Free The Right Mistake by Walter Mosley Page B

those bare legs again.
“You wanna see?” she asked him.
He put out his hands, laying them lightly upon hers.
“Slow down, baby,” he said. “You like to give me a heart attack here.”
This brought a true grin to the hard girl’s lips.
“I bet you nevah said that to nobody before,” she said.
“Luna, you mighta heard what I did but you can’t know no shit like that. I choked the life outta that woman. I had her blood all ovah my hands. I took her and I killed her like I was some kinda wild animal. Animal.”
Luna moved her wrists so that her hands were now on top of his.
“But you ain’t no animal,” she said.
“You cain’t forgive me, girl. Nobody can.”
“I don’t forgive you,” she said behind a steady stare. “I don’t care what you did. I ain’t here to give you nuthin’. I’m here to get sumpin’ from you.”
“What could I possibly have that you need?”
“I might be young, Mr. Fortlow, but I been around. I seen my brothah, my fathah, an’ uncle all die from alcohol an’ drugs. My mama turned to a old woman before I was sixteen. I seen it all. Killin’s, beatin’s . . . I got raped when I was twelve. My daddy killed the mothahfuckah did it.”
Socrates closed his hands around Luna’s.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’ont have to be sorry. I’m okay.”
“You bettah than that. You a young woman. Smart and fine . . .”
“I ain’t pretty,” she said, “an’ I ain’t fancy. I can read but I don’t know nuthin’. The only thing I know is that I want you. I knew it the minute I walked in that door an’ saw you. I knew it even before when Marianne told me about how you got this place and what you wanted to do with it.”
“I could be your grandfather.”
“You could be my baby’s daddy.”
“Luna,” Socrates said, feeling that he was pleading. “The things I’ve done . . .”
“The worst thing a man can do is not be there,” the young woman said. Now she was squeezing his fingers with surprising strength. “But all somebody got to do is look at you to know that the only way you gonna leave is if you died.”
Socrates wanted to pull his hand away, to stroke her hair and send her off, but Luna would not relinquish her grip. “I’m not lettin’ go’a you, Socco. I’m not playin’ here.” “Baby, please,” he said.
“We both done things,” she said. “I stabbed that man an’ he wasn’t the first one. I done things wit’ men. I done stole and sold drugs. We both been bad. An’ you ain’t that old anyway.”
“Let me go now, Luna.”
She withdrew her hands, clasping them upon her bare knees. Socrates enveloped the tight ball of fingers between his rock breakers.
“I’m not like one’a yo’ teenagers,” he said. “You got to give me a little time on this.”
“You not just sayin’ that so I go away?”
“I feel for you, girl,” Socrates said. “From that first minute you walked in this house I wanted somethin’. But I never saw you comin’. It’s like a dream I used to have in my cell sometimes.”
Their restless hands kept moving. Now Luna took Socrates’ big right hand in both of hers.
“What kinda dream?”
“I’d be in my eight by ten cell,” he said. “There was mold growin’ on the walls and bugs skitterin’ all ovah in the dark, men cried out when they’d get hit and hurt. Killers be laugin’ out loud and when and where it was quiet the convicts was mostly scared.”
Luna was staring straight into his eyes. He could see that she could discern the truth as well as the pain in what he was saying.
“I’d go to sleep,” he continued, “listening to all that sufferin’, smellin’ it too. And then I’d wake up because someone called my name . . .”
“Who?”
“I’d open my eyes and there’d be this li’l girl, no older than you, standing there.”
“A black girl like me?”
“Oh yeah. She’d be naked an’ ask me for my blanket. An’ I’d get up and take that thin army surplus wool they had for us an’ put it on