“Y’all like movies?” Their hostess strolled in with sublime indifference and brushed the clutter from one of the two fabric and steel lawn chairs onto the floor, picking up a scattered handful of cubes and sorting through them, looking up at Thad. “Whaddya think, luv, Lair of the White Worm, Evil Dead II, or Night of the God King: The Return?”
“I dunno.” He walked over and opened the fridge and started passing out beer. “Maybe Lair, it’s pretty cool. Hey, Reefer, do you live up to your name, dude?”
The other man glanced at Cally nervously, but he must have decided it was okay, because he shrugged his backpack off his shoulder and pulled his clothes out onto the floor, pulling out a largish compressed pack vacuum-sealed in clear plastic. Janet perked up, pulling a small plastic scale out from under the futon and tossing the pack on it. “A whole kilo? For us? Damn, Reefer, you did score. Good shit?”
“Like, I shit you not, that is the most righteously awesome Jamaican Blue you will ever find coming up the pipeline,” he said.
“Not like I’d ever doubt you, dude, but I’ve heard that before.” The girl eyed the package speculatively. “All right, usual price up front, we try it, and if it really is good shit, and I mean seriously good shit, say, ten percent of the face over in dollars.”
“What, you mean you don’t trust me? Damn, Janet, haven’t I always brought you, like, the most truly fantabulous stuff on the whole route?” He clapped his hand to his chest in an air of injured innocence.
“Yeah, except for that shit cut with oregano,” she said.
“Okay, like, once, four years ago. And the truly heinous bastard who did it doesn’t, like, well, like, he’s gone. I mean, like totally gone, okay? And that was the last time I ever let somebody handle my shit out of my sight. And didn’t I make it right on the next trip? Didn’t I?”
“Well, yeah, Reef, I’ll give you that. Still, you didn’t have to listen to all the bitching I caught in the meantime. All right, twelve percent face over dollars, then.”
“Fifteen, FedCreds,” he countered.
“Reef, I gotta be able to sell at a price the customers can afford. You’re not the only guy on a convoy, you know. Ten in FedCreds is the absolute best I can do — eleven if you’ve got another kilo like it. And if it’s as good as you said,” she allowed.
He smiled slightly and pulled a second bag from the backpack, stacking it on top of the first on the scale. The buyer checked the weight and picked up a bag in each hand, comparing them carefully to make sure they looked the same, before setting them on the floor by the scale, nodding and going back to the bedroom. Cally heard a faint metallic click and the woman came back into the room with a large envelope, counting a mixed pile of dollars and FedCreds in front of her source, then another stack of FedCreds onto a milk crate with a plywood top that obviously served as an end table.
“Hey, Janny, if you’re through buying it, can we, you know, smoke some of it now?” Thad asked plaintively, taking the cube she’d dropped beside the chair earlier and popping it into the player below the monitor. “This is such a cool movie. I mean, to watch it, you’d never guess it was based on a book by some old dude,” he offered knowledgeably. “That’s what the credits say, anyway.”
The younger man moved a dirty T-shirt and picked up an older hardback from the floor, opening it to the middle, where a section of the pages had been cut away to make a box for rolling papers. Cally tilted her head enough to read Oliver Twist on the spine as he set it down and scooted over to hand a stack of papers to his girlfriend.
The girl put the full bag inside an empty, slit the seal with a razor, and took a zipper baggie from inside the milk crate, noticing Cally’s raised eyebrows as she stuck a paper on the scale and added a careful amount from it, and an equal amount from the bag she’d just purchased.
“Premium North Carolina tobacco. Best cut there is. My old man’s a bounty farmer,” she tapped the bag of marijuana with a finger, “but he sure don’t grow this. Too bad, but he don’t. Good enough source of papers, though.”
She rolled it with expert hands, lit it, and took a deep drag, holding it for a moment. She blew the smoke out, tilting her head consideringly and giggled a bit, passing it to her toy-boy.
“Damn, Reefer, you’re right. This is some primo shit,” she said, and nodded to him. He picked up the stack of FedCreds and stowed them in his pack.
When it was her turn, Cally noticed the two buyers watching her, and Reefer just as carefully not watching her. She grinned and took a long pull, holding it as she passed the joint on. The other three people relaxed slightly as Cally let the smoke out, allowing a silly-stupid grin across her face. Wonderful evening. The only straight in a roomful of stoneds. Well, at least it’s the next best thing to anonymous and I don’t have to do any of the three. In any sense.
The movie had played through its preview sequence and Cally scooted back to lean against the futon. At least it was a decent movie, and she hadn’t seen it recently. After the second joint made the rounds, Janet pushed the scale and rolling papers away.
“No more for me. The munchies are hell on a woman’s figure.” She looked Cally up and down critically. “You should probably stop, too, Marilyn. If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re carrying a teenie bit extra on the hips.”
“Oh, I never get the munchies.” Cally smiled coolly, amused at the baseless slander.
“Well I do, dude.” Thad rummaged in the shelves of the desk and pulled out a bag, sitting back down beside Reefer. “Cheese curls?”
“Hey, sure, dude. Thanks.” He was clearly feeling more mellow as the drug took effect, and leaned forward to roll another one, skipping the tobacco.
“Ah, I’m not, like anal about weighing the stuff,” he laughed at the sour expression on his girlfriend’s face. “I love ya, babe, but you’re anal.”
She threw a cheese curl at him.
Cally sat on the opened futon and stared into the darkness, arms wrapped around her knees. Janet and Thad had gone to sleep, Thad completely out of it and Janet almost straight. Once the third joint had made the rounds, Reefer and Thad had got on like long-lost brothers. The older man now slept the sleep of the stoned, his snores competing with one of his music cubes to cut through the slightly irritating but completely nonintoxicating oak-leaf smoke. She sat in the darkness and didn’t know what she felt, whether it was coldness, or numbness, or tiredness. She lay down against his rather odoriferous arm and sighed up at the ceiling. After a whole day of it, she was getting a little tired of Reefer’s favorite songs… in again, I’d like to get some sleep before I travel, but…
She heard the snick of the apartment door unlocking and trained instincts must have warned her because she was already rolling off the futon, onto the floor by the door, as the door slid open and the two stocky women in security uniforms stepped through. What are the odds…
One of them tripped over Cally’s outstretched leg as she stood. The world had gone into slow motion as Reefer sat up and began to blink owlishly in the light the other woman had flicked on as she came through the door. Cally tripped over the falling woman, just happening to catch the second one, trying to maintain her balance, and bringing her down as well. On the way down, the top of her forehead “accidentally” bumped into the second guard’s temple, hard. Cally rocked back and sprawled on top of the first guard, just happening to be sitting on top of her shoulders, as she held a hand to her head and uttered a plaintive and bewildered cry.