Fortunate Son

Sometimes he would have silent dialogues with his mother or Alicia while meandering through the halls of art. But not so much as before, when he was on the streets of Los Angeles. Often he found himself thinking about the afternoons when he would take the subway downtown to Washington Square Park, where every other day or so he would meet Clea Frank for coffee.

B e f ore Th omas f i r st called her, Clea had decided not to see him or his beautiful “brother,” Eric. After all, she didn’t know them, and they had said that they were running from the law. But when Thomas called, he didn’t ask to get together.

“I just remembered that I had your number in my pocket,”

the perpetual runaway said. “And I thought I’d see how you were doin’ in school.”

“It’s really good,” she said. “I like the classes, but they’re big, impersonal, you know.”

“How about the classrooms?” Thomas asked, remembering that awful light that drove him away.

“They’re big. Sometimes there’s as many as two hundred kids in the same class. But I can do the work, and the library’s nice.”

“Eric says that the library at UCLA is so big that you could sleep in it at night and nobody would find you . . . if you wanted to, I mean.”

“How is Eric?”

“He’s fine. He met a woman down on Wall Street who’s showin’ him about how investing works. I think he’s happy. I hope so.”

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“Why would you worry about him?” Clea asked, forgetting that she didn’t want to know the boys. “He’s got everything.”

“He’s my brother,” Thomas explained.

“Deposit another ten cents for five additional minutes,” the mechanical operator said.

“I better be goin’,” Thomas said. “That was my last quarter.”

“What’s your number?” Clea asked. “I’ll call you back.”

“I don’t see one.”

“Why don’t you come down to Washington Square Park?”

she said. “I could meet you under the archway at five.”

The phone disconnected, and Clea wasn’t sure that Thomas heard what she said. But at five she found him at the foot of Fifth Avenue and the park, sitting on the ground at the wire barrier that fenced off the crumbling arch from foot traffic.

“You made it,” she said, wondering to herself why she had asked him to come. It had been a week since she’d seen him, and she’d already been out on her first date with a good-looking senior who was about to start law school at Columbia.

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “I didn’t have any money, so I had to walk.”

“From where?”

“I was up at Ninety-second and Lexington, but that wasn’t so bad. I used to walk all day long when I lived in L.A.”

Clea didn’t know why she looked forward to seeing Thomas. She still talked to Brad (the future lawyer) and went out with him on weekends. But Thomas made her feel comfortable, and when he kissed her he seemed to be telling her something, something dear and intimate. When Bradley kissed her it was strong, and he seemed to know what he wanted. He made her want it too, though she hadn’t given in yet.

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Wa l t e r M o s l e y

But she had agreed to go away with Bradley to Martha’s Vineyard with a bunch of seniors who had rented a house for the long weekend. They would stay in the same bedroom.

She told herself that she wanted to go, and her new girlfriends in the dorm agreed that she should.

Th omas was wal k i ng across a broad green field in Central Park. The day was so beautiful that he didn’t want to go into the museum just yet. He had not been so happy since he was a child. All day he walked and studied and dreamed about kissing Clea, and in the evening he got together with his brother and they talked about their day.

Eric was liking New York too. Constance had gotten him an afternoon job as an intern, and he spent four hours a day with other college students learning about high finance. But in the evenings he was happy to be quiet and listen to his brother regale him with facts about Mesopotamian cylinder seals and pre-Columbian clay whistles.

Thomas was walking across that field, thinking about asking Eric to come with him to the museum tomorrow, Saturday, when he walked into someone’s chest.

“Excuse me,” he said as he looked up and saw the blue uniform of the NYPD.

“Put your hands up, son,” the policeman said, “up and behind your head.”

C lea ’s c e l l ph one rang just when she was beginning to wonder if Thomas had somehow figured out that she was going away for the weekend with Bradley. He hadn’t called about getting together, and they hadn’t seen each other since 2 5 4

F o r t u n a t e S o n

Tuesday. She still wanted to be friends with the lame man-child, but there was no future with him.

“Hello?”

“Clea, it’s Eric.”

“Hi. I was expecting Lucky.”

“They got him in jail.”

“What for?”

“Some kid mugged a woman in Central Park, and they grabbed Tommy for it.”

“He wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“No. They found the kid who did it, but Tommy didn’t have any ID and so they took him to jail as a vagrant.”

“A vagrant?” Clea was amazed. Maybe he really was jinxed.