The Mentor

by Pat Connid

  Smokey frowned. “Not really, no.”

  Gently, I said: “Well, you need some extra cash. I’m not home much and recently… I really gotta clear out of my place. Neighborhood’s gone to hell.”

  “Son, I don’t even know you. And, honestly, being alone I can walk around nekkid when I want to.” Permanent house option: officially out.

  I nodded. “All right.”

  There was no going back to my place. Laura’s was probably out because The Mentor obviously would know where she lived. Pavan’s for the same reason. I had a strong feeling the prick knew everyone I might bunk with.

  Where in the world was I going to stay? People I knew, they were out. Who would rent to a stranger, expecting no money up front? The thought crossed my mind about tapping into the savings, but no that wasn’t an option that felt right. At least, not yet.

  So, what then? Where could—?

  “I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but do you have a computer, Smokey?”

  “Sure.”

  “One that works? One that’s got the Interweb on it?”

  “I ain’t a moron, Dexter,” he said. “I got one for email, so I can write complaint letters to the newspaper. And there’s some good pictures out there if you fiddle around with it.” Frankly, I didn’t want to know what sort of pictures he was looking at nor what the “it” was he was apparently fiddling.

  From the room upstairs, I heard a long, low moan.

  “Think he’s waking up,” I said. “I better get him some water.”

  “You sure you ain’t gay?”

  I stood up. “Would it matter?”

  “A little, I guess,” he said. “Not used to that sort of thing. I just don’t want no funny business up here. Male or female, frankly.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said, stretching my arms above me. “I’ve got a girlfriend, and she hates me.”

  “Nah, you wait till you get married,” he said, standing slower than I did. “Then you’ll know real hate.”

  From the kitchen, I got a glass of water for Pavan and brought it upstairs, but he was still out for the count. And it looked like some of the staples had dug into the pillow—he wasn’t going anywhere soon. Anticipating that, I’d made most of the glass ice, just a little water, and left it on a dresser next to the bed.

  Back downstairs, I saw that Smokey had put a couple jars of his brother’s finest out on the table. Luckily, I’m about a third Irish.

  Cranky-pants was shuffling through the kitchen, and he pointed me to the computer. After ten minutes of fiddling with it, I came back in and sat down. We clinked our glasses, and I titled mine into my mouth. When I took the first sip— I tasted the liquid but frankly never felt it go down my throat— I realized I hadn’t asked one very important thing about the man who bought Smokey’s van.

  “You had to fill out the car’s registration, sign it over to the guy who bought the van.”

  “Sure,” he said and sipped again.

  “You remember the name he gave you?”

  Smokey slumped against the ancient fridge and it tipped slightly, but he didn’t seem to notice. He let out a big breath and shook his head slowly… then: “Damn, nearly had it. It was… a flower.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, yeah. He had a name like a—“

  I asked, “Was the name ‘Daisy’?”

  He snapped forward like he’d sat on a burr and growled excitedly. “YES, that’s it!” he said and slipped to the chair opposite me. True concern seemed to cramp his face for a moment, and he asked: “So you’re worried about this Daisy fellah?”

  Tired, my head was beginning to spin just a little courtesy of the small jar in my hand.

  “Yeah, you could say that,” I said and tipped my drink toward my mouth, but found it empty. “You could say I’m a bit worried about the Daisy fellah.”

  Chapter Twelve

  A few hours later, Pavan finally came around. After his second glass of water, he mumbled something about heading off to work, and I said I’d better join him. That’s when he broke the news that wasn’t entirely unexpected.

  “Mr. Rainey,” he said putting down his third glass of water. “He sorta let you go.”

  Just me and him standing in the kitchen—Smokey had crashed early— my world suddenly became a little more, guess you would say, untethered. Even though it was a crap job, it was something real, tangible in my life. In effect, it dictated when I went to sleep, when I got up.

  That probably should have felt freeing. Instead, it felt... lonely.

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “I shoulda told you earlier, I know.”

  “That would’ve been good f-y-i, pally.”

  “Just never seemed like the right time,” he said and dug into his jean pockets until I heard the tinkle of keys. He shrugged an apology.

  “Don’t worry about it. Gotta do some serious life evaluating while I still got a life to evaluate.”

  I looked around the cramped room. There was a small collection of porcelain cows on the kitchen windowsill next to the cupboards. Well, not entirely small. The cows were piled up—some with bonnets, some with sweaters— as if crowding the escape door after one of the ladies had made a panicked remark she’d heard the sound of a butcher’s blade.

  Around the door that led upstairs was a bushy faux vine that came down both sides of the molding, and at the top a wooden plaque read: Friends are the family you chose for yourself.

  “You really sleeping here tonight?”

  “Seems like a good plan.”

  He lowered his voice. “I don’t think I could. Kinda creepy, actually. I wouldn’t be surprised if you find bones in the dude’s basement. All bleached and shiney and—“

  “Pavan.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re gonna give yourself bad dreams,” I said and opened the door to the garage, pushed the button. From the inside, the door’s motor was even louder, so I had to yell over it. “Tomorrow, before work, would you mind if we headed to my place and grabbed the rest of my stuff.”

  “Sure,” he said and walked toward the yawning opening, the battle tank-door opener preparing for war above his head. Over the din, he yelled: “Dude, why’s there staples in my hair?”

  “You fell,” I said and shrugged.

  “Okay.”

  “You should be fine. Just don’t try to board any commercial aircraft over the next couple days, and it'll be fine.”

  He turned toward his grungy car with the crystal clear windshield and waved slowly. The driver’s door lock was busted, always has been, so he had to crawl across the passenger seat to get to the pedals. I sent the garage door down on its return trip.

  Smokey’s pickle jar juice had given me a beginnings of a migraine and the only way, I’d discovered a long time ago, I could keep it at bay was to keep sipping the stuff until passing out or try to crash and sleep through the hangover.

  I was ready to lie down and it was the first time I’d been to bed before the sun since grade school… but: new start, right? Seemed apropos.

  I lay on the bed we’d put Pavan in but had to flip the pillow or risk possible tetanus. Smokey said I could spend the night. I promised to be out in the morning, and he promised to not walk around nekkid.

  The batteries in the CD player were getting low, but I’d found another set in the kitchen and put them in before closing my eyes. My left ear was treated to a biography of Thomas Edison. None of it seemed very useful, but it was interesting.

  He didn’t sound like he appreciated other people very much, except maybe to do a lot of the grunt work. I supposed after you invent the light bulb, movie theater, record player and a thousand other things, the whole “99% perspiration” bit was best contracted out to other people.

  In the dim light, an Army plaque hung on the wall. It looked like some marker that Smokey’s son had graduated and could now shoot people or something.

  It struck me that a few nights earlier, Allejo had let me crash
in his dead uncle’s house. This night, my bed belonged to a dead son.

  Friends are the family you chose for yourself.

  I said aloud, “And, if you lose a family member, you can have a friend make good use of their stuff.” No, that seemed kinda bitter or pessimistic. Both of those guys-- and, really, Abe the OTR Speeder-Chomping Guyanan, too-- they’d been there when I didn’t or couldn’t rely on friends or family. Either the world’s usually like this, and I missed it, or I’d gotten pretty lucky lately.

  Maybe it was time to give the world a second chance.

  Took a deep breath and, damn it had been a long time, but once the weeping began, I couldn’t stop it. It was the first time I’d allowed myself to cry for her, and I couldn’t stop it.

  “I miss you, Ruthie,” I croaked between selfish sobs. “I’m sorry. Your big brother is sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Smokey was pouring runny eggs into a couple small ceramic plates when we walked into the kitchen. Shoulders hunched, he looked toward me, concern hooded his eyes and I did my best to give him an easy smile to lighten his mood.

  Upstairs, I’d clipped the CD player to my jeans and hit play. As we sat for breakfast, I discovered this morning’s audio entrée would be more stuff about insects. While it in no way seemed unimportant, I hoped this knowledge wouldn’t become vital in the coming days and weeks. Never a big fan of bugs.

  Pavan had wheeled by and was at the table when I came down. We chatted with Smokey for about fifteen minutes over breakfast, simply enjoying each other’s company. Pavan nodded to the clock on the wall.

  “All right. Time to pick up the wheels. That is,” I said looking at Pavan, “if your brother got the insurance card with my name.”

  Pavan reached back, picked a staple out of his hair and tossed it on the table into the dish. “Yeah, but there’s still the issue of two and a half bones, man. You’re not getting the Mystery Machine without paying that big guy with the sausage fingers.”

  The previous night, I'd decided it was time to tap into the savings accounted fattened by my sister's death years ago.

  “Got it.”

  “Got it?”

  I nodded. He said, “Then let’s go get it.”

  "YOU KNOW, YOU'RE GOING to get about a mile to the gallon in this thing,” Pavan said as we tooled in a wide arch around an empty parking lot. We’d parked his car to give the van a spin, see how it ran. “Hey man… you wanna slow down a little?”

  “Want to test an idea,” I said and took a wide right turn.

  “Hey, stop doing that anymore,” Pavan said and gripped his seat belt like he was repelling down a mountain for the first time.. “Feel like I’m lifting up here.”

  “Doesn’t do it the other way.”

  “Because you’ve got more lard than me, man.”

  “Whatever. You’ve got a beer gut as big as mine.”

  “Nah, I got one of those high metabolisms.”

  “Sure, like a Chihuahua. The ones that pee on the floor when the doorbell rings.”

  “Chihuahua es de Mexico, hombre,” he said and thumped his chest. “Me? El Salvador.”

  “Not many Mexicans named ‘Pavan,’ right?”

  “Not many El Salvadorans either,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said, the biggest smile of the day spreading across my face. “Oh, this is going to be good. Tell me, tell me.”

  “Fine, whatever,” he said. “So, you probably already knew that I was like this god or something.”

  “Escaped me, actually.”

  He waved me off. “Pavan is the name of a Hindu god. My mother had been calling me Romero when I was in her belly. But when I came out, my father said Pavan was better.”

  “You’re father, not Hindu.”

  “Correct.”

  I turned my head toward my friend and said, “You look like a Pavan. Why’d he call you Pavan?”

  “Because the first thing I did when I was born—I didn’t cry, I didn’t shiver, didn’t say ‘hey, gimme some milk, lady’, nothing like that—first thing I did, I let out this huge fart.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “I’d been holding it for months, probably. Can’t let one fly inside of mama. That’s your mother, right?”

  “Gross.”

  He nodded. “So, Pavan is Hindu god of wind,” he said and looked at me, waiting for me to react. “Dad thought it fit better than Romero.”

  I laughed, but then was overcome as my eidetic audio recall pressed itself to top-of-mind.

  Last time I’d been in this van, I’d heard something by George Michael and the other guy who nobody remembers.

  “Everything She Wants,” I said out loud, recalling the track.

  “What? Yeah, usually, but the name stuck.”

  There was no CD player, just a radio. Whatever tune I’d heard before I’d gone into the drink at the quarry was either bubbling up from my subconscious or happened to be on one of the crappy Atlanta radio stations. Had to be the latter: I’d never hallucinate George Michael. Not a guy that spent half his teenage years in black Metallica shirts with the sleeves torn off.

  “Pavan, god of wind,” I said. “I’ve known you for two years and that’s the first time you’ve ever told me that.”

  “Never came up,” he said.

  I slowed the van and turned to him.

  “Yeah, but... you got pretty mad because I didn’t tell you about my listening recall. Like, you know, I was hiding something from you.” He listened, offered nothing. “But you never told me that you were named after a fart god.”

  Pavan looked out the windshield then back at me. Sitting back into his seat, his feet dangled a few inches from touching the floor.

  “Hell, guy like you, I thought you knew shit like that,” he said. “Besides-- you know, you’re kinda, I dunno.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a bit... different than before. Now.”

  I listened, offered nothing because I didn’t know what to say.

  Pavan said, “I’ve been your best friend, you tell me that sometimes, and I'm glad you say that, right, but the truth is that you just don’t got a bunch of other friends. I seen you with like one or two other buds before, tops. Me, I got a ton of friends so, you know--”

  “No, I don’t. You’re saying that I-- I’m not your best friend, then.”

  Pavan sat forward, shifted his weight, and said, “Well, no, but-- you know, sorta, but that’s different now. Seriously, I mean that. You are my best friend, man... now . But before”-- he looked back out the window-- “you were a bit of an asshole. A friend, sure, some guys are just like that. Think they’re better than everyone else.”

  I was trying not to be hurt by what he was saying, but the overwhelming feeling was that this was really hard for Pavan to tell me and that, a good friend, they tell you these things because they’re important.

  “You think I believe I’m better than everyone else? Better than you?”

  He smiled, nodded.

  “But, you’re different now," he said. "Look the same, right, this spongy white guy who looks like he cuts his own hair, but you are different with me and even with other people. Not so much, anymore, like...”

  “An asshole,” I finished and he nodded.

  Leaving the vacant parking lot, I took a sharp corner testing the van’s weight distribution again and the tires bit hard into the blacktop. It was the momentum that I worried about.

  “Built like a tank,” I said. “I mean seriously, this thing weighs a ton. Stable but—“

  “Heavy. Heavy metal, man.”

  “Makes you wonder,” I said, readjusting my earbud. Thankfully, I’d left bug study far behind and had been hearing something about small gas engines. “And the light?”

  “Yeah, yeah. When I was down there headlights, horn, all that stuff dead. But the overhead dome worked. Might be wired special.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Well,” I said a
nd checked the mirror for any cops. “I think… maybe he was giving me a chance to make it out.”

  I hit the gas hard and the engine roared but we didn’t accelerate very fast. Still, the torque of the thing felt like it was grinding your gut into the seat back.

  “Dude, don’t drag anybody from a stop light. Seriously, it would be embarrassing. Hey,” Pavan said, turning toward me. “You know how this guy he’s always catching you off guard, right?”

  “Always? Not always. Two times.”

  “Yeah, two times too much. But, what if he planned on you picking up the van? Maybe he’s following us.” Pavan slinked into his seat and stared hard at the side mirror.

  “Hell,” I said. “It was your idea to get the van in the first place.”

  “Yeah, since when do you listen to my ideas? Take a look at how I live… I’ve been doing my ideas for years—trust me, it’s not a good idea doing my ideas, Dexter.”

  “Fine, fine. We can check that out.” I looked in the rear view mirror catching sight of the interior of the vehicle. “It’s clean at least.”

  “Big space back there,” Pavan said and his voice echoed. “We should carpet it and put a little bar set up in the rear.

  “Now, I don’t even have a license. But…” I said, having just had an ID card for years now. The only way we’d gotten it out of the impound lot was to let Pavan take the wheel. “I’m pretty sure there’s something on the test about not having a wet bar in your vehicle.”

  We pulled back up to Pavan’s car and he hopped out. Standing next to my newly acquired wheels, he looked down at his tennis shoes.

  “I’m actually sorta bummed that, you know, I won’t be driving you around so much. You ain’t going to need my piece of shit car no more.”

  This was what he’d thought of me? I used him for his wheels, for rides. But, thinking back over the past couple years, maybe that wasn’t entirely untrue. I had been a bit of an asshole.

  “The past week or so, with you battling the weirdo-ninja Mentor dude, I’ve been kinda like Kato, driving for the Green Hornet.”

  “Always a Green Lantern fan, myself,” I said.