“Oh,” she said. “It was dark and I didn’t know . . .”
3rd Pass Pages
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The Man in My Basement
I went to the wall near where she’d entered the room 1
and turned on the light.
2
“. . . didn’t know if something was wrong.” She was 3
brown, mostly dark brown, but here and there it light-4
ened a little, lending a subtle texture to her skin. I imag-5
ined the broad sweep of clouds across the earth from an 6
astronaut’s view. Or maybe it was a parchment, incredibly 7
old and almost erased by age and rain, the slight grada-8
tion of color coming from sepia glyphs whose secrets were 9
now gone.
10
“. . . I mean it was so dark,” she continued, obviously 11
still nervous about coming into a strange man’s house 12
without the proper reception.
13
I didn’t help to relieve her fears, looking her over, think-14
ing strange thoughts about her skin.
15
“. . . and you were just sitting there . . .”
16
“I’ve been working all day pulling stuff out of the cellar 17
because Ricky said you’d come by at eight. I guess I 18
worked so hard that I fell asleep here in the window.” And 19
there it was — the truth. There was no lie in my words, 20
body language, or voice. And again I wondered what had 21
happened. It was almost as if I were in one of my beloved 22
Philip Jose Farmer fantasies. Like I had gone to sleep in a 23
mundane world and awakened in a fantastical place where 24
the colors were brighter and youth was eternal. It was par-25
tially like that, like some fantasy, but this new world of 26
mine was only subtly different; only my point of view and S 27
clarity of vision had altered.
R 28
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Walter Mosley
1
“Oh,” Narciss said, looking around the large living 2
room. “There’s a lot, isn’t there?”
3
She wasn’t a beautiful woman, except for that skin.
4
Probably my age, give or take. Her face was squarish and 5
the white-rimmed glasses were too big for her features.
6
