The Man in My Basement
stand. Our hearts are like those sharks. There’s no curbing 1
the appetite of a hungry heart.”
2
“Maybe he was talking to himself,” I said, not thinking 3
really, just making up words.
4
But Mr. Anniston Bennet, Tamal Knosos, aka Hikmet, 5
looked up at me with something like wonder in his face.
6
He wrestled with the words that I had already forgotten 7
and then repeated them and then wrestled some more.
8
“Talking to himself,” he said a third time.
9
10
11
Anniston Bennet was a murderer if you went by his 12
words. He had people killed, and he killed with his own 13
hands four times. Never in self-defense — he was a pred-14
ator with no natural enemies. But he never killed without 15
the say-so of officials in the government; he never killed 16
for passion — at least that’s what he said.
17
When his time in my cellar was almost up, he became 18
jaunty. He made jokes with me and said thank you every 19
night before I left him.
20
I was happy then too. I had three girlfriends, money in 21
the bank, and plans for my future, and I was friends with 22
Clarance and Ricky again. Some weeks earlier I told Nar-23
ciss that I wanted my family heirlooms back so I could 24
make a museum out of my ancestry in the house where 25
that family throve.
26
Every now and then Bennet would say to me, “The S 27
cook was talking to himself, huh, Charles?”
R 28
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Walter Mosley
1
“I don’t know,” I’d say to him. “I just said it. You’re the 2
one who read the book.”
3
He’d smile at me and sit back in his red chair. He had a 4
full beard by then, and he never wore his blue contacts at all.
5
6
7
