The Mentor

Before the voice, there was a cashier’s stool. The Mentor kept the books of the Royal Flamingo, the finest cabaret on the coast: the take, the artists’ fees, the velvet suppliers. When it all burned in an hour and fifteen minutes, he was left the only man who knew exactly what the thing that no longer existed had been worth. They say that’s the night the numbers took him for good — when you have no walls left, an accurate total keeps you warm.

Then he walked the whole road. A House built in a garage, a marquee, all four cities, records pressed one after another. In Tokyo he became what the night calls a legend: someone never seen coming back down. He came back down anyway. There was no fifth city, and a man who has finished the circuit has no reason left to hold walls. He gave back the marquee, kept the name, and took a table at the back of a Suburbs bar.

These days he scouts for beginners who say good evening to the bouncer first. To those, he offers three things: an advance — hand to hand, no paper —, seven steps to learn the trade, one per Marquee, he says, and Sugar. The first artist will be that Street Soul with a calm that never wears out, because a first night without someone who knows both exits is a first night wasted. Why a stranger? Because after the fire, someone lent him his first cash box without giving a name, with a single instruction: you’ll pay it back to someone else. He’s been paying it back ever since.

Then he steps away, and that’s calculated like everything else. Seven steps, not eight: an advisor you hold on to becomes a crutch, and a House on crutches topples in the first draft. After that he’s messages only — tips with numbers in them, never two at once. An exact number, he says, is a courtesy: it spares the other guy from paying to learn. Everything he knows had a sticker price once; he just passes on the wholesale rate.

The bowling alley he never talks about — and that’s precisely the problem. Everyone swears they were there that night, and everyone insists. He never does. When you ask, he looks at his coffee and changes numbers. One detail remains: on his key ring, a flat key, unmarked, that opens nothing he owns. The Suburbs bowling alley has changed all its locks since — all but the back room’s. No one has yet dared ask him to try it. Word is he’s waiting for the question. Word is, too, that he had the key cut on purpose. Both are possible; that’s what a legend is.