Free Diablerie by Walter Mosley Page A

years when the body, mind, and heart start to wind down. I wanted to hurt someone, but not for revenge.
    I reached for my Lucky Strikes, but the pack was empty.
    *  *  *
    Four blocks away I stopped at a kiosk to buy cigarettes. It was a very small stand that sold chewing gum and newspapers, instant lottery tickets and racing forms. I bought a pack of filterless Camels. Three blocks later I picked up a free copy of the Village Voice. I took the paper over into Central Park and sat down at another bench.
    It occurred to me that Lana was right. I was a much different man than I had been just a day before. Yesterday I had been all herky-jerky, skipping down the street and lamenting my wife's betrayal. Today I had woken up devastated, blubbering like a child, but now I was as calm as a contract killer on the old TV show Kojak, waiting for his next job.
    I smoked three cigarettes, found what I was looking for in the performances section of the paper, and watched a big blustering pigeon try time after time to mount shy and reluctant hens.
    I wandered around for a long time, finally making it home at a little after three. I was planning to pack a bag and go to a hotel. There was a small place on Thirty-sixth Street, the Reynard, that rented rooms by the week. It wasn't far from Mrs. Valeria's apartment but she'd never know I was there.
    I wanted to get in and out quickly but Mona was there sitting on the sofa that faced my river-watching chair. She was wearing a white skirt and a black T-shirt. Her white hair and copper skin made her seem somehow transcendent.

    "My ancestors were the Indians who lived in the Caribbean before the Europeans came," she once told me. "They had red skin and straight hair. Not like the slaves."
    "But your skin has a lotta brown in there," I said. "And you straighten your hair."
    There I was, saying everything she didn't want to hear. No wonder she took lovers.

    "Hello, Ben."
    Without speaking I went into the bedroom, took out my small traveling suitcase, and gathered together my socks and underwear, jeans and shirts.
    "Ben." She was standing behind me now, blocking the exit from our small sleeping room.
    I snapped the latch on the bag and turned toward her, waiting patiently for her to move aside.
    "You can't just walk out like this," she said.
    There were rebuttals in my head but my mouth refused to utter them. I looked at her feathery white tresses and soulful deep eyes. She was as much a stranger to me as I was fast becoming stranger to myself. Our actions and words seemed to come from other players, understudies who had completely different takes on the roles of our lives.
    "Talk to me, Ben," she said.
    "You don't want to hear the words that come from my mouth . . . my gutter mouth," I said, feeling a profound satisfaction at being able to throw that term back at her.
    Her face took on that rigid expression she used with such success in business, child rearing, and our marriage.
    "You see?" I said with a smile, "all I have to do is remind you of the way I talk sometimes and it makes you mad. But tell me something, Moan. When your lover tells you to suck his cock, do you tell him that he can't use that language on you or do you get all soft and wet and call him 'baby doll'?"
    "I don't know why you want to talk to me like this," she said. "I don't deserve it, and I have no lovers."
    "No?"
    I glanced at her vanity in the corner. There, right out on top, was the little leather satchel. I walked over to it. The abruptness of my movement made her jump backward. I took two steps toward the bag, opened it up, and brought out the package of condoms.
    "What's this?" I asked her, holding the box in an open palm.
    The look on Mona's face reminded me of why I married her. It was a look both calculating and transparent. She saw that she was caught in a lie and a tryst. But a box of condoms, she reasoned, visibly, was certainly no conviction.
    "I haven't used them," she said.
    "Come on, Moan, don't be like that