 Penguin Random House Audio presents We cast A Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin Red for you by Dionne Graham For Tanzanica I bet you a fat man There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers Ralph Ellison See how elastic our stiff prejudices grow When once love comes to bend them Hermann Melville Look at this tangle of thorns Vladimir Nabokov Part one My name doesn't matter All you need to know is that I'm a phantom A figment A man who was mistaken for waitstaff twice that night Odd given my outfit I managed to avoid additional embarrassments by wall flowering in the shadow of the grand staircase Their cheeks pink from southern comfort The partners, or shareholders as the firm called them, stood chatting in clusters around the dining room I'd been invited by my law firm's leaders to attend their annual party at Octavia Whitmore's mansion on the Avenue of Streetcars It was a highlight of my life, an honor for a lowly associate just to be invited Although I was surprised to be told to show up in a costume Ruff fabric chafed against my collarbone I was dressed as a Roman centurion I had rented the mega-deluxe option, no expense spared Full tunic of lambswool, leather sandals and five, count them, five Hollywood prop-grade weapons A sword, a javelin, a bow and arrow, a shield, and a dagger I never knew that Roman soldiers used daggers But the costume guy assured me that they did use daggers The dagger being the preferred weapon of choice for when shit got real Which apparently it did from time to time The first floor of Octavia's mansion was a series of large rooms Playful notes of sandalwood and jasmine lingered in the foyer I spotted my fellow black associate Franklin beyond that entryway Franklin, who got white girl drunk at every firm function, karaoke'd I feel pretty into a microphone Franklin had come wearing the perfect icebreaker He wore a white smock and a black bow tie The uniform of every black busboy and waiter at every old-line restaurant in the city Cafeter-refugee, carnation room, pierres No, not pierres, there were no brothers at pierres I wasn't sure what must have been more mortifying for Franklin, that he was singing so poorly or that no one paid him any mind It couldn't have helped that he was too black to be pretty My friend of me, good old back-slapping Riley, was bent over a table giving the managing shareholder, Jack Armbruster, a Sample complete. Ready to continue?