The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley

Finally I found it in the upstairs hamper, in the pocket I had put it in after calling Bennet the first time.
    “Hello,” said a familiar voice. “You have reached the Tanenbaum and Ross Investment Strategies Group”—the click—“Mr. Bennet”—the next click—“is not in at the moment but will return your message at the earliest possible time. Please leave your name and number after the signal.”
    “I’ll be there at midnight,” I said and hung up.
     
* * *
     
    And I was there, in the lamp-lit parking lot, at midnight. An obese family—the Benoits, mother and children—was also there, waiting. The Benoit family had come down to the Harbor from Montreal at the turn of the century. I don’t remember ever having spoken to Raoul, the father, or any of his clan, but I knew them because they were part of my community. Trudy, the mother, looked at me nervously, a black man at midnight and the train not in yet.
    “Hello, Mrs. Benoit,” I hailed. “You meeting Raoul?”
    I said it to put her at ease. It worked too. She smiled and nodded. She didn’t remember my name. Maybe she couldn’t distinguish between black men. But it didn’t matter what white people saw when they looked at me. Why would I care?
    The train came in and a few people got off. Most of them got into cars. Three taxis rolled up from the colored company that Clarance dispatched for. The few travelers who did not have cars climbed into the cabs. Raoul Benoit, a thin and dapper man wearing a silver-gray suit, tried to get his arms around his wife and failed. He kissed his children and herded them, like so many beach balls, toward a blue station wagon.
    “Hey, Charles,” a man said. Behind me Clarance had driven up in a cab. In the back there were three passengers, and another, a woman, sat beside my childhood friend. All of the passengers were white. The riders looked uncomfortable. One man in the backseat checked his watch.
    “You drivin’ now?” I asked.
    “Athalia needs braces, so I’m drivin’ three nights a week. How you doin’?”
    “Fine,” I said, looking over my shoulder.
    “You need a ride?”
    “No.”
    “What you doin’ out here?” he asked. “Meetin’ somebody?”
    “Can we get going, driver?” the woman next to Clarance asked, barely restraining her impatience.
    “Must be the next train,” I said vaguely.
    “Next train’s tomorrow,” Clarance informed me.
    “Oh.”
    “Driver,” a man in the backseat said.
    “What?” Clarance’s tone was sharp.
    In the darkness, on the platform next to the station sign, I saw the silhouette of a small man.
    “We need to get home,” the passenger was saying.
    “Well if you can’t wait a minute while I find out how my friend is, then you could walk.” That brought silence.
    “You go on, Clarance,” I said. “I got my car. I can drive home.”
    “I tried to call you,” Clarance said.
    “I been thinkin’,” I replied.
    “You wanna get together?”
    “I’ll call you next week,” I said.
    Clarance looked at me a moment. There was concern in his face. He was a good man, and we had been friends as long as either one of us could remember. But there was no way to talk to me. He shrugged.
    “See ya,” he said and then drove off.
    As he left, Anniston Bennet approached from the platform. I stood my ground, waiting.
    “Good evening,” he said.
    The air was cool but my windbreaker was enough to keep the chill off. There were moths floating around the floodlights, and I detected the barely distinguishable motion of bats feasting on the fluttering bugs in the hovering darkness.
    I took a deep breath and prepared myself. I wanted to start this thing with Bennet on the right foot. I never had a tenant before and didn’t want to be taken advantage of. Everything mattered. The fact that I waited for him to walk to me, that I didn’t offer to take his satchel. All he carried was that small leather bag. I wondered what he was planning to wear for two months.
    “Mr.