And Sometimes I Wonder About You : A Leonid Mcgill Mystery (9780385539197) by Mosley Walter

Author:Mosley, Walter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Digital
Published: 2015-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

28

After a month of a dedicated housekeeper’s hard work the smell of old socks and twenty years of brooding had finally been cleaned away from Dimitri’s room. My father, whom I would always and forevermore call Clarence, was asleep therein. He told me that he felt best sleeping in a different bed every night; that he felt safer moving around.

I should have been asleep too. My days had been strenuous and the drinking wasn’t light. But there I was in my den/office wondering how it could be that I had discovered hidden feelings for my wife and once again lost her in just a few minutes’ time?

I picked up the phone at four minutes shy of midnight and dialed a number. After four rings a recording of Aura Ullman’s voice said, “You have reached me, so talk to me.” I hung up before the beep.

I’d called Aura hoping that there might be love somewhere for me, too. But if I couldn’t have love I had to dig deeper.

“Mr. McGill,” she said after the Hotel Brown switchboard operator connected us. “What revelation do you have for me at this hour?”

Just the sound of her voice brought up a vibration like a growl in my chest. The creature making this sound in me was like a wild thing—both hunted and free.

“I want you to know that I’m not asking you for anything, but…” I said.

“But what?” There was a lot of satisfaction in those two words.

“I’d like to come over.”

“I understand,” she said with no underlying gratification. “Come along.”

—

I walked there. The whole time I was thinking about how foolish it was to pursue a woman like that; a woman as dangerous as any killer I’d gone up against.

I was so wrapped up in these thoughts that I bumped into a pedestrian waiting for the light at Seventy-third and Broadway—a very large pedestrian male.

White, short-sleeved, and generously tattooed, the man made a sound like the one in my chest.

He said, “What the fuck’s wrong with you, nigga?”

We live in a brave new world. Many white people in their thirties, and younger than that, take the derogatory slang from the music they listen to with no notion of insult based on race. I felt, however, that this particular individual had learned his slurs behind bars and under guard; at close quarters and in situations that were life and death on a daily basis.

I smiled broadly and held my upturned palms near shoulder level.

“Bring it on, my brother,” I said. “Bring it on.”

The tattooed man moved his left shoulder to put himself in an advantageous position for fighting. My smile deepened. He took me in with well-trained eyes, and the anger he carried around like a weapon suddenly faded. The light turned and he walked away at a pace he hoped I wouldn’t try to match.

If there was anything that should have dissuaded me from going to the Hotel Brown it was that ex-con’s reaction to me at that moment in time.

—

Marella and I didn’t speak until after 4:00 that morning.

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