Free The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley Page A

for the living room. There I began to drink. It was necessary to slow down my beating heart.
    From the sofa I could hear the occasional moan or gasping sob, but the whiskey dulled my urges and I fell half into a doze.
     
     
    “Charles?” she said. “You awake?”
    I was asleep on the couch in the living room. At least I think I was asleep. It seemed to me that I had been looking at Bethany in her tight satin slip for quite some time.
    “Are you awake?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Ricky’s asleep,” she said as if it was an important piece of information.
    She sat down next to me and I got up, almost without thinking, and moved to the chair. That made Bethany smile.
    “You scared of me, Charles Blakey?” she asked.
    “You know a lot of those rich people come in here from New York, don’t you, Bethy?” I asked.
    She was confused by my changing her subject but still answered, “Some.”
    “They do some crazy things, right?”
    “I guess,” she said. “I mean, they think they’re all crazy and wild. And they don’t have to get up and go to work in the morning. Really all the difference I can see is that they think that they’re smarter and better than people don’t make as much money as they do. And they want a lot more. You know, like that artist I used to go with. He wanted to be the best at everything. And he was so rich that everybody told him that he was the best. When he started playing trumpet, his friends said that he sounded like Miles Davis. It wasn’t like us. You know somebody set you straight in a minute around here.”
    Bethany smiled and I wanted to kiss her, not because she was beautiful, even though she was, but because she wasn’t impressed by the lies rich people wore like clothes. She knew where her feet were planted. Right then I think she wanted to be standing a little closer to me.
    She stood up and walked over to my chair. I stood to meet her.
    She was about to lay her hand on my chest, but I took hold of her wrist and gently pushed her away.
    “I want to see you, Bethy,” I said. “But not downstairs from Ricky after you made him all happy like that.”
    “We could take a shower,” she suggested.
    “It’s not that. You know Ricky can get low and dirty, but he’s the only friend I got right now. Believe me, this is not easy. But can I make you some tea?”
    Bethany frowned for a few seconds, and then she shrugged and smiled. There was a sweater on the floor. She must have let it fall from her shoulders when she saw me slouching on the couch. Now she picked it up and covered all that youthful beauty.
     
     
    Over Irish Breakfast (it was 4:30) we discussed the rich white people she’d known. Bethany liked the fine dinners and fancy houses, but rich people—even the black ones, she said—couldn’t satisfy her like people from our neighborhood.
    “It’s just like my people know me better,” she said. “Like Ricky. You know for a while tonight I thought he might have a heart attack, he was so excited. And before he fell off asleep he was talking about Johnetta Johnston and Kirby. You know? Everyday stuff. Rich men always want to be teaching something, asking,
Did you know?
when they know you don’t know and don’t care neither.”
    Ricky came down when the sun was just coming up. At first he looked suspicious, but when Bethany showed him her big teeth and said, “Mornin’, baby. Charles made me some tea,” he calmed down and kissed her face and neck.
    After that they went back upstairs. I was so tired that I didn’t even listen. I went to sleep with my bag of money in my dead father’s foldout sofa and dreamed about Anniston Bennet. He was humongous and wedged tight in my cellar, sticking his head out of the trapdoor and begging to be let free.
     
     
     

• 11 •
     
     
    I spent the next week working on the basement and reading the books I had bought. Late every afternoon Ricky would call to crow about his further conquests with Bethany. One night they did it on the