Walter Mosley - Fortunate Son

The phone stall didn’t have a phone book. Thomas went down street after street looking for another phone with the white pages book. It was at the sixteenth booth that he found what he wanted. He looked up ET Nolan’s address on Wilshire Boulevard. It was a five-mile walk, but Thomas didn’t know that — and even if he had known, it wouldn’t have made a difference. He felt that he had been walking for a lifetime trying to get back to his brother: up and down his alley valley, down on his knees, walking from one drug addict to another, through the juvenile system, and finally behind this wire cart that he’d patched and repaired again and again until it resembled him — scarred and shambling down the streets of Los Angeles.

That was on the afternoon of the day that Christie drove to the desert.

On her ride back she called Drew.

“Hello,” Drew answered brightly.

“I can’t go with you,” she said in a rush. “I’ve decided that I have to make it work with Eric. Good-bye, Drew. I’m sorry.”

“Wait. Wait. Don’t get off.”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Drew. I’m sorry.”

“But why? What happened? I love you.”

“What we were doing wasn’t love,” she said. “It was pain and anger. It was trying to get a feeling back.”

“I feel it,” he said.

“I’m not coming.”

“I bought nonrefundable tickets,” he cried.

“Good-bye, Drew,” Christie said. She disconnected the call and then turned off the phone.

As Thomas walked up the incline toward Wilshire, there was a strong Santa Ana wind blowing. He felt this as an invisible force pushing against him, trying to keep him from reaching his brother. He smiled, knowing that he was fighting against his own ill fortune in the attempt to reach Eric. He felt like a hero pushing that heavy cart with two dead wheels up the rough asphalt street.

The police stopped him on San Vicente.

“It’s against the law to push that cart in the street, Bruno,” the officer said. He was a large white man with a name tag that read PITTMAN.

“I was staying off the sidewalk, officer,” Thomas replied. “Because I thought that maybe I’d get in someone’s way with this big thing.”

“He’s right about that, Pitt,” a Hispanic man, Rodriguez, said with a joking smile.

“What are you doing here, Bruno?” Pittman asked Thomas.

“I’m going to see my brother, Eric.”

“He a bum too?”

“Street person,” the other cop corrected with a smirk on his lips.

“He’s a doctor’s son,” Thomas replied. “We got the same mother. I called him, and he said he’d help me out.”

Officer Pittman stared at Thomas for what seemed like a long time. It was as if the policeman was trying to make up his mind about what his next action should be. He sniffed the air, and Thomas realized that he must have smelled. He knew that sometimes street people smelled bad to straights when they didn’t know it. He wondered if Eric would turn up his nose and walk away.

“It’s three o’clock,” Rodriguez said, pointing to his wristwatch. “It’ll take two hours to process this dude.”

Still Pittman speculated on Thomas. Under that pale-skinned crew cut, the policeman scowled as if there was something important about this roust.

“Come on, man,” Rodriguez said. “He ain’t messin’ with nobody.”

“You got a knife in there, Bruno?”

“No, officer.”

“What about pills? You got pills or pot?”

Thomas thought about the phrase a pot to piss in, but he didn’t try to bring it to voice. He shook his head, wondering why this man was so interested in him.

“I got books,” Thomas offered as if he were a salesman and Pittman a potential customer.

Something about this answer brought a sour twist to Pittman’s lips. For a moment Thomas thought the man might spit on him.

“Get the fuck outta here,” the peace officer said.

A minute later, cops nearly forgotten, Thomas was once again pressing against the invisible force of the wind.

An hour afterward he reached the Tennyson, the building in which the man who bore his brother’s initials lived. He stopped out front, looking up at the huge edifice of glass and steel. It didn’t look like a home. It didn’t remind Thomas of his childhood friend and brother. Now that he was there, he didn’t know what to do. There was a doorman in the lobby. He wouldn’t let Thomas just walk in. And a doorman announcing his name would be even worse than a phone call.

So Thomas sat down on the curb looking up at the tower. He decided that he could wait awhile, and maybe, if he was lucky, Eric would come out of that rotating door and into his brother’s arms.

Patrolmen Pittman and Rodriguez had just stopped at their favorite coffee spot. Rodriguez ordered a dark-roast coffee and Pittman a grande Frappucino made with skim milk, caramel syrup, and chocolate chips. It was their 4:45 lunch hour, and so they sat down and turned their radios to “emergency calls only.”

Christie was at home by then. She had told Eric that she would marry him, and they were already making plans for the wedding. The long separation from her father would be over. Minas Nolan and Ahn would certainly come. Eric had wondered if he could somehow find Thomas and share with him his new life of personal denial. Tommy would understand how much Eric was giving up. Tommy understood everything subtle and emotional.

Distraught Drew had gone to his father’s house, completely lost in his grief. He’d never known such pain before. Those three days with Christie were what he’d yearned for all these years. She was his for those hours, but the moment he took his eyes off her she was lost to him again. His heart clenched into a fist, and everything he’d ever learned or loved sank into the cold ocean of his chest.

Thomas’s thoughts drifted as he sat there. At first he had been nervous about seeing Eric, but now he was visited by a feeling of quiet elation. These moments that he spent waiting were exquisite in their own way — perfect weather, with birds arcing through the sky and people walking and talking up and down the boulevard. It was one of those beautiful instants that get past you if you don’t look. But Thomas was looking. He had nowhere to go and everything to hope for.

While Thomas was having these thoughts, a purple Chrysler drove up and a tall young man climbed out. There was a dark cast to his face and a pained grimace in his expression.

Eric, Christie, and Mona had just gotten into the elevator on the twenty-fifth floor, going down to the street for a walk to the pizza restaurant that Mona loved.

Pittman and Rodriguez were finishing their coffees and ham sandwiches and thinking about going back on the prowl.

Drew stood not six feet from Thomas. After first glances, neither paid heed to the other.

The policemen were in the street, not a block from the Tennyson.

Eric and Christie and Mona entered the lobby. When Thomas saw Eric he stood up and smiled. He would wait patiently for his brother to come out.

Mona dashed for the revolving door, obviously ecstatic about their adventure. Christie came in the next partition, watching after the child and glowing. Eric came last. Just when he was sealed within the glass quarter section, Drew grabbed Thomas’s cart and shoved it into the aperture that Christie had just left.

“Hey, man!” Thomas grabbed Drew by the shoulder, but with a sweep of his arm the tall young man knocked Thomas to the ground.

He took out his father’s Luger, and Christie screamed.

This wasn’t how Drew had it planned. He didn’t want to confront Christie on the street. He wanted to follow Eric to a quiet place and kill him. Kill him and maybe later he could console Christie, take her away to rest. He would be the shoulder she could cry on. But seeing her he was overcome by unexpected hatred. All those things she said that excited him so much in bed now had other meanings. She had cheated on him, made him into a fool. Made love to Eric while telling him a hundred lies.