Shadow Traffic (6 page)

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.

“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.”

“Of course,” I said, “I knew that.”

“Ask me why this matters? Ask me why I'm talking about this to you now?”

“Why?”

“Because I just had the most fuckin' beautiful day of my life with her and I don't just mean sexually, bro. I mean beautiful. Yah, Maggie really touched my heart—really, truly, deep in my heart, and we're both crazy in love man, it's true.”

“Wow, that's great,” I said, trying to sound as earnest as possible and not remind him that his whole day had, of course, been completely created by drugs. I even wondered if he'd still feel any real enthusiasm for her a couple hours from now when more of his high would wear off.

I remember talking easily with the dealer that day. We talked about the Celtics, about women, a little about politics, too, during which the dealer surprised me by saying, “I'm going to respect Obama, you know, because he's our President and that's what we should do.” We also talked about our families, he about his big one, me about my small.

“I love all my brothers,” he said, “all my sisters, too. Love 'em to death.”

There was a passion and a kind of laughter in his eyes when he said it and I knew it was true.

“My father was a helluva guy. I only wish he were still alive.”

I said I felt the same way about my parents and that I was lucky they were both in good health. I told him I only had one sister, who I sometimes heard from, who lived in a small country town in western Massachusetts. Sure enough the dealer had been there. “I love Massachusetts almost as much as Connecticut. I've traveled in Massachusetts a lot.” That remark led to a conversation about towns in Massachusetts where we'd both spent time, from Falmouth and West Harwichport in the Cape, to Lenox and Lee in the Berkshires.

We talked about a lot of things that day and I didn't mind not using the computer much, though it meant falling further behind at work. I remember wanting to tell him about Birdwoman and how I'd finally told her I liked her paintings and was planning maybe to try and buy one from her, but I didn't. Just didn't get around to talking about it, but I could have.

Dash made a lot of calls on his cell later that day, all about his lawsuit over the gig in Missouri, but he kept his voice under control and he washed the dishes after his usual dinner of cheese ravioli. I was even going to suggest we fire one up and smoke together when he walked back into the living room and said, “I'm going to Maggie's.”

She has a place? I almost said.

“I've been missing her real bad and I need to be there. Don't wait up for me or anything. I'll probably end up staying there.”

“OK, bro,” I said.

Dealers are probably the most vulnerable people on earth. I had trouble sleeping that night while I waited for Dash. Somewhere around 2 a.m. I realized he wasn't coming back. Nor did he return the next two days. I tried to keep from worrying about him but I couldn't help it, the way he threw himself at her, or at what he imagined her to be. He was like a child that way, always chasing his dream. Whether it was imagining he was a better ballplayer than he was or that Maggie was a better person than she was, a person with whom he would finally find love. It's not like I didn't do the same thing to a degree, but I already was thinking a lot less about my ex (who I now realized I no longer wanted back) and saw myself quitting drugs in the near future, whereas Dash was the type who would always “love” someone and never give up and so would need to take drugs forever.

On the third day he came back in his old electric blue convertible to take his things. He was moving in with her. “I've never loved anyone like this,” he said.

“How big is her place?” I asked.

“We only need room for a bed,” he said, laughing. Then he told me a couple of dirty jokes—he never ran out of jokes. When he said goodbye, he said, “Don't worry. I'll see you at basketball and we'll still take our trips together”—meaning to the electrician's. “I'll always be grateful, bro. Your decision that night saved my relationship with Maggie, probably our friendship too. You're a wise man, Jeff.”

It was the first time anyone had ever called me wise, and then he left. I returned to the silence of my condominium. I watched it get dark and it started to hurt. I thought how I'd let a dangerous person stay at my home, but it turned out that after he left it felt more dangerous than before. Then I thought about going upstairs to visit Birdwoman but didn't have the will. I was gonna
take a 'lude but I didn't want to wait thirty minutes for the high so I smoked a joint instead, put on TV, ate my food, fell asleep. My usual pattern. Only I didn't sleep for very long. I had a crazy dream that I had a different body. It was me but I was taller and stronger and strode around the playground like a giant. I saw the dealer shooting baskets at the other end of the court and began walking toward him wanting to see if I was as tall as him, when I woke up.

For the longest time (though it was probably only a minute or two of marijuana time) I couldn't shake the feeling that my body really had changed. It made me sad and happy at the same time as if I'd finally found the reason for my life being the way it was. I thought about seeing Birdwoman but worried I might scare her to death if she saw me in my new body. Anyway, she wasn't someone I could talk to about it, but Dash was. It's strange what you end up missing about people. You could talk to Dash about almost anything. I'll give him that.