Words of Advice
“Have you found someone to mentor yet?”
“I have some prospects but nothing set in stone.”
“Do you think I will get into trouble if I don’t find someone?”
“No.”
“Okay, so what if I don’t look in the first place?”
“Maybe not.”
“That’s discouraging.”
“Well, consider it this way: you won’t be punished as such, but it may count against you over the course of time. Adulthood is no less crude in its punishments than in adolescence, but it takes the long view of things.”
“It’s good to have options.”
“It is a comfort.”
“Even if the options aren’t good.”
“Well … yes …”
“I’m having trouble choosing the principle on which I want to rest my objection. I find the whole thing a waste, but for purely selfish reasons. I have enough on my plate without some shrinking shadow lurking in my professional space getting snot everywhere. Then there’s the paranoid reason. The feeling not only of being watched but of being watched rather closely for some subtextual interest. But I think the loftier reason is more suitable.”
“What’s that one?”
“My long-held disdain for this notion that someone who doesn’t know how I think should deign to direct the application of what I think. A good deal of my esteem in human society is subtracted by this impulse.”
“I take exception at what you imply.”
“What am I implying?”
“A disregard for the untold number of people who do not think at all. Who make up a majority of our workforce and do no more or less than what is expected of them. I think you have, to use an industry term, a ‘deficiency in outlook.’”
“What is the more proficient outlook?”
“You will be better served by a realistic outlook rather than the theoretical one that currently sustains you. Trust me. I was here when the mentorship program was inaugurated and I had objections to it very much along the lines of yours. But realizing that it wasn’t going away, I decided to put it to work. Indeed, I absorbed it into my lifestyle; I remade it in my own image. Here, look at this list.”
“There are like 20 names on it.”
“32 to be exact. And within the next week or two it will be shortened to around five or six ideal candidates that most satisfy my custom-made criteria. Within the vast population of people who do not think are a vanguard of, I’m sorry to tell you, people who think even less than they do. You can discern them through a certain look. On the surface it doesn’t seem like much, a kind of glazed-over aspect of detachment from any and all semblance of life. That is easy enough; still I look for something deeper in a mentee, a kind of dead-insidedness. It’s hard to describe what it looks like exactly, but it may compare rather closely to, say, a pornstar’s face appearing mid-scene on her third film, when she has the realization that ‘This is how it’s gonna be, I guess.’”
“You look for that?”
“Basically. And once found, they are free to do whatever, so long as they are within reach of my ability to imbibe their essence like an oaky vintage.”
“What does that do for the company?”
“There are no direct advantages to the company that I’m aware of. But I do worry that once vampirism gains in social acceptability, and I may indulge myself in less a compartmentalized fashion, that my little practice might be redundant. I’d have to do as others do and I risk becoming an unreliable employee, something that can’t be said of our unthinking underlings.”
“Seems like you got it all worked out. I envy you.”
“Give it a try.”
“Well … what if I end up with a nepo hire whose complaints will be heeded half-heard?”
“If the superiors have the temerity to act on complaints they show the genetic quality of unthinkingness. Who, after all, do you think guided me to this approach?”
“Why do you get the good options?”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks and you the slightly less big bucks.”
Words of Caution
“That girl is the ultimate beast, Dashiell, I fucking swear.”
“Which girl would that be, sir?”
“Belinda. Willful … stubborn … impulsive demon child.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“She’ll drive this whole family insane.”
“If you’ll permit me to advise?”
“I will not, Dashiell.”
“A word of caution, then.”
“I don’t see the difference.”
“I don’t require the courtesy with cautioning.”
“Very well—caution away.”
“You could be more sympathetic toward your sister.”
“You can’t be serious. I’ve seen your exasperation with her antics too. Don’t deny it.”
“I would never deny that the inventory of my patience is not always well stocked.”
“But …”
“”But … sir … it is wise to remember the truism that oftentimes a woman’s trials in the world don’t have a clear end.”
“How did you arrive at that conclusion?”
“The way most people have, sir: reading fine books, observing from afar, listening in respectful silence to the woe of familiars.”
“I’ve never seen you listen to any … familiar’s woe for as long as I’ve known you.”
“Of course, sir, as we don’t have that kind of relationship.”
“Well how do you reason Belinda’s trials go on even amid all this apparent progress?”
“It would be unusual, but the universe is rather inventive and even someone with a genius for living as your sister has can find any variety of hindrance.”
“What sort of hindrance?”
“Well … the dilemma of the discerning modern lady may be explained thus: if she endeavors to learn the art of the ventriloquist, she will be applauded as the pride of the household. But if she were to wed a ventriloquist she would be cast out as being worse than a witch. You tell me, sir, how is someone with such promise and potential to judge her course?”
“Dashiell, you know as well as I that promise and potential were never my burden. Notice my general lack of worry about myself, my future, or the consequences I impose on humanity.”
“Forgive me, sir.”
“Obviously Belinda will become a criminal.”
“Or she may beget a criminal. But it seems dangerous, at this moment, to say definitively that one outcome is the greater impediment to the sex than the other.”