The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley Read Free Book Online Page A

woman’s jacket. She took off the jacket, revealing a loose black T-shirt. She was dressed for hard work.
    While she worked Ricky and I sat side by side in the window seat, watching her plow through my family’s accumulation of junk.
    “You wanna go get a shot at Bernie’s?” Ricky asked me. That meant the drinks were on him. That was our code—the man who suggested drinks paid for them.
    I wanted to go. But I was also interested in everything about Narciss. By then she was sitting in a half-lotus position, going over old photographs and letters that my mother kept in a miniature steamer trunk she’d inherited from some aunt or another. With every new letter she clucked her tongue or hummed. I felt like she was a teacher impressed by my homework assignment.
    Narciss was marking out a history that would probably have captured the interest of historians and anthropologists around the nation. But for me there was only her, scrutinizing a pile of refuse that, if it weren’t for her concern, I would have used to make a bonfire in the backyard.
     
     
     

• 8 •
     
     
    R icky was fidgety. He wasn’t used to sitting around while others worked.
    “I saw Clarance last night,” he said.
    “What’s he have to say?”
    “Nuthin’. He’s gonna add a rumpus room onto the house this summer. He asked if I could work on it, but I told him that I was already working for Wilson Ryder. I told him you were looking for a job, but he didn’t say anything.”
    “You don’t have to do me any favors, Ricky,” I said. “I don’t need Clarance’s charity or yours.”
    “You need somethin’,” Ricky declared.
    He wanted me to take up the bait and fight or make a joke out of it or anything. But I just stuck out my lower lip and shrugged. I didn’t have the energy for that kind of talk right then. I focused my attention on Narciss. She was writing down notes on slips of yellow paper, which she attached to different pieces. She also made entries in a small spiral pad she had.
    “Hey, Charles?” Ricky said.
    “Hey what?”
    “Could I use your phone?”
    “Local or long distance?”
    “I wanna call Bethany. She said that —”
    “Okay,” I said, cutting him off. “Make your call.”
    Ricky gave me a sullen look and then went into the kitchen to use the ancient Princess phone in there. I heard him say Bethany’s name and then I returned my attention to Narciss.
    She seemed extremely competent. Now and then she’d take some reference book or another from her shoulder satchel to prove or disprove some point she was making to herself. She would write more notes and then move on to the next object. In the meanwhile Ricky was laughing and chattering on the phone in the other room.
    I was having a fine time in the chilly window seat, watching the earth-toned woman judge my lineage. The moon shone on her, glaring over my shoulder.
    “Are you hungry?” I asked Narciss after it was completely dark outside.
    “I’d like something after I’m done here,” she said.
    “We could go over to Dinelli’s in Southampton,” I offered and immediately I was sorry. I didn’t have a single paper dollar to my name. I probably didn’t have enough in change to cover a dinner at Dinelli’s, and my only credit card had been canceled more than a year before.
    “That would be nice,” Narciss Gully said.
    She turned back to her work, and I jumped up to go to the kitchen.
    “Be right back,” I promised.
    Ricky was cradling the phone with both hands against his face. His voice was low, and I knew that he must have been getting somewhere with Bethany Baptiste. Bethany was a heavyset young woman who liked food, dancing, and men. She could never get enough of any one of them, and we all loved her for it.
    She’d been married once but that didn’t take. Bethany married Lawrence Crelde, but she was in love with Clarance, who was already married. Whenever Clarance called, Bethany came running, and one day when she got back, Lawrence was