The Mentor by Pat Connid

the
plate,” he said.  “Says here the owner is you, Mr. Daisy.”
    Staring at
my own face on the screen, for the moment, I forgot all about the metal chair
and the shooting pains in my back.

Chapter
Three
     
    The two men
watched as the other looked up from a handful of notes he'd taken.  Both,
independently, wondered how the Scotsman could write so tiny into the little
book, no bigger than his palm.  
    As the gray
man (they were all gray men, the seated man if just slightly more) read back
what he wrote, the tremor of his hand brushed the book through the air in small
circles, as if keeping beat to music too low for anyone else to hear.
    When he
looked up at them, he said, "You needed me here f' this?  There's
little here!   Nuh -thing!"
    "I beg
your pardon that is not nothing .  It's--"
    "It's
a beginning," the shorter man chimed in.  The old Scot had only
joined the Group a few years earlier-- following a sudden vacancy-- but, while
the short man prayed (oh god, he prayed) they were successful in their singular
task, he quietly hoped the Scot was dead before that happened.  "It's the beginning."
    "Fine. 
Fine then, go and start the inquiry process," the Scotsman said.  There's
little time--"
    "Good
Christ, no .  You must be joking."
    "It's just
the beginning."
    "More
than anything, we have to be delicate.  This is it.  This is our shot,"
this other man said and wiped his lower lip with the flat of a thumb.
 "Our last shot."
    "Why
d'you need me, then?  Why call me down into your wee shit-pit, here?"
    So crass .  "We need approval to expand
our consultant's… latitude for gathering the necessary, uh,
research," the short man said and smiled.  "Needs just a three."
    "Latitude?" 
The Scot whispered something under his breath that sounded like either a curse
or a prayer.  " Latitude needs full consideration.  The full Group. 
All eleven, no?  We can't take it upon ourselv--"
    " Now ,
you want to delay?"  The short man said, adding a weak smile.
    "I
don’t wan' this biting me if your man takes too much latitude !"
    "It
only requires three."
    "It's
just the beginning.  These protocols were established long before you
joined the group, sir.  Long before any of us did.  A Three Vote is all that's
needed to move through the minor transitions.  Otherwise, we would committee
ourselves until our deaths."  He chuckled and pulled gently at an ear
lobe, a soothing gesture.  "Then, the beneficiaries would not be any of us
but rather some later Group.  This is just a minor transition."
    "We
just need three."
     A single nod
from the Scot.  He waved a hand.  "Aye, then.  Sure.
 Yes.  Get on with it."
    "Approved,
then."
    "How
much longer is this all going t' take?"
    A shrug
from the short man.  "As long as it needs to, but not too long,"
he said.  "It's the beginning.  Finally, it's the beginning of the
end."
     
     
     

 
    Chapter
Four
     
    “Maybe it’s
a present,” Pavan said, lifting a collection of nacho cheese and popcorn from
the plastic tray with two curled fingers, and pressing it into his mouth.
 The theater was dead at the moment, between shows.
    I guess you
could call Pavan a good guy: pretty honest, never stiffs you with the bar tab
and is often infected with this type of unbridled optimism.  It’s good to
have those kinds of people around to lift the spirits.  Unless you’re in
no mood for spirit lifting.
    At the
theater, Pavan and I joke that we are slaves to the "dots."  Beneath
the stairs leading to the second floor is a panel up on the wall.  The
panel has two horizontal rows of small bulbs.  Each vertical pair of
"dots" represented one of the movie houses.  A yellow on top, a red
on the bottom.
    At that
moment two yellows and a red were glowing.  
    One movie
had just started rolling the credits and people were starting to leave.  For
the other one-- with the yellow and red-- the credits had rolled,
movie’s over, lights are up full.
    The new
guys leap at the yellow