Fortunate Son

They entered the Russian’s office a little after nine.

“Yes?” the burly man asked. He was frowning at Thomas.

“I brought a watch from Constance Baker,” Eric told him.

This took away the scowl.

2 7 2

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

“Let me see it.”

It was a tiny pocket watch with gold-filled numbers and a shiny blue lacquered back.

“It’s lovely,” the watchmaker said.

Thomas wandered over to the window at the back of the shop. The sky outside was opaque white, pure and unfathomable.

Eric exchanged the watch for a receipt.

“Let’s go, Tommy,” he said.

“What’s with this window?” the young black man asked.

The watchmaker, Mr. Harry Slatkin, smiled.

“Open it up,” he said.

Tommy pulled the old-fashioned window wide. The dense white mass hovered outside.

“What is it?”

“The clouds,” Slatkin told him. “We are in the clouds.”

Thomas talked about it all the way down in the Art Deco elevator.

“We were actually in a cloud, Eric. I never did anything like that before.”

“You never flew?” Eric asked.

“Where I’ma fly to? The soup kitchen?”

Th e n one morn i ng Eric got a call on a bright-red cell phone that Raela had given him.

“Hi, Eric,” the raven-haired girl said into the line. Her voice was exultant.

“Hi, honey,” he said.

Connie, who was lying next to him in the bed, sat straight up.

2 7 3

Wa l t e r M o s l e y

“The governor of California has commuted Thomas’s sentence, and he’s persuaded the district attorney to drop all the other charges,” Raela said. “You can come home. Daddy’s sending a plane tomorrow to pick you up at Stewart Airport.”

“What time?”

“Three in the afternoon.”

“We’ll be there.”

When he disconnected the call, Connie said, “You’re leaving?”

“Uh . . . yeah.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow . . . at three.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I told you we were going back.”

“But just one day’s notice?”

“We’ve got to go. That’s where we live. I have a daughter there.”

“You’re married?”

“No. But I told you about my girlfriend.”

“So you take advantage of me and then walk out with hardly a good-bye?”

“Connie.”

“Get out of my house.”

Te l l i ng C lea was somewhat easier. She cried a little.

“Will we ever see each other again?” she asked Thomas.

“I’d come back if you want me to,” he said. “I could maybe get my GED and a job at the museum. I could stay at the Y.”

“Maybe I could come out to California in the summer,”

she said. “Then you’d have time to see your family awhile. I mean, it sounds like you haven’t had a break in years.”

2 7 4

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

“I love you.” Thomas hadn’t remembered using those words since he was a boy with Branwyn.

“Go back home, Thomas, and call me. If it’s right I’ll come out this summer and we’ll see.”

“I don’t want to leave you, but I want to go home too.”

“Go.”

2 7 5

18

Kronin Stark sent a private jet—his own personal 767, in which he had never flown — for the boys the next afternoon. Connie didn’t even say good-bye to Eric. She just slammed the door after telling him that he had destroyed her life.

“I don’t see how you did that, Eric,” Thomas said as the jet gained altitude. “I mean, you told her that you were going back to California and that you had a girl. She’s twice your age. I mean, damn — what more did she need?”

“I shouldn’t have led her on.”

“You didn’t.”

“What do you know about it, Tommy? Nobody ever threw herself at you and then fell out of a window instead.”

“Maybe not. But so what? You think that means I’m too stupid to know?”

“No. Not that. But I have problems that you wouldn’t understand. I have to be careful how I treat people. You have to be careful how people treat you. She said that I ruined her life.”

“You didn’t do nuthin’ to her, man. All you did was go along for the ride. You don’t know what you did to her. She don’t know either.”

“She knows how she feels.”

“Maybe. But she broke up with that boyfriend, right?”

2 7 6

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

“Yeah.”

“She probably needed to do that. She needed to leave him, and she told herself that she was in love with you to do it. Of course she’s gonna be mad. But she’s mad at her boyfriend, mad at herself for bein’ with him. It don’t have nuthin’ to do wit’ you.”

Eric was once again amazed by his brother. During the years that they were separated, Eric often thought that he’d idealized Thomas, that the boy really wasn’t so brilliant as he remembered. But time after time when they talked, Eric was forced to admit the rightness in Thomas’s keen insights.

“How do you know that, Tommy?” Eric asked a long while later.

“What?” Thomas was looking out of the window, holding tight to the armrests of his seat. He had never been in a jet, or any other aircraft. He was elated and petrified.

“About Connie. I mean, you never even slept with anybody before Clea.”

“You ever been to the carnival that come down on Fifty-fourth Place sometimes?” Thomas asked. “Down toward South Central?”

“No.”

“But you ever been in a hall of mirrors like?”

“No, but I know what you mean.”