Read Online The Mentor by Sebastian Stuart - Free Book Online

fly to these people, a convenience. You don’t belong here. Freak! Go back to where youcame from, hide away in some rented room, be a small-town weirdo. Emma clenches her fists, digs her fingernails into her palms, harder harder.…
    There’s a tentative knock on the door at the end of the hallway. Emma licks a sliver-moon of blood from her palm. Be calm be cool. She goes and opens the door. Magdalena, the housekeeper, a quiet woman from the Canary Islands who pretends she doesn’t speak English—Emma sees through
her
little act—is standing there with a FedEx letter in her hand.
    As Emma walks back down the hallway, she looks at the return address and sees that the letter is from London, from Charles Davis’s British publisher. She stands still and listens and then knocks lightly. Silence. Then the door flies open.
    “What do you want?” Charles Davis demands. His face looks pained, almost contorted.
    “This Federal Express letter just arrived from your British publisher. I thought it might be important.”
    “You
thought
it might be important?”
    “Yes.”
    Charles grabs the letter, tears it in two, and flings it in the trash. “I’m trying to write! I don’t care if Jesus Christ himself wants to meet me for lunch, I’m not available to the world until further notice. Is that so goddamn hard to understand?” After shooting her a look of pure condescension, he slams the door in her face.
    Emma stands there, a sickening deadweight suddenly lodged in her stomach. The sensation begins as a purely physical one, but quickly moves up her body, until her mind implodes with dismay, dismay and an approaching panic. She feels herself start to sweat on her upper lip, her forehead, under her arms. She feels the first tingle of prickly heat. She knows what comes next—banishment. Out to the back landing at the top of the stairs in her thin cotton dress and her bare feet, the door slamming and then locking behind her, the hours passing, she forbidden to move, staring at the railing, at the grooves in the wood, dreading that she’ll be noticed bythe family that lives across the way. There are six kids in the family—six rowdy, unwashed, laughing, loved kids—and when they see Emma they stare, too kind to laugh. Then they whisper and run away, as if her sorrow might be catching. And evening turns to night and Emma grows colder and wants to cry, but what’s the use? And the hunger grows so intense it finally disappears and at least when it’s dark no one can see her up there on the back landing at the top of the stairs at the end of the alley in her bare feet and thin cotton dress with nothing on underneath.
    Emma stands in front of the door to Charles’s office. What should she do?
Don’t panic
. She stands stock-still, her breathing shallow. She clenches her fists and wills herself not to cry. She hears what sounds like Charles Davis falling to the floor, followed by loud breathing, as if he’s doing a series of push-ups. This is followed by pacing. Then silence.
    “Emma?”
    “Yes, Mr. Davis?” she answers through the closed door.
    “For Christ’s sake, stop calling me Mr. Davis. And will you please come in here?”
    Emma opens the door and takes a step into the inner office.
    He’s sitting at his desk. “It’s Charles.”
    Emma hesitates a moment before saying a soft “Charles.”
    “That’s better.” He smiles. “Sit down.” Emma sits across from him in a wooden armchair. “When I’m writing, or trying to write … well, it’s a difficult process, agonizing, fucking hellish is what it is. I don’t understand it. It’s physical, like football, or combat even, only the enemy is some amorphous gorilla of the soul. Or some bullshit like that. Is this making any sense?”
    “Yes.”
    “I suppose my point is, I become keyed up, revved, I go a little crazy. Or a lot crazy. So if I scream and yell and pound the walls … well, it’s not you.”
    Emma feels a surge of gratitude and reaches past