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what I need.” Bennet’s words and his bright blue eyes were pure and innocent. But what he was telling me was that a stranger could walk into my life and find out more about me than my closest family and friends ever knew.
    “How do you make your money, Mr. Bennet?”
    “I’m an agent for a consortium of investment and oil companies. I do research and reclamation work all through the world.”
    “Reclaiming what?”
    “Wealth.” He said the word and it tickled him.
    “No drugs or anything?”
    He shook his head. His hands hadn’t moved and the sunlight now shone on his forearms.
    “You got the money on you?”
    “In a brown paper bag in my trunk,” he said.
    “So you hand over the money and I just wait for your furniture and stuff?”
    He nodded.
    “You really found out about my mortgage and house and everything?”
    “I’m a man who gets what he wants, Mr. Blakey. I want your cellar and I’m willing to give you what you need.”
    I couldn’t see anything wrong with a man wanting to be a monk. I certainly didn’t have any problems with fifty thousand dollars. But there was something, some formal-ity, an expectation from Bennet that made me feel this
recluse,
as he called it, was more than just a vacation or retreat. I wanted to find the right question to ask, to pull out the truth that he professed to believe in.
    But I felt that it couldn’t go on much longer. If I said no that day, then my chances would be over. The bank wouldn’t give a petty embezzler a break on the mortgage. I couldn’t work.
    “What do you plan to be doing down there in my basement?” I asked.
    “Reading, thinking. If I get the opportunity maybe I’ll do some writing.”
    “Nothing else?”
    “Eat and sleep.” Bennet’s face was reposed and patient. He even gave me a wan smile.
    “What do you mean,
if you get the opportunity?
”
    “Many things depend on circumstance, Mr. Blakey. Opportunities stem from these circumstances.”
    I was beaten by this last interchange. Anniston Bennet wanted to live the hermit’s life in a two-hundred-year-old cellar. I needed the money. I tried to think about what my mother would advise, but all I could come up with was a sad face and a deep sigh, a beseeching look that said I hoped I did right. Uncle Brent would have damned me for either choice.
    I wanted to say no, but instead I said, “Okay, Mr. Bennet. Bring me your paper bag and we have a deal.”
     
* * *
     
    The white man handed me the bag and shook my hand in the street in front of my house. Irene Littleneck watched and smoked over our exchange.
    “See you on July one,” Bennet said softly.
    “You bet.”
    Again he got into his turquoise Volkswagen, made a U-turn, and drove off. Irene met my eye from her porch across the street. She probably wanted an explanation. I had known her since I was a child—getting into mischief and having my ears twisted by her and her sister, Chastity.
    “How is Chastity, Miss Littleneck?” I hailed.
    “Restin’,” the aged woman replied.
    “Give her my best,” I said.
    “Thank you,” Irene said, and she turned off the heavy stare of accusation. A kind word about her family always softened her punishing ways.
     
     
     

• 10 •
     
     
    I answered the phone after it had been ringing for a very long time.
    “Helah,” I said.
    “Charles? Charles, are you awake?”
    It was Monday morning and I was sprawled out on the floor in front of the couch in the living room. My pillow was a paper bag that held almost eight thousand dollars on top of a brand-new boom box that I’d picked up in East Hampton. Next to me was a half-empty bottle of Courvoisier. A cognac high is the smoothest thing in the world. Even the hangover is like being squeezed by a velvet vise.
    “Ricky? Ricky, what time is it?”
    “It’s afternoon, Charles. Afternoon.” As wild as Ricky thought he was, he was still a blue-collar man. The thought of sleeping during daylight hours was sinful to him.
    “What you want,