Walter Mosley_Leonid McGill_01 by The Long Fall Read Free Book Online Page A

glass for her mother too, but since Katrina had abandoned our family for Andre Zool, Shelly refused to serve her.
    “Dimitri, get us some plates from the cabinet,” Katrina said.
    “I’m not eating,” he replied.
    Before I could say anything Twill popped up and went to get our plates. He was a peacemaker, a very important trait for a career criminal.
    “Don’t give me one,” Dimitri said, holding his hands over his little parcel of the table.
    “I’m on a diet,” Shelly said.
    “Isn’t anyone going to eat with their father?” Katrina asked the universe.
    “I will,” Twill said.
    My wife served me and her son.
    He only took one bite but I still felt good that he joined me.
    Shelly chattered on about her classes and classmates, her teachers, and a cute boy named Arnold. Dimitri was silent and Katrina kept asking if I wanted more.
    When the food was gone and the shaker half empty, Dimitri stomped off to bed. Shelly followed after kissing me goodnight. She was a lovely Asian child. Her father, I was quite sure, was a jeweler from Burma who’d had a yearlong affair with my wife.
    “I’ll help with the dishes, Mom,” Twill offered when Katrina began stacking plates.
    “No, darling. You keep your father company.”
    She carried off the plates and we sat, side by side, at the table for eight.
    Twill had a small scar under his chin, a blemish from a tumble he took as a toddler. I often thought that that little protuberant flaw made him even more perfect, telling the world that this handsome representation of a man was human too.
    “How’s it goin’, Twill?” I asked.
    “Can’t complain.”
    “You see your probation officer this week?”
    “This afternoon. He said I was doing fine.”
    Twill always looked you in the eye when speaking.
    “Any girls on the scene?” I asked.
    He hunched his shoulders, giving away nothing.
    Twill didn’t call girls hos and bitches, as many of his friends did; not that he was outraged by that kind of language.
    That’s just the way people talk, he once told me. I don’t do it ’cause it don’t sound right comin’ outta my mouth, that’s all.
    “Is everything okay?” I asked.
    “It is what it is, Pop.”

9
    T he setting of the dream changes slightly over time but in essence it remains the same.
    I’m in a burning building, running through a maze of blazing hallways. In this particular nightmare I come to a staircase and wonder if it’s worth trying to get down that way. But when I arrive at the door, flames vomit out at me. I run through an office door into a burning room. I run from room to room, breathing hard, choking on the smoke and hot air.
    I come to another stairwell but it is blocked by smoldering timbers. I try to move them but orange embers burn my hands, sending me reeling backwards. I stumble and right myself again and again, running in between the stagger. All of a sudden I see a window at the end of a long, flame-licked hallway. I take a step and the floor under my foot gives way. Shifting my weight to the other foot, I spring forward, vaulting over the gaping hole in the floor. The walls and floor and ceiling are all flame now. At every step the floor gives way behind me. I keep on moving toward that faraway window, certain that I won’t make it. I’m running. Smoke is rising from my clothes. My senses become confused with each other. I see the concussive cracking of flame and hear the bright heat. My mind is burning and it is my soul more than any other part of me that is racing for the liberation of the window.
    Suddenly I am standing on a solid floor before the huge plate-glass frame. The window is occluded by smoke residue. There is no mechanism to open it. I rush back into the conflagration to retrieve a burning timber. And though I am being burned I batter the glass, again and again. It cracks and buckles, weakens and finally gives way.
    As the window falls I am faced with the most beautiful blue sky I have ever seen. Below, the broken pane