Shadow Traffic

by Richard Burgin

  “Don’t worry, I will. I’m gonna sue their ass and get twice what they owe me.”

  He pulled to a stop by the convenience store and I got out.

  “I’ll call you if I have to stay a long time,” he said before driving away.

  It was cold out and already getting dark. I didn’t want to look around at the dealers or cops, and kept my eyes straight ahead like a soldier while I paced. My ex used to make fun of my pacing. She made fun of my worrying too. “What’s a big guy like you worry about so much?” she’d say in the friendly, sexy way she used to tease me during our first few months. Then, toward the end of our relationship, her tone of voice completely changed as she’d run through my defects. Also, it suddenly became a much longer list. Of course, those kinds of changes always happen when things go bad. I was shocked when she left me, yet I’d always worried that she would, that I wasn’t enough for her. I used to smoke pot to help feel confident with her. Then I got her to smoke with me while we made love and it was out of this world sweet. But when we started to argue (I never trusted her with men) the pot made us paranoid at times and we’d have to take ’ludes to calm down. That reminded me that I forgot to give Dash the money for Quaaludes, forgot to even remind him to ask for some from the source.

  “Shit,” I muttered, then looked up and saw Dash’s car, back already.

  “Get in,” Dash said. “He wasn’t home.” I wanted to make him promise right then to never drive me there again unless he talked to the source first. That just because you wanted someone to be home didn’t mean they would be, but I held back. The dealer’s depression was obvious. He made more cell phone calls in the car, obsessively going over the details of how he was cheated. Then, a block from my condominium, he asked me if he could use my computer again and I said OK.

  “I’ve been a real pill to be with today, brother,” Dash suddenly said as he parked. “First I take you for a ride, then I make all those phone calls and barely talk to you at all and now I need to use your computer again.”

  “Don’t worry about it, that’s nothing,” I said.

  “Thanks, bro,” he said, as he disappeared into the little room that seemed barely big enough to contain him. “I’ll only be about five minutes.”

  I paced the hallway while he used my computer, periodically looking at my watch. When seven minutes passed I ducked into the room and asked him how things were coming.

  “Check this out,” he said, indicating the screen that was full of photographs of women. “I’ve already boned two of them on this screen alone.”

  “Who are they?” I blurted, trying to hide my irritation.

  “They’re from Match.com. They’re a gold mine of pussy, man, you should check it out.”

  “Yuh,” I said softly, thinking of my own experiences with Internet dating, which was full of much less happy stories. “So how are things with Maryann?”

  “It’s all over,” he said, as he flicked to another screen full of young women.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We’re still best friends but I’m not doing her anymore. Yeah, I’ve already moved out of her place.”

  “So are you staying in your office?”

  “No, there’s mold there now. The last storm it got flooded and now there’s mold. Hey, you’ve got a lot of space, you want to rent me a room, Jeff?” he said, turning in my swivel chair to face me with a big, hopeful smile on his face.

  I looked down at the floor for a moment. It was what I always feared.

  “No, that wouldn’t work. I’ve got a new girlfriend now who’s coming over tonight so …”

  I let it trail away as if what I were saying were so obvious it didn’t need to be spelled out. But I felt he didn’t believe me. Though he congratulated me, I thought he knew I was lying.

  “I’ll have to go on Priceline, then,” he said, turning back to my computer. “I can get a hotel on Priceline for fifty bucks but it’s gonna take me fifteen minutes. No more than fifteen and I’ll find one, OK, bro?”

  “No problem,” I said, feeling temporarily relieved as I stepped into the hall and resumed my pacing.

  Twenty minutes passed, then forty-five. I asked him how things were going with Priceline and he told me he couldn’t find a thing but was still trying. I looked at the computer and saw that he was really looking at hotels this time and not women. It had gotten dark out. It was mid-November, and I could feel it getting colder. I thought I’d maybe drop a ’lude and watch some TV but I stayed in the room and watched him in silence.

  “Jeff,” he said after another five or ten minutes, “Are you sure I can’t crash here just for a night? I promise I’ll flush the toilet and clean up after myself, ha ha, cause it’s looking like your place or my car, OK? I’ll pay for the time I stay, I promise.”

  When you take drugs they produce the drama in your life so your dramas are very short and controlled, lasting only as long as the high does. But people who take drugs, myself included, like or maybe need it that way. We crave excitement as long as it’s part of a routine. With Dash in my house I tried to adjust by accepting new routines as long as I could know their results in advance. Here are some of the things I knew would happen that did happen after I let Dash stay that night.

  1. He stayed longer than one night.

  2. He never paid me any money, nor did I ask him to.

  3. He increased the number of drug runs that we took.

  4. I hid my cash, credit card, and drugs that I used to keep in my bureau drawer deep in my hallway closet and found myself checking them all four to five times a day. (As far as I know he never stole anything from me.)

  5. He asked to smoke with me every night and sometimes during the day and more often than not I agreed and never charged him.

  6. He monopolized my computer.

  But things I didn’t know would happen happened too. I hadn’t shared a place with a man since I was in college, so there were bound to be surprises. One night he called me from a bar. I didn’t answer the first time, but as usual he started repeat calling me as if he knew I was just pretending to be away from my phone until I finally answered.

  “Hey bro, I’m at my favorite pussy bar and I just scored a really hot one. You don’t care if I bring her over, do you?”

  For some reason my mind went blank and I heard myself say, “It’s OK, you can use my room.”

  “Thanks, bro. I’ll be over in ten minutes.”

  I dropped my cell after I hung up. Then I paced around my place looking into my rooms as if half expecting that they’d disappeared or were radically rearranged. Finally, I stopped to take a Quaalude. Then I rehid my money and drugs in a new place, went into the living room and, anticipating that there’d be noise coming out of my bedroom soon for the first time since my ex left three months ago, turned on the TV.

  I was watching a political talk show—one of those where the host keeps interrupting the guest as if he’s really interviewing himself—when I heard my door open and only then remembered that a few days ago I’d let Dash talk me into giving him a key. I could already hear them laughing and talking, so I turned up my TV and shut off the lights.

  Then I heard the door shut. Don’t come into the living room, I said to myself, not wanting to see who he’d picked up. Just take her straight to my room.

  “Hey, brother,” the dealer said, in a voice that sounded more drunk that stoned, “come out and meet my girl.”

  I ignored him. Maybe he’d think I was asleep.

  “Come on, bro, I want you to meet my girl,” he repeated.

  I knew if I didn’t get out of my La-Z-Boy he’d bring his trophy into the living room and show her off to me there, but I still stayed in my chair. I didn’t want to walk out there where it was lighter and have to stand next to him like his little brother and have her see how much bigger than me he was.

  “Bro, come on, say hello to your new houseguest.” This last time there was a little edge to his voice so I hit the remote, went forward in my La-Z-Boy, finge
r combed my hair and checked my fly in the dark as I walked out to the living room.

  “Jeff, this is Maggie, named after the Dylan song, right? But I’ll tell you, bro, Dylan was wrong about her ’cause I’ll work on Maggie’s farm any day. Yah, I’ll plow that farm anytime.!’

  The dealer was cracking himself up, only louder than usual because he was drunk.

  “Shut up,” Maggie said, laughing a little herself, as she mock punched him in the shoulder. She was wearing a short black leather skirt and stockings and a black shirt with the top two buttons open. Her body was about as good as I figured. (Though he was overweight, the dealer had to have women who weren’t.) It was harder to evaluate her face because she wore so much makeup and a lot of it seemed to be smeared around, giving her a kind of blurry look. “You keep making those jokes, I’m gonna change my fuckin’ name to Margo.”

  “Hey, that’s not nice,” Dash said, spanking her pretty hard on her bottom, then looking at me to check my reaction.

  “What was that for? That hurt a little, Bubba.”

  “That’s for using a bad word.”

  “What? What’d I say?”

  “Women shouldn’t use the ‘f’ word in public …”

  Maggie looked profoundly confused for a moment. She was pretty drunk too, I figured.

  “I’m just kidding,” Dash said, “Geez, I really had you going there.”

  Except I knew, right-wing nut that he was, he was only half kidding.

  “So what do you think of my brother Jeff’s place? Pretty nice, huh? Yah, he’s got some serious bucks. Works for a big company that’s very impressive. Plays good basketball too.”

  She looked at me with a bit more interest now. “It’s very nice … lots of space,” she added as vaguely as if she were talking about the sky.

  “OK, time to mosey over to the bedroom,” Dash said smiling, then winking at me as he put his thick arm around her while tapping her bottom a couple of times. “Say goodbye to brother Jeff,” he said, as they started walking down my hall.

  “Goodbye,” she said, turning to wave.

  I walked back in the half dark to my La-Z-Boy. A few seconds later I turned the TV on pretty loud, hoping of course to drown them out, at least for most of the time (though I imagined his orgasm would sound like a whale bellowing during a tsunami), while hoping I wouldn’t wake up Birdwoman upstairs.

  My TV, and the acoustics of my condo, did succeed in blocking them out for the most part, and therefore in helping to keep me from thinking about or visualizing what they were doing. Oddly, I kept thinking about what Birdwoman was doing instead. How did she pass her time up there, flitting from room to room by herself in what looked like an art gallery more than a condominium. She’d mentioned once that she had a daughter, but I gathered that she lived pretty far away and in any case I’d never seen her. In fact, in the eight months that I’d lived here I’d only seen three or four people going into or out of her place.

  I knew she used to be a professor, the real estate agent told me that. I knew from looking at her mail, which was often mixed in with mine on the floor that she subscribed to a variety of art and other cultural publications. So she must keep herself informed, yet I never heard her TV or radio, not even once, nor a note of music. She was trim and very active, which were good indicators about the quality of her life, yet her rapid-fire high-anxiety speech patter made me think she didn’t have much peace of mind.

  Generally I’d see her, albeit only for a few seconds, almost every day. Sometimes I’d see her picking up her morning newspapers from the front lawn (one Philadelphia Inquirer, one New York Times) like a bird gathering its birdseed, then climbing up the flight of stairs to her home. I’d feel bad then, more often than not, and wondered if I shouldn’t bring the papers up to her doorway myself. It didn’t seem like much of a sacrifice to make for a nice older woman, but I hadn’t yet done it.

  Finally I did start to hear laughter mixed in with sex sounds coming from my bedroom, but luckily it was after my Quaalude kicked in and in a little while I was asleep. It was a short dreamless sleep. When I woke (and it was probably what did wake me up) I heard the heavy strides of the dealer walking toward me until he stopped two feet in front of my chair.

  “Hey, bro, you awake?” he said.

  “Kind of. What’s up?”

  “Come with me now and I think she’ll do you too.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Maggie. I got her all sexed up and doing whatever I say and I told her to suck your dick and she said she would. How’s that for sharing the wealth, Dash style? Better than Obama, huh? Ha ha. Come on, we’ll end up banging her together. It’ll rock.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think so. I’m really tired and I took a lot of pills to sleep.”

  “Are you sure?” he said, in an incredulous tone of voice I’d never heard from him before.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Wow, you just blew it, bro.”

  “Just enjoy her yourself.” I said. “I really need to get to sleep. I’ve gotta work tomorrow morning.”

  “OK, bro, your call. Don’t say I never did anything for you, though. She’s got an incredible bod.”

  Then he walked away. In the silence I soon began to wonder why I didn’t do it. I could certainly use the release, but I knew I couldn’t bear to perform in front of him, couldn’t stand to have him see me naked (I was convinced by now he must be very well endowed) while I tried to come. It all felt like a setup somehow.

  The sex noise came back a few minutes later but mercifully I fell asleep. When I woke up it was the next morning and Dash and Co. were quiet—either asleep or gone.

  I tiptoed over the hardwood floor and pulled open the Venetian blinds in my living room. A light snow almost as transparent as dew was falling on our little front lawn. It was early for it to snow, which reminded me that the whole summer and especially fall had seemed colder this year. But didn’t that contradict the global warming theory that I’d argued about with Dash? Then I remembered seeing someone on TV who explained the reason for it but I couldn’t quite recall what he said. I had to realize that it was just another thing I didn’t understand, any more than I understood how television itself worked, or how my own brain worked that chose to watch television and why it made the decisions it made, such as last night about Dash and Maggie, or why, for that matter, I kept acting in a way that I knew would drive my ex away even though I thought I wanted her to always be with me.

  I started thinking about Quaaludes again. (I certainly couldn’t smoke if Dash was still home or he’d immediately smell it with his supersensitive nose and then find a way to join me, after first talking with me about the Celtics or how cool Cape Cod used to be.) I had more or less decided to take a ’lude when I saw Birdwoman, in a sweater and jeans, walking in her hopping sort of way to pick up her morning papers. I raced back to the living room, put on my bathrobe and slippers, and met her in the yard a few feet from the door. She had her typical, hypervigilant birdlike expression, maybe a smidgen more startled than usual since I’d never gone out of my way to greet her before. It was an expression that all but demanded to know what I was doing outside like this, as she clutched her newspapers to her tiny, palpitating bosom.

  “What do you think of this snow?” I blurted, trying to cover up my embarrassing lack of purpose. She produced no words in response, but did nod her head rapidly a couple of times.

  “I was going to bring your newspapers up for you.”

  “There’s no need to do that,” she said, clutching her papers more closely to her birdlike breast. “I like the exercise.”

  Of course you do, I thought. The worst thing you can do to a bird is to make it stay still. She even looked slightly hurt that I should doubt her capacity to gather up her papers, and I felt myself start to panic.

  “By the way, I wanted to tell you how much I admired your paintings. I really think they’re … superb” was the word that finally emerged.

&nbs
p; “Thank you, Jeff,” she said, smiling so widely I could see her teeth. Yet I had to admit she looked very pretty while she smiled.

  That was my magic moment in the snow with Birdwoman. I don’t remember the few more words we said. Her smile really said it all and I reentered my condo temporarily oblivious to the two lovebirds who were still, as it turns out, nesting in my bedroom.

  Eventually I figured out that the real reason I didn’t join the dealer and Maggie in a threesome was that I was afraid he’d want Maggie to live with us too and that he’d try to addict me to her sexually to achieve his goal. But like so much else in the world I was apparently wrong about this as well. Late the next afternoon after Dash took Maggie home and perhaps checked into his office, or perhaps not (he’d admitted to me that during his days with Maryann one of the chief functions of his office was to hide his stash and more often than not to smoke it, but now he had my place to use for both of those functions), he walked into the computer room where I was trying to work and started talking. That wasn’t surprising but what he said was.

  “Hey, bro, you were a prince last night, I gotta thank you for being such a prince among men.”

  I checked his voice for sarcasm but couldn’t detect any.

  “What?” was all I could finally manage.

  “I’m talking about last night when I asked you to join us in bed and you turned me down. You knew I was bombed outta my skull.”

  “I suspected something like that,” I said with a smile.

  “Yah, you knew and you protected me from myself. I mean I never would have said it if I wasn’t on pot, booze, and a little E too.”

  “Ecstasy?”

  “Yah, bro, E rocks. And by the way, no offense, but she never would have done it with you if she wasn’t just as high as me. She feels embarrassed about it now, ’cause she knows I told you she wanted to.”