Shadow Traffic (5 page)

“Look how long the hallway is,” he gushed, as he lumbered bear-like toward my computer room. “Look how big the rooms are. How much money you make anyway?”

I could feel my heart beat as I mumbled something incoherent.

“Turn left for the computer room,” I finally said, and then quickly changed the subject. Fortunately, it was easy to do that with Dash, who I think had ADD or something close to it. He also seemed to have a belief that socializing was something he had to do in business, even the cut and dried business of dealing. That's why he kept me waiting so long when he was with the source. He felt he had to chat up the electrician, and, to a lesser degree, he did it with me too.

“This won't take long, brother,” he said as he sat in front of my computer. “I just need to go through my mail while I was gone. … Hey, how 'bout those Red Sox?” Dash added. “Isn't it a drag how they blew that last game?”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“You watched it, right?”

“Of course. I felt like committing suicide afterward.”

“Oh well, if we hadn't traded Manny, we would have won it, right?”

The dealer and I were both native New Englanders. I'm from Brookline, which borders Boston, and he's from Stowe, Connecticut, so we're both Red Sox and Celtics fans. He'd use this connection relentlessly when we talked, but a part of me enjoyed it, I have to admit. It isn't easy to leave your hometown, especially when you're over thirty-five, as I was, and then find yourself in a new, bigger city like Philly that doesn't even know you exist. In spite of what he was doing, the dealer was a naturally friendly guy, which I appreciated.

Predictably, with all our talking plus his insisting I check out the pictures taken from his latest gigs on the Internet, it took much longer than he said it would before we hit the road. During our trip the dealer made one call after another on his cell. Between the calls I realized that he'd been ripped off in his Missouri gig. Basically, the promoter claimed 251 people showed up at the concert and offered him a check based on that number, while Dash said it was more like 600 people, at least, and rejected their offer. Just before he dropped me at the gas station I said, “So you didn't get any money at all for your concert?”

“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, finger 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.