Radio Belly by Buffy Cram Read Free Book Online Page A

“Étonnants voyageurs. Quelles nobles histoires.” French: I flinched. I could barely tell one word from another these days. It was impossible not to hear his words as a personal insult.
    â€œNous lisons dans vos yeux profonds comme les mers,” he continued. There I was, the enraged landowner, standing inside his orbit of stench and he could care less.
    â€œMontrez-nous les écrins de vos riches mémoires...”
    I recognized those words from a poem I’d once loved and was reminded of my leisurely undergraduate days, reading Baudelaire beneath trees. But I snapped out of it when I finally understood what was going on here—that I had also mistaken my own box of keepsakes for Large Garbage.
    Something was rustling in the man’s pants just then, and I looked down to see that he was scratching and rearranging himself down there. He was bouncing his meat at me. My gaze jolted back up to his face. Then his hand, the same one he’d used to scratch himself, was coming toward me. I could see his crumbling yellow nails, the grime built up in the creases of his palms. For a moment it seemed he would make some apologetic gesture, but then he opened his filthy crack of a mouth and said: “Would you happen to have any spare change?”
    â€œNo. No-no. No. No. No change. Sorry,” I stuttered. I was a small angry man, a man of small anger. “This is our— my property and I command you to get off, ” I hollered. “Go-go. Please go.”
    He didn’t run as I had hoped but turned to offer his hand to Pinky.
    She looked at the stack of parking tickets pinched in my hand. “You shouldn’t park in front of your house anymore.”
    She was right, but ever since Kathy had given Jennifer a BMW (and my spot in the garage) for her sixteenth birthday, I’d had no choice.
    â€œWhat was it the Marquis de Sade said?” She was wiggling into her heels. “‘Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.’” She stepped out from behind the hydrangea then, dainty as a debutante.
    Constantine smiled. “Or, ‘Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud,’” and then he looked at me just long enough to break the social contract. “You, sir, are you a miserable little creature?”
    My mouth flapped: open, closed.
    He threw his head back, laughing, and then they walked—no, sauntered—down my driveway. I didn’t chase after them. I was stunned, speechless. And I was late. Again. As always.
    I slammed into the car and headed for work, the previous night’s parking tickets piled on top of all the others on the passenger seat beside me.
    AT THE MINISTRY of Revenue I was hardly in the office door before man-faced Rhanda was on me.
    â€œYou’re late,” she said, and I couldn’t help but notice in that particular light she really did have something like stubble. She was keeping pace with me down the hall, yapping and handing me memos. “The Schmidt case is being pushed ahead. Dan wants all the forms by noon. But he wants to talk to you first. ASAP. As soon as you’re done with—” she looked at her clipboard—“Hez? Yes, Hez. She’s waiting for you.”
    â€œHez?”
    â€œHez. Your daughter’s friend?”
    â€œDeal with this, would you?” I said, handing Rhanda my dirty travel mug.
    IT SEEMED THE little blonde princess Hez was there to talk to me about Money Management while my Jennifer was somewhere across town talking to Hez’s father about the same thing. It seemed it was a competition of sorts. So I explained my position to her, then talked about taxation policy and departmental divisions and the various meetings I attended in any given week, but it wasn’t good enough, somehow.
    â€œWait,” she said. “So you don’t manage any actual money?”
    â€œI’m afraid it’s not that