Walter Mosley - Fortunate Son

Before Thomas first called her, Clea had decided not to see him or his beautiful “brother,” Eric. After all, she didn’t know them, and they had said that they were running from the law. But when Thomas called, he didn’t ask to get together.

“I just remembered that I had your number in my pocket,” the perpetual runaway said. “And I thought I’d see how you were doin’ in school.”

“It’s really good,” she said. “I like the classes, but they’re big, impersonal, you know.”

“How about the classrooms?” Thomas asked, remembering that awful light that drove him away.

“They’re big. Sometimes there’s as many as two hundred kids in the same class. But I can do the work, and the library’s nice.”

“Eric says that the library at UCLA is so big that you could sleep in it at night and nobody would find you... if you wanted to, I mean.”

“How is Eric?”

“He’s fine. He met a woman down on Wall Street who’s showin’ him about how investing works. I think he’s happy. I hope so.”

“Why would you worry about him?” Clea asked, forgetting that she didn’t want to know the boys. “He’s got everything.”

“He’s my brother,” Thomas explained.

“Deposit another ten cents for five additional minutes,” the mechanical operator said.

“I better be goin’,” Thomas said. “That was my last quarter.”

“What’s your number?” Clea asked. “I’ll call you back.”

“I don’t see one.”

“Why don’t you come down to Washington Square Park?” she said. “I could meet you under the archway at five.”

The phone disconnected, and Clea wasn’t sure that Thomas heard what she said. But at five she found him at the foot of Fifth Avenue and the park, sitting on the ground at the wire barrier that fenced off the crumbling arch from foot traffic.

“You made it,” she said, wondering to herself why she had asked him to come. It had been a week since she’d seen him, and she’d already been out on her first date with a good-looking senior who was about to start law school at Columbia.

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “I didn’t have any money, so I had to walk.”

“From where?”

“I was up at Ninety-second and Lexington, but that wasn’t so bad. I used to walk all day long when I lived in L.A.”

Clea didn’t know why she looked forward to seeing Thomas. She still talked to Brad (the future lawyer) and went out with him on weekends. But Thomas made her feel comfortable, and when he kissed her he seemed to be telling her something, something dear and intimate. When Bradley kissed her it was strong, and he seemed to know what he wanted. He made her want it too, though she hadn’t given in yet.

But she had agreed to go away with Bradley to Martha’s Vineyard with a bunch of seniors who had rented a house for the long weekend. They would stay in the same bedroom. She told herself that she wanted to go, and her new girlfriends in the dorm agreed that she should.

Thomas was walking across a broad green field in Central Park. The day was so beautiful that he didn’t want to go into the museum just yet. He had not been so happy since he was a child. All day he walked and studied and dreamed about kissing Clea, and in the evening he got together with his brother and they talked about their day.

Eric was liking New York too. Constance had gotten him an afternoon job as an intern, and he spent four hours a day with other college students learning about high finance. But in the evenings he was happy to be quiet and listen to his brother regale him with facts about Mesopotamian cylinder seals and pre-Columbian clay whistles.

Thomas was walking across that field, thinking about asking Eric to come with him to the museum tomorrow, Saturday, when he walked into someone’s chest.

“Excuse me,” he said as he looked up and saw the blue uniform of the NYPD.

“Put your hands up, son,” the policeman said, “up and behind your head.”

Clea’s cell phone rang just when she was beginning to wonder if Thomas had somehow figured out that she was going away for the weekend with Bradley. He hadn’t called about getting together, and they hadn’t seen each other since Tuesday. She still wanted to be friends with the lame man-child, but there was no future with him.

“Hello?”

“Clea, it’s Eric.”

“Hi. I was expecting Lucky.”

“They got him in jail.”

“What for?”

“Some kid mugged a woman in Central Park, and they grabbed Tommy for it.”

“He wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“No. They found the kid who did it, but Tommy didn’t have any ID and so they took him to jail as a vagrant.”

“A vagrant?” Clea was amazed. Maybe he really was jinxed.

“He told’em his name was Bruno Frank, so...”

“Where are you?”

When Clea called Bradley his machine answered. She was relieved not to have to talk to him, and also not to be going with him to the Vineyard.

The police station was on 86th Street. The sergeant in charge asked her a dozen questions about Bruno.

“What is his birthday?”

“January 12, 1986.”

“What is his middle name?”

“No one in our family has middle names.”

“Why doesn’t he have ID?”

“He doesn’t have a license and, anyway, he lost his wallet.”

Eric and Thomas had worked out all of the lies on the train ride before they got to Denver. Later on, after they had reached New York, Clea had told Thomas it was all right to use her last name. She hadn’t really believed that Thomas was in such deep trouble, or that the police would just grab him off the street for no reason.

Eric posed as Clea’s boyfriend from NYU.

“Your brother should really have identification,” the policeman said.

“I’ll get him to do it, officer,” she said, relieved.

The three caught a cab a few blocks away. Eric gave the driver an address on the West Side Highway near 12th Street. There they entered a twelve-story glass apartment building. The doorman seemed leery at first, but when Eric gave him his name he handed over the key and allowed them entrance.

As he worked a key on the door of the penthouse, Clea asked, “Why are they letting us in here?”

“Connie said that I could stay here on the weekends if I wanted. She said that she’d leave my name at the desk.”

“But shouldn’t you knock?” Clea asked.

“She spends every weekend with her boyfriend in Brooklyn,” Eric answered. “I thought we could go out in the Village this weekend. Connie said that it’s a pretty big place.”

The transparent walls allowed a nearly unobstructed view up and down the Hudson River. They could see the Statue of Liberty and across to Hoboken.

“I was supposed to go away with some kids to Martha’s Vineyard this weekend,” Clea was saying that evening after they had eaten take-out Chinese. “But I’d rather be here with you guys.”

Thomas had been quiet since getting out of jail. He sat close to the future linguist and ate hardly at all.

“What’s wrong, Lucky?” she asked.

“I don’t like bein’ in jail. But I think that’s where I’m gonna end up.”

“No,” Eric said. “I won’t let that happen.”

“I didn’t do nuthin’ today, man. I was just walkin’ in the park thinkin’ about you guys an’ the pictures. But those cops just grabbed me, and even though they knew I didn’t do nuthin’, they took me to jail. One suckah in there started beatin’ on me the minute he saw me. I didn’t even look at him.”

There was a pronounced lump over Thomas’s left eye.

“I’m sorry,” Eric said.

“They just see a black man,” Clea said, “and they think he did something wrong. It happens all the time.”