Walter Mosley - Fortunate Son

“I never had such a good life as I do right now,” Thomas said, unaffected by apologies or explanations. “I got friends and places t’sleep an’ that museum. You know, I could spend every day for a year lookin’ in there. I could live there. I asked them about bein’ a guard, but you know you need a real Social Security numbah and a phone and a high school degree at least to work there. And even if you walk in the park, you could get grabbed up an’ put in the Tombs.”

They were sitting on a leather couch in front of a low glass coffee table. The sunset lit a fire behind New Jersey.

Without warning, the door to the hall came open and a woman walked in.

Eric jumped to his feet.

“Connie,” he said.

“Hello, Eric.” She had short red hair and an aggressive, angular face.

When Thomas met her eye, he thought he saw disappointment, but then she put on a bright smile.

Sharp as a hatchet. The words came into Thomas’s mind. After a moment he remembered that it was something Ahn used to say.

“I’m sorry,” Eric was saying, “but I thought you said you were away on weekends.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I just came back for a few things. Who are your friends?”

Eric introduced Thomas as his brother and Clea as his brother’s friend. Connie smiled and asked, “Does anybody want a drink?”

Clea joined their hostess for a glass of white wine. Eric had a Coke, and Thomas took tap water without ice.

Then Constance Baker regaled them with stories about her day. It mostly concerned trading and investments. A terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia caused a flurry because of a bus manufacturer. Only Eric seemed to understand what she was talking about.

But Constance was a good host. She asked Clea about NYU and then if Thomas was in school too.

“I wanted to go to school,” Thomas said, “but it wouldn’t make no difference.”

“Why not?”

“It just wouldn’t.”

“Hm,” Constance mused. “Eric, will you come into the other room for a moment please?”

They went into her bedroom, and she closed the door.

“I think she likes your brother,” Clea said.

“Everybody likes Eric. When we were kids he used to go to parties all the time.”

“Didn’t you go?”

“Not too much. No. I coulda gone, I guess, but I liked stayin’ home with my mother. We used to talk a lot.”

“Is that Eric’s mother too?”

“Not by blood. But she loved Eric and me.”

Clea took Thomas’s big hand in both of hers, and for a while they sat there looking out the window.

Then there came a low feminine moan from the bedroom.

“I was going to go away with a boy named Brad this weekend,” Clea confessed.

“How come you ain’t goin’?”

“Because I had to come get you outta jail.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“I’m glad I didn’t go anyway.”

“How come?”

“He’s nice and everything, but I like you. I don’t want to like you, but I do anyway.”

“Oh, yeah!” Connie declared loudly. “Oh my God!”

A heavy thumping began to sound through the wall.

“Why you like me?” Thomas asked.

“I think it’s your big hands. At first you look so small and weak, but then when I hold your hands it’s like you’re the strongest person I ever knew.”

Clea kissed Thomas, and Connie squealed.

“Do you have protection?” Clea asked.

“What’s that?”

“You don’t use a condom when you have sex with your girlfriends?”

“I never had no sex with a woman,” the young man said.

The thumping got louder, and Connie cried out clearly, “Do it, do it, do it!”

“You’re not serious.”

“Yes, I am. I never had no girlfriend to have sex with.”

“But you used to take drugs to prostitutes; you lived with a woman and her child for three years.”

“But I ain’t never had no sex. One time, on my twelfth birthday, Monique played with my thing. I mean, sometimes there was women who said that they would if I wanted, but I was too shy. And that was when I was livin’ in the street an’ I was dirty all the time. You know, it didn’t sound right. And anyway...”

“Anyway what?”

“Nuthin’.” Thomas didn’t want to say that he felt that his mother was watching him and that she would have been upset to see him with some prostitute or drug addict.

“Oh, baby, yeah,” Connie said through the wall.

“Do you want to sleep with me?” Clea asked. Her tone was both serious and soft.

“I’d like to try,” Thomas said.

“I bet we could find some condoms in Connie’s bathroom.”

Raela Timor took her place at an ebony dining table that was so large it took up almost the whole dining room, and that room was twenty feet wide and thirty long. The family of four was at the north end of the table, with Kronin Stark — still in his tailor-made suit, still wearing his red silk-and-gold tie — at the head. When Rita the maid served Raela her sliced pork roast and red cabbage, the girl thanked her but did not pick up her fork.

“You gonna eat that, sis?” Michael asked.

He hadn’t been home in a week, but he could tell that there was something wrong. His court-appointed guardian, Maya, was drawn and haggard, while Kronin looked even more menacing than usual. Raela, as always, was beautiful. If anything she was even more ethereal, slighter, even closer to taking off on the slightest passing breeze.

“I’m not that hungry,” she said.

“You should eat,” Maya suggested, worry stitched into the words.

“Maybe later.”

“Eat your food,” Kronin Stark growled.

“Is that an order?”

“You damn well better believe it’s an order.” The master of the house spoke in his deepest, most threatening bass tone.

Michael felt a quailing in his chest.

Raela rose from her seat.

“Sit down,” Kronin commanded.

“I will not stay at a table where men are cursing at me,” she said.

With that the girl walked out of the room. Michael thought that she seemed a little uncertain on her feet.

“Raela,” Kronin called, his voice filled with sudden grief.

But the woman-child left the room without looking back.

“What’s wrong with her?” Michael asked.

“Shut up and eat your food,” Kronin snapped.

Later that evening Michael found his sister in the upstairs living room. She was knitting him a sweater made from a skein of uncolored raw silk that was specially imported from Tibet by one of Kronin’s thankful business partners.

Raela was always happy to see her brother. She cared for him more than anyone, at least until she’d met Eric — and now Tommy.

“What’s wrong with Stark?” Michael asked. “He’s like a grizzly.”

“It’s nothing,” she said, not interrupting her stitch count.

Though Michael was the older sibling, he knew better than to make demands of his sister. He brought out one of his economics texts and sat there vainly trying to plumb the secrets of money and how it made and destroyed men’s lives.

A half an hour or so later, Kronin Stark lunged into the room. He was still wearing his suit but had discarded the tie. His feet were prone to swelling, so he wore slippers instead of shoes.

“Leave us alone, Michael,” Stark said, while his eyes bored into the downcast girl.

Michael stood, and so did his sister.

“You stay,” Kronin ordered.

“I’m not your damn servant,” she said, barely raising her voice. “And neither is my brother. If you want to talk to me, do it with Mikey here.”

Michael felt like a bug he’d once seen on the nature channel. Beneath the sand a hypersensitive subterranean snake was stalking him while from behind came the shuffle of a small rodent that had picked up his spoor. He’d die if he ran and die if he stood still. Michael had turned off the show, unable to bear it because of his identification with the insect.