Fortunate Son

by Walter Mosley

  B e f ore Th omas f i r st 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.”

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  “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.

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  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.

  Th omas was wal k i ng 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.”

  C lea ’s c e l l ph one 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 2 5 4

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  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?”

  Wh e n C lea cal le d 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 2 5 5

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  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 sup p o se d 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.

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  “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.”

  “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.

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  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?”

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  “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 birth-2 5 9

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  day, 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.”

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  17

  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.

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  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.

  L ate r that eve n i ng 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.

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  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 chan-nel. 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.

  “I will not be bullied by you,” Kronin said to the queen of his heart.

  “I’m not the bully.”

  “What did you do with that money?”

  “It’s my money, and I can do with it what I please.”

  “Not ten thousand dollars.”

  “Why not? Didn’t you put it into my account? Didn’t you tell me that you trusted me to make sensible decisions?”

  “I don’t know if I trust you anymore.”

  “I’m tired,” Raela said then. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Eat something,” Kronin said, no longer loud or a bully.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You’ll die.”

  “Everything dies.”

  Michael was beyond understanding this confrontation. He was unaware of Eric’s relationship with his sister. He hadn’t heard much from his friend since the funeral. Michael had called Eric, but that phone number was disconnected and he’d taken a leave from UCLA.

  Raela walked out, leaving the older man seething and the younger one perplexed.

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  “Do you know what’s going on?” Kronin asked Michael.

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not? You brought him into this house.”