you left,â the trainee explained. âShe asked me questions about how volunteering worked, where they carried out the procedures, stuff like that. I sensed she might be open to another try. I couldnât find a âMaybeâ option so I selected âFollow-up advised.ââ
Matthew groaned again. ââFollow-up advisedâ means theyâre ready for a pre-transition consultation.â
âWhat?â
Matthew reviewed the process Mandy should have known. The system automatically alerted immediate family members whenever a prospective client agreed to move ahead. It even recommended language they might want to use to affirm the loved oneâs decision.
âIâm such a mess-up!â Mandy said.
âWell,â Matthew replied, âI can assure you youâll never make this mistake again.â
âWhyâs that?â
âBecause I wonât be calling Freddy Baxter to apologize.â He smiled in her direction. âYou will.â
*Â Â *Â Â *
The day turned out to be more productive than Matthew had expected. They had managed to sign up four of five prospective clients, exactly the number needed to complete his commitment. Each trainee was required to observe ten successful closings before he or she could move up the food chain. Matthew could now go back to flying solo, at least until his boss hired another batch of rookies.
Opening a well-deserved can of beer, Matthew grabbed his tablet before plopping himself onto the only chair occupying his apartmentâs ten-by-twelve-foot living room, a leather-like recliner that still released the slight smell of cigarettes six months after heâd paid thirty dollars to haul it away from a garage sale.
He scanned a list of possible television programs. Then he remembered the assignment he had accepted from the teacher he had met at Peak and Brew. Matthew tapped the book icon to find The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. âRead book five, chapters three through five. That should give you a taste,â Mori had urged. âRuthless arguments against the goodness of God.â
Matthew found the recommended section. He immediately recognized the names of the two characters speaking. Mori had called Ivan the skeptic and Alyosha, his brother, the believer.
At first Matthew felt as if he had stumbled into the second act of a longer drama; which, of course, he had. But he stuck with it, eventually grasping the thread of Ivan Karamazovâs attacks that must have been the source of Alyoshaâs squirming.
âPeople speak sometimes about the âanimalâ cruelty of man,â Ivan was saying, âbut that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. A tiger simply gnaws and tears, that is all he can do. It would never occur to him to nail people by their ears overnight, even if he were able to do it.â
It was an idea that had never occurred to Matthew. Man more vicious than beasts? Ivan expanded the claim with a series of stories, each more troubling than the last.
A soldier taking delight in torturing children, tossing them in the air and catching them on a bayonet before their mothersâ eyes.
A trembling mother watching a man use the end of his gun to amuse her nursing infant.
âThe baby laughs gleefully,â Ivan explains, âreaches out its little hands to grab the pistol, and suddenly the artist pulls the trigger right in its face and shatters its little headâ¦Artistic, isnât it?â
A five-year-old little girl tortured by parents who hate her for reasons unknown to themselves. They beat her, flog her, and kick her into a lump of bruised suffering. And then, angered by the childâs mishap, they lock her all night in the freezing-cold outhouse after smearing her face and making her eat her own excrement. The mother goes back to sleep âwhile her poor little
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