Mentor: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page B

shell-shocked. One woman in the room was older than me. A few other students were roughly my age. Two were in their midtwenties—a long-haired girl who wore glasses appeared to be fifteen, and a short, redheaded guy, who likely had his ID checked at bars before they’d serve him alcohol.
     
    With fingers spread and his wrists arched, Frank tapped his desktop the way he’d play a piano. He said, “We don’t have any text, so there’s nothing to talk about. Someone explain to the new guys what we do next.”
     
    Steve Kiernan, a second-year student, answered, “We go to a bar called the Mill.” He gave us directions. Then Frank said, “Okay, that’s it. See you there.” And we left.
     
    I walked to the bar alone, hiking uphill from the river plain where EPB stood to the state capitol building. From there I passed an indoor mall, a shop that sold Iowa Hawkeye football jerseys, a textbook store, a bakery, a bank, and a gas station. The ugly building beside it was the Mill. It had chocolate-brown wooden facing. An orange sign hanging from the roof announced that the restaurant served burgers, pasta, and pizza; basically, cheap food for destitute students. I opened a glass door and stepped into a dark bar. The cool air chilled my light sweat. I could see a second barroom with a restaurant area in the back. The room I’d entered seemed to be reserved for serious drinkers. I noticed someone from class, Charles D’Ambrosio. He wore work boots, black pants, a black T-shirt, and a skimpy, unlined black blazer. He had an iced drink in front of him. I settled onto the stool beside his.
     
    “Hi.”
     
    “Hey.”
     
    I ordered tap beer because it was cheaper than bottled. When the bartender handed it to me, I raised it and Charlie and I tapped glasses. He seemed keyed up and was perspiring, sweat beading on his forehead. Black stubble covered his round face and spread halfway down his neck. We exchanged backstories. He had grown up in Seattle, studied at Oberlin, later worked at a warehouse in Chicago, and then held construction jobs in New York.
     
    “Are you in your early thirties?” I asked him.
     
    “Yeah.”
     
    “You think we’re too old to be here?”
     
    “Uh-uh.”
     
    “Good. What are you writing?”
     
    “Stories. You?”
     
    “Novel.”
     
    Others, including Frank, entered through a side door and went directly into the back room. Charlie and I each ordered another drink, paid our tab, and joined them. The back room’s bar was long; fifty people could lean on it. Wooden, maple-syrup-stained dining booths pressed against the opposite wall. Seventy or eighty students from the eight workshops that met each Tuesday had crowded a separate space with more booths and freestanding tables. Frank made his way toward one of them. In his right hand he held a shot glass full of bourbon, in his left, a quart bottle of imported beer and a chilled mug. He sat on a chair in the middle of things, then reached into his blazer pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. When he noticed Charlie and me, he raised his eyebrows and waved us over by tilting his head to the side. Other students seemed to avoid Frank as if he was radioactive. By joining him, I felt italicized . I’d already sensed that others regarded me with some wariness. After an orientation meeting for new teaching assistants several days earlier, a second-year TA asked each of our group of six over lunch what we were working on. I said a novel. He said, “What’s it about?” When I said baseball, he held his ham and cheese sandwich several inches from his mouth and didn’t take a bite. “So you’re the baseball guy,” he said. I didn’t know what he was referring to, but I’d encountered the same reaction several times. I felt like a scarlet B for baseball had been branded onto my chest (and Charlie was the only person not to see me that way).
     
    Meanwhile, Frank wore a literary halo. The first chapter of his novel, Body & Soul , had