Read Shadow Traffic for Free Online Page B

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.
    â€œNo, 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.
    â€œI’ll have to go on Priceline, then,” he said, turning back to my computer. “I can get a hotel on Priceline for fifty bucks butit’s gonna take me fifteen minutes. No more than fifteen and I’ll find one, OK, bro?”
    â€œNo 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.
    â€œJeff,” 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 myselfchecking 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.
    â€œHey 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.”
    â€œThanks, 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