs.

  The apartment is snug in the soft lamplight and warm neon underglow. Emma puts Brahms on her CD player and, his appointed sous-chef, she stands beside Charles as he peels the avocado.

  “The avocado has to be so ripe it’s almost melting,” he says. “You can start chopping the onion and pepper… I’d just moved to New York and was living in one room in Hell’s Kitchen. Life and Liberty had been out for a month. I woke up one Sunday and it was number one on the Times best-seller list. Ten minutes later the phone rings. This five-pack-a-day voice says, ‘Davis, this is Lillian Hellman and you’re coming to my house for dinner tonight.’… No, no, tiny pieces, do a horizontal cut and then a vertical one.”

  Charles demonstrates his chopping technique, their shoulders just barely touching. Emma feels cocooned, enfolded in a sweet lulling buzz, by his voice, his presence. She takes the knife from him and chops slowly, lovingly.

  “That’s it, Emma… I get to her town house at eight o’clock. Hellman greets me. She’s got this face so wrinkled it looks like a dried apple, and cigarette
smoke pouring out of every orifice. She leads me into the living room-Mailer, Capote, not to mention Jane Fonda, Dustin Hoffman, and half of New York society… The garlic has to be paper thin… Hellman announces me and all these women wearing ten grand on each finger rush toward me. I felt like a headlight at a moth convention… Thinner.”

  “Thinner?” Emma asks, her voice almost a whisper.

  “The garlic has to be translucent; that’s the great secret… So I get cornered by a bleeding heart in an evening gown who’s just read my book. She’s carrying this special guilt about Vietnam because her husband inherited half of some chemical company that makes Napalm. I sprint off to the bathroom before I make a nasty scene, and bump into Olga, the six-foot Swedish maid, spraying an entire can of bug bomb into the toilet, nuking this poor water bug who doesn’t know what hit him… All right, I think everything’s ready to go.”

  Charles turns the burner on high, puts on a skillet, and pours in olive oil. He’s so graceful, so deft, so at home in his skin, his body.

  “Now every second counts. Dump in all the vegetables. Good. Sixty seconds and not one more… After dinner, Mr. Napalm stands up and toasts me and all the boys who risked it all for the good old U.S. of A. He takes out a cigar, and Hellman, who’s been chain-smoking through the whole meal, tells him cigars are verboten at the table. He sulks off somewhere, and some socialite starts rubbing my thigh… Thirty seconds to go… Mailer stands up to toast Hellman and everything is quiet when- boom! — there’s this explosion like I haven’t heard since the war. Olga comes running in, screaming ‘The bug! The bug!’ in her Swedish accent. Hellman slaps her across the face and everyone rushes into the hall… The eggs.” Emma pours the bowl of beaten eggs over the vegetables. “Two minutes here and thirty seconds under the broiler.”

  “Charles!”

  “Turns out Mr. Napalm went into the bathroom to smoke his cigar, sat on the can, and tossed the match between his legs. The dinner party was shot… and so was his ass.”