Read Online And Sometimes I Wonder About You by Walter Mosley - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Walter Mosley
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chargin’ her or nuthin’ but I figure I can work on my detective chops doing a simple girl-wants-boy-back kind of job. Like you on the Martinez gig. Did you find him?”
Ignoring the question, I asked, “That’s why you’re at this party?”
“He think he’s a DJ and so he always around places like this askin’ for work. I’m just doin’ the do.”
“Have you been to see your mother?”
“I’m goin’ there this evenin’,” he said. “Right after I take a little nap.”
“I want you in the office tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there.”
We said our good-byes and I put the phone down.
The only thing I got out of our discourse was that Twill was lying and his trouble was deep.
12
T he rest of the day I concentrated on the e-mails that didn’t need answering. Seventeen of these were replies to my ad in the
New York Literary Review
. Some Bills and Williams, lonely johns, and a few vanity presses thought that I might really be looking for them. But none of these people or places were the self-named Tolstoy McGill, my missing father. For half my childhood and all of my adult life I had thought the anarchist-revolutionary had perished in South America fighting some dictatorship or another. But Tolstoy wasn’t dead. I’d made an appointment to meet him for dinner one night but Katrina decided that afternoon to kill herself and my father once again faded into speculation.
By 7:14 I was through for the day. Mardi was still at her desk. I sometimes got the feeling that she would work twenty-four hours a day if she could.
“Who’s looking after your sister?” I asked.
“Marlene’s staying at our downstairs neighbors’ apartment tonight. Their daughter Peg is her best friend. They move back and forth between the apartments.”
Mardi looked up at me and I turned away before our eyes could focus on each other.
“Am I going crazy or did Kit just knock on the door?” I said to the door.
“I had Bug give me a button to turn off your buzzer when I’m in,” she said. “I figure we both don’t have to be bothered.”
“What if you forget to turn it back on?”
“It’s on a two-hour timer. After that it goes back to both.”
I would have liked to find something wrong with her logic but Mardi was a bright kid with an old soul; just the kind of employee you wanted in a world filled with a starstruck workforce and electronic memories.
Even her smile was knowing.
“In the old days,” I said, “when I was younger than you are now, people would say ‘you’re a good egg’ to people who did right most of the time.”
“Really?”
“You’re a good egg, Mardi.”
“Am I?” she said, looking me straight in the eye.
A microsecond of fear clutched at my heart, not quite long enough to get a good grip.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, thinking for the second time that this week was going to be a challenge.
—
I ran up all ten flights to the eleventh floor of our family apartment, a block east of Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side. There was a new locking system since a pair of East European assassins had broken in and tried to end my career. I used two keys and a remote control so small that it was hardly larger than the button that worked it. The kids didn’t argue about the new process because I left the bullet holes in the wall where the killers missed.
Another reason the kids didn’t mind was because two of them had moved out and the youngest, Twill, rarely spent the night.
I’m not what most people would think of as a family man. I don’t come home for dinner every evening—many nights I don’t come home at all. But over the decades I got used to a wife that cooked and kids that complained. The muted sounds through the large prewar apartment had made a place in what some might call my heart. And so the emptiness in the apartment felt…wrong.
I went to the dining room, poured forty-year-old cognac into a crystal snifter, and sat at the big hickory dining table. It
Ignoring the question, I asked, “That’s why you’re at this party?”
“He think he’s a DJ and so he always around places like this askin’ for work. I’m just doin’ the do.”
“Have you been to see your mother?”
“I’m goin’ there this evenin’,” he said. “Right after I take a little nap.”
“I want you in the office tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there.”
We said our good-byes and I put the phone down.
The only thing I got out of our discourse was that Twill was lying and his trouble was deep.
12
T he rest of the day I concentrated on the e-mails that didn’t need answering. Seventeen of these were replies to my ad in the
New York Literary Review
. Some Bills and Williams, lonely johns, and a few vanity presses thought that I might really be looking for them. But none of these people or places were the self-named Tolstoy McGill, my missing father. For half my childhood and all of my adult life I had thought the anarchist-revolutionary had perished in South America fighting some dictatorship or another. But Tolstoy wasn’t dead. I’d made an appointment to meet him for dinner one night but Katrina decided that afternoon to kill herself and my father once again faded into speculation.
By 7:14 I was through for the day. Mardi was still at her desk. I sometimes got the feeling that she would work twenty-four hours a day if she could.
“Who’s looking after your sister?” I asked.
“Marlene’s staying at our downstairs neighbors’ apartment tonight. Their daughter Peg is her best friend. They move back and forth between the apartments.”
Mardi looked up at me and I turned away before our eyes could focus on each other.
“Am I going crazy or did Kit just knock on the door?” I said to the door.
“I had Bug give me a button to turn off your buzzer when I’m in,” she said. “I figure we both don’t have to be bothered.”
“What if you forget to turn it back on?”
“It’s on a two-hour timer. After that it goes back to both.”
I would have liked to find something wrong with her logic but Mardi was a bright kid with an old soul; just the kind of employee you wanted in a world filled with a starstruck workforce and electronic memories.
Even her smile was knowing.
“In the old days,” I said, “when I was younger than you are now, people would say ‘you’re a good egg’ to people who did right most of the time.”
“Really?”
“You’re a good egg, Mardi.”
“Am I?” she said, looking me straight in the eye.
A microsecond of fear clutched at my heart, not quite long enough to get a good grip.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, thinking for the second time that this week was going to be a challenge.
—
I ran up all ten flights to the eleventh floor of our family apartment, a block east of Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side. There was a new locking system since a pair of East European assassins had broken in and tried to end my career. I used two keys and a remote control so small that it was hardly larger than the button that worked it. The kids didn’t argue about the new process because I left the bullet holes in the wall where the killers missed.
Another reason the kids didn’t mind was because two of them had moved out and the youngest, Twill, rarely spent the night.
I’m not what most people would think of as a family man. I don’t come home for dinner every evening—many nights I don’t come home at all. But over the decades I got used to a wife that cooked and kids that complained. The muted sounds through the large prewar apartment had made a place in what some might call my heart. And so the emptiness in the apartment felt…wrong.
I went to the dining room, poured forty-year-old cognac into a crystal snifter, and sat at the big hickory dining table. It
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