Every Man a Menace Read Online Free Page A

button-up shirt, tucked in like he was at an office. He had a softness around his cheeks and gut. He smiled big at Shadrack.
    “The Doctor has come!” he said. He was in his forties, white.
    “We’re both doctors,” said Shadrack, flicking his thumb toward Raymond. Then he stepped forward and the two men hugged and slapped each other’s back like a secret handshake.
    When they’d separated, the man turned to Raymond. “How are you? Brendan Moss,” he said, holding out his hand to shake. His eyes were wide open, like he was playing around. Raymond shook his hand and flinched—it was soaking wet.
    “I was washing dishes!” the man yelled.
    “Come on,” said Shadrack, waving them up the stairs. When Raymond passed him he whispered, almost like a preemptive reprimand: “Handle your high, brother.”
    They stepped into a large room. Raymond gawked at the height of the ceilings, the glass windows, everything clean and modern. He’d expected some kind of biker party, not this. People turned their heads and stared, and Raymond froze until the heads swung back, the noise of conversation resumed. Moss grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward a bar. “Get this guy a drink,” he yelled out. People smiled as they passed. Raymond felt gripped by the realization that just three short days earlier, he’d been wearing a blue uniform, living in a packed gymnasium, eating canned tuna on special occasions.
    The bartender, an Asian man, was wearing a white shirt and black tie. They smiled at each other and Raymond was briefly certain he knew him from somewhere. When he tried to admit this his voice sounded strange in his ears. The bartender’s smile faded a little, and he turned toward Moss for help. But Moss—his hand still on Raymond’s arm—was looking somewhere across the room.
    “Get him a drink,” said Moss.
    Raymond looked back at the bartender. He seemed annoyed.
    “What can I get you, sir?” he asked.
    “Budweiser?” Raymond couldn’t think of anything else.
    “We only have Peroni, sir,” said the bartender.
    Raymond nodded, uncertain. He could still feel the heat of Moss’s hand on his arm, but when he looked, he sawthat Moss had left him standing there alone. He searched the room for Shadrack, but he couldn’t see him either. The lights had been turned down, and the room felt candlelit now. Everyone’s clothes looked beautiful. It was a costume party, Raymond thought. He took a breath and turned back toward the bartender, who was holding a bottle of beer out for his examination. It looked fine. The man poured it into a glass.
    Raymond’s hands were sweating. His ears popped. Where had Shadrack gone? Where was Moss? There was a fireplace at the other end of the room, and he walked toward it.
    He had been lost in the blue and orange tangles for God knows how long when someone grabbed his arm. He turned, expecting Moss, but instead found a young woman asking if he’d walked there.
    “Did I walk here?”
    “Do you work here?” she said again. She had a foreign accent. She looked over his shoulder as she talked.
    “In this building?” Raymond asked.
    The floor below his feet seemed to be moving in small circles. The woman he was speaking with looked, suddenly, elderly. Her makeup was thick, Raymond realized; she was much older than he’d thought. At some point he understood that they were standing in the middle of a group of people. He stepped back from the older woman; there were chairs set around them, people sitting and talking. To his right, a woman with long blond hair held a dog in her lap like a baby. It looked cute until he noticed she was breast-feeding it. She saw Raymond watching and stopped; she pulled up her shirt to cover her breast and gave him a nasty look.
    The place had become crowded. He was still holding the beer, he realized, and he drank it. He started trying to move a little, in time to the music, but he felt strange, like a bear dressed in clothes, and then he kicked over