Shadow Traffic by Richard Burgin Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    â€œWhat 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.
    â€œI was going to bring your newspapers up for you.”
    â€œThere’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 toa 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.
    â€œBy 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.
    â€œThank 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.
    â€œHey, 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.
    â€œWhat?” was all I could finally manage.
    â€œI’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.”
    â€œI suspected something like that,” I said with a smile.
    â€œYah, 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.”
    â€œEcstasy?”
    â€œYah, 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.”
    â€œOf course,” I said, “I knew that.”
    â€œAsk me why this matters? Ask me why I’m talking about this to you now?”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause 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