For a time this behavior had unsettled my nearly imper-turbable friend. That’s because he was not only a natural-born killer, he was also a romantic. Fearless needed to be hopelessly in love to give his space to a woman. She didn’t have to be pretty or smart or friendly, even. There was some quality he searched for that I never understood. And so when he realized that Mona didn’t have what he needed, he told her so. He said that he didn’t mind spending time with her but they would never have a life together.
Most women, when Fearless told them that, would move on — after a while. But Mona said she didn’t care. She loved Fearless whether he loved her or not. She let him know that she would be there no matter what he did or who he saw. All he had to do was call or ring her bell.
Fearless didn’t have a phone, so she always lived nearby.
While Mona was lighting my cigarette, Three Hearts asked, “Are you okay, baby?”
I was still angry that she had called me a coward when I had tried my best to save her, so I didn’t respond right off.
“First he struck Paris with his hand,” Three Hearts said to Mona and Fearless. “And then he kicked him.”
77
Walter Mosley
I remembered the kick as a bounce.
“He was lookin’ around the ground for somethin’ to hit Paris with,” Three Hearts was saying, “when I took out my Colt forty-five. You know a woman always got to have somethin’ in her purse for protection. He’s lucky I was so mad.
Made my aim go wide.”
I remembered the shot. It was a car on another block — I thought.
“An’ he run like a coward,” Three Hearts said. “Just a damn coward.”
Fearless gave out a deep belly laugh. Gray-hued Mona brought up both of her hands to cover her beautiful smile.
“He a fool not be afraid’a you, Hearts. Damn. Forty-five.
This mama right here don’t play.” He laughed some more.
“How did we get outta the alley and ovah here?” I asked.
Mona was handing me my whiskey.
“I remembered that you and Fearless used to work for Milo Sweet,” Three Hearts said. “I dragged you to the side of a house in that damn alley and went to a phone booth and called.”
I slugged back the whiskey and Mona poured me another.
One of the nice things about her one-sided love for Fearless was that it seemed to spill over on me some. She looked at me with the same friendly eyes that he did.
“I put Milo and Loretta away and then come over to dust you off,” Fearless said.
“Damn,” I said. “Gotdamn.”
“What you wanna do, Paris?” Fearless asked me.
“I don’t know, man.”
I looked from him to Three Hearts and back again. What I wanted didn’t matter. There was no way out.
78
FEAR OF THE DARK
I drank my whiskey.
Mona refilled my glass. The aches in my body began to recede.
“Let’s walk on down to Mona’s place,” Fearless said. “I need to make a call.”
Because Fearless never had a phone, Mona was also his phone booth.
79
M o n a ’ s a p a r t m e n t wa s no larger than Fearless’s studio, but she had a royal blue sofa, 13 nice chairs, and a fine oak table that supported a small TV set in a pink plastic frame.
Some people felt sorry for Mona. They thought that she should find a good man who wanted to be with her. But I wasn’t so sure. Fearless didn’t love Mona in the way that she wanted, but he’d accompany her to any restaurant or church event she needed an arm for, he kept her car running and her plumbing flowing, and he never got mad when she had a weekend away with some temporary boyfriend. When Mona’s cousin Natalie died, Fearless stayed with her for two weeks, making coffee in the morning and tea every night.
I’d look at his relationship with her and think that if I could have a woman who treated me the way Fearless did Mona, I’d be in heaven. Of course that’s a selfish attitude, but I don’t know. If Mona had a child and died, I’m pretty sure that Fearless would have taken that baby in. That’s the kind of selfish-ness the world could use more of.
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80
FEAR OF THE DARK
F e a r l e s s s a t d o w n on Mona’s upholstered chair, hung his left leg over the arm, and started making phone calls.
