Shadow Traffic by Richard Burgin Read Free Book Online

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.
    â€œHey, 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.
    â€œCome 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.
    â€œBro, 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.
    â€œJeff, 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.
    â€œShut 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.”
    â€œHey, that’s not nice,” Dash said, spanking her pretty hard on her bottom, then looking at me to check my reaction.
    â€œWhat was that for? That hurt a little, Bubba.”
    â€œThat’s for using a bad word.”
    â€œWhat? What’d I say?”
    â€œWomen shouldn’t use the ‘f’ word in public …”
    Maggie looked profoundly confused for a moment. She was pretty drunk too, I figured.
    â€œI’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.
    â€œSo 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.
    â€œOK, 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.
    â€œGoodbye,” 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