Fortunate Son: A Novel by Walter Mosley Page B

it ’cause the hole is too small.”
    “Thank you, Monique.”
    “What’s your real name?” she asked.
    “My name is Tommy, but everybody calls me Lucky.”
    “You right, Bruno,” Monique said. “He do talk funny.”

7
    E IGHT YEARS after Thomas met Monique, a fourteen-year-old Eric Nolan was getting ready to play a match on a public tennis court above Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. He was set to play against an older boy from his school, Hensley High, which was known as the Yale of private high schools. The boy, Drew Peters, was a seventeen-year-old twelfth-grader who had already been accepted to three Ivy League schools for the following year.
    Drew had called Eric’s class a bunch of pussies, and then he pushed around Limon, a delicate Peruvian boy who was also in the tenth grade. Eric told Drew that he couldn’t even play tennis and challenged him to a match. Eric agreed that if he lost he’d pay Drew a hundred dollars and carry him around the track on his back. But if Drew lost he’d have to go down on his knees and ask Limon to forgive him.
    Both classes showed up for the match, which took place at 4:00 p.m. on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. The upperclassmen came into the bleachers all cool and superior. The sophomore class was loud and cheering. And even though Eric was a year younger than most of his classmates, he was the best of them, and they loved him for daring to challenge a boy who was almost four years older. Drew was in the California Junior Tennis League and had placed second in the statewide tournament.
    In the front row of the senior side of the bleachers sat Christie Sadler, whose father, it was said, owned a riverfront block in Paris. Christie was the prettiest girl in any class at Hensley. She looked like a woman already, tall and lithe with violet eyes and skin that defied comparison. Mr. Mantel, the English teacher, had been fired midyear for suggesting to Christie that she would get the grade she was looking for if they could go out on a date.
    Christie and Drew were the perfect couple at school. They’d be king and queen of the prom. They were definitely having sex.
    Eric wasn’t thinking about any of that when he came out onto the court. He liked playing tennis. It was a sport where he didn’t need clumsy teammates who competed with one another. He liked things one on one or, even better, sports where he could excel without competition, like diving or running.
    But Drew had roughed up Limon, and Limon was the closest thing to a friend that Eric had. Not that they were really friends. Limon talked too much, and he always wanted advice about how to be more popular and better in school. He wasn’t satisfied with his life, and Eric looked down on that.
    Don’t you mind it when you lose at tic-tac-toe?
Eric had asked Thomas sometime before his brother disappeared forever.
    Nuh-uh.
    Why not?
    I’ont know,
Thomas said.
I guess it’s just fun to play. And anyway, if you win and you’re my brother, then in a way I win too.
    The day of the match was cloudy and cool. So was Drew, with his light-gray tennis clothes and serious brow.
    Drew’s father had offered to judge the match. Mr. Peters was hale and tall. He had red hair everywhere and skin that had seen a lot of sun. The Peters family made their money in construction. He was a hard man, and Eric was confident that he wouldn’t cheat to favor his son.
    But even if he did, Eric expected to win the match anyway. He always won when it was important. He was, as his Episcopalian minister, Uncle Louis, always said, “born in the circle of light.”
    Eric hadn’t told his father about the match. He never wanted Minas or Ahn to be anywhere where he was the center of attention. Something about that talk with Ahn the night after Lester Corning was scarred had made him leery of the trouble he might cause. For the next few weeks after the accident, Eric asked about his real mother and what had happened.
    She succumbed after