Hydroponic homegrowers had several methods to choose from. Jonas used the "wick system," with ebb and flow urns; this was the best system because it grew the biggest plants, but the least popular because it consumed the most water and electricity. Water and electricity weren't a problem here, of course, because Jonas simply tapped into the army's unmonitored supply; hence the brightest lights round the clock, and unlimited fresh water. His only expenses were airstones and aerator pumps, Perlite, Pro-Mix, coconut planting fiber, and a lot of aluminum foil, which doubled the photosynthesis effect by bouncing back the light. That's why Jonas's plants were bigger and more concentrated. The average grower was limited to closets and basements, but with ceilings this high-and all this free light-Jonas was giving the plants more than even nature could provide. Charging a little more for superior pot was only good business. His customers just wanted more.
They checked the next head shack where, if anything, the plants grew even hardier. Then they moved to the third head shack.
"A damn good thing you have some ready to go," Slydes grumbled.
This was where they did the cutting, drying, and weighing. Jonas had tables and chairs set up for the various tasks, plus cartons of plastic baggies.
"That's because I always think ahead," Jonas bragged. "You always have your next delivery ready in advance. You know, Slydes, if you ran your poaching business like I run my pot business? You might actually make some money."
"Bend over real hard and blow yourself, brother."
Ruth giggled. "That I'd like to see." But then her eyes opened wide when she looked at the cement floor, and she shrieked, "Fuck!"
The men walked over.
"What the hell's that?" Jonas queried.
On the floor a small, bright pink worm squiggled across the cement. It was about three inches long.
"Ain't no earthworm, that's for sure," Slydes noted. "Not movin' that fast."
The worm made more tracks, leaving tinseled slime. It had traversed half the width of the head shack in the time they were looking at it.
"Well, ain't that just the shit?" Jonas said. "There better not be any of these things on my plants."
"It just looks… disgusting," Ruth said and glared. "Somebody kill it."
Jonas seemed very concerned. "What the fuck is that? A corn worm?"
Slydes stepped on it. "Nope. It's a dead worm. Now let's quit fuckin' around with worms and get the fuck out of here."
When Slydes lifted his shoe, all that remained of the worm was pink slime.
Jonas grabbed a plastic bag full of a pound of trimmed marijuana, then snapped off the lights.
Before they left, none of them happened to notice that the squashed remains of the worm were sizzling.
CHAPTER EIGHT
(I)
Why did she feel so unsettled? Weird night, Nora dismissed. She'd expected the sounds emanating from the woods to help lull her to sleep; instead, they'd annoyed her. She supposed they'd all need to be up early tomorrow, for Annabelle's shoot, but now, going on two o'clock, it would be impossible to get in a decent night's sleep.
The little polyester tent pressed in like a coffin. She'd tossed and turned in the summer-weight sleeping bag. Each time she tried to clear her head of the day's aggravations, her temples began to rage in a headache. She'd drifted off once but was then bolted awake by, of all things, a sexual dream.
You've got to be kidding me…
She never had sexual dreams… an odd fact for a virgin. The little bit of dating she'd done in college and grad school had always wound up getting torpedoed by a term paper, a stwly session, or a test. The academician in her always wound up walking on her womanhood, asserting the priority. Whenever a potential relationship would fail, or she'd miss out on a perfectly normal fling, she'd always be satisfied to tell herself: You're not in school to make whoopie. You're in school to get your doctorate. Objectively this was all true, but by now it left little to console her womanhood. Her sexuality felt like something moldering. Her desires were fruit whose seeds would never touch the earth to give root.
The dream:
The man's face reminded her of the door knocker at her grandmother's house. It had been mounted on the ornate door's center stile, an oval of tarnished bronze depicting a morose half-formed face. Just two eyes, no mouth, no other features. The peculiar knocker was one of Nora's earliest childhood memories, for whatever reason. Her parents took her to Grandma's house every Thanksgiving; she remembered the knocker but not the rest. Why would that be?
One sleepless night, at age four or five, she'd gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom. The darkness of the musty hall had confused her; she'd opened the wrong door. This isn't the bathroom, she realized. It's the room Mommy and Daddy are sleeping in. But-
Her big eyes stared out. Mommy and Daddy weren't sleeping. She didn't know what they were doing-just that they had their clothes off and Daddy was doing something weird on top of Mommy. Nora shuffled away, bewildered.
The day after Thanksgiving, they'd driven away, and Nora could see that scary door knocker shrinking in the distance. Grandma died the next day.
And now her dream. The man's face was just like the knocker: half formed, just two blank eyes. He didn't need any more facial features than that, for he was just a body to suit her needs. His arms felt hot beneath her; he was carrying her through teeming woods-these woods?-deliberate footsteps crackling over twigs. He laid her down naked on the forest bed, and stood between her spread legs, looking down. The moon glowed behind him, blocking out the unnecessary details of his face. A face would give him a persona, a humanity, but her desires had taken her so completely, she didn't care who he was, or even how he might feel about the real her. He was only a symbol-of deliverance-just as her body, in this hot, compressed dreamscape, was a symbol-of her own unbridled lust.
When he turned a moment, the moon cut him into a silhouette of raven black, the outlines sharp as newly cut glass-including a stout, erect penis. Nora whined, cringing atop fallen leaves. Her belly sucked in and out as she stared up at him almost teary-eyed. The sweat on her skin felt slippery as glycerin when she smoothed her hands up her stomach to her breasts and plied her nipples as if twisting screws out of a wall. The pain drilled the most delicious sensations through her belly to her groin, where they all settled like an overcharged battery waiting to be tapped.
The silhouette seemed content to watch for now. Was the faceless figure touching himself, so incited by her body? Nora hoped so because, next, those electric sensations summoned her hand back down the slick abdomen. She gruelingly held herself back, her fingers never quite being allowed to hit the final triggers that would flatten her right there in the leaves. More and more of those sensations mounted, and soon she was moaning to let them out, but…
Not… yet…
She wanted him to see it all, to bear witness, and then to spend himself on her from where he stood. The live-wire sensations mounted; the moon bathed her glistening skin. Then her guest began to lower himself.
Yes…
Callused hands began to massage her. The compounded sensations were driving her mad; the stars blurred in her eyes. As the rough hands kneaded her breasts, her nipples burned hot as embers embedded in her flesh. But just as she thought he'd lie atop her, he pulled back-…
The hands pushed her knees back to her face, and his mouth found her sex. His tongue did things she didn't think possible-she'd never known that the web of her sexual nerves was capable of feeling such things. She closed her eyes and let the frenzy take over. First, one finger entered her, then two, then three; she was biting marks into her knees. The ministrations went on and on. Was her tongue hanging out? Was she shrieking her pent-up bliss?