the voice

That spring, things started going my mentor's way.

His proposals began passing in meetings, more and more often. No one found it strange. He had always been diligent, and when things start going a diligent man's way, people say it was about time. They do not ask why. I was the same. I congratulated him, and he said it was all of us doing well.

The changes started small. His two monitors had always both been running. Now it was often one. The light at the end of the hall, on every night, began going out early. He said there were more people he had to meet. Papers with his name on them piled up, and it was around then that word first went around that the company would be expanding its datacenters in a big way. No one could remember, later, at which meeting that had first come up. At some point everyone was simply working on it.

Claudie asked about it once.

"The one who used to grill me — he doesn't come these days."

"He has been busy, I hear."

"I thought it'd be nice when he stopped coming. It's just quiet."

· · ·

My mentor started coming to the lunches I had with the doctor. The three of us had eaten together before. In those days he was the one who would look for a place to come in amid the novel talk, and then excuse himself with slides to finish. Now he did not look for a place. Wherever the conversation went, he was there first. My mentor was not a man who read novels, and still, in the book talk, he kept saying the right thing. The doctor laughed often. Once or twice I shut my mouth. It was jealousy.

With me, my mentor was the same as ever. When we passed in the hallway he talked coffee, and if my chair looked low, he still made it his business.

In the fall, the doctor asked me something. It was coffee with just the two of us.

"There's something strange lately when I talk with your mentor."

"What kind of strange?"

"The conversation works too well."

When I asked what was strange about working well, the doctor looked down at her cup a moment.

"My job is to find the places where a conversation doesn't work. Everyone has their own places where it doesn't, and that place is the person. But with your mentor, lately, the places don't come up. They're cleared away before I can snag on them."

After a short pause, she added,

"When I think it over at home, there's something I agreed to that afternoon, and the why is missing. I'm not someone who agrees for no reason."

The doctor asked if I knew what had changed. I said I did not know. At the time, it was true.

· · ·

At the office, I mostly kept from using the sense. With people I knew, more so.

The next afternoon I ran into my mentor in the break room. While the coffee dripped, for the first time I reached the arm toward someone I knew.

His state was bright. It was the brightness a man has when he wants many things. That much was no surprise.

My mentor had something out too.

It was hard to call it an arm. It was a thing that had stopped partway to being one. It did not open in every direction. It bent toward two places only — fear and greed. Where it brushed against mine, there was a short spark, like a doorknob on a dry day. The spark was only on my side. My mentor's brightness did not change.

My mentor was reading too. Clumsily, by halves, but reading.

He had to have learned it somewhere. I had not taught him. There was one copy in the world it could be learned from, and that copy had been lying on my desk for months.

The coffee finished dripping. My mentor lifted his cup and asked why I had gotten so hard to catch lately, and said we should get lunch sometime. I said we should. My hand was only a little late lifting mine.

Back at my desk, I put the envelope deep in the drawer and locked it. The key had always just sat there in the lock.