Half of what remained to him – about two grams of blond hashish – he had eaten on the train, somewhere between Breda and Eindhoven, on his way to the airport. So for most of the flight he was content to sit and listen to the Rolling Stones in his walkman and dream almost nostalgically of opening his own coffeeshop in New York. He was trying to decide whether to feature the fifth generation of North Lights (his personal favorite) or that Swiss XT one of his friends had slipped him a few weeks ago when the pretty stewardess passed his way. He asked – naturally – for another Heineken. What pretty eyes, he remarked to himself as she fetched it for him.
“Some people are born to be mothers or fathers,” he once told a stoned Dutchman at a coffeeshop somewhere in Den Helder. The stoned Dutchman listened closely to the soothing voice, admired the long dreadlocks. Of course there was little else he could have done. He was simply too stoned to tell this young man that he did not understand most of what he was saying. To be honest he was a bit embarrassed, since most of his friends could speak English fairly well; they liked to show off in front of each other. So he nodded whenever he thought it appropriate and smiled warmly in the hopes that his face would say all that his lips could not. “Some people,” the young man continued firmly, “are born to be religious, or – even worse! – bureaucrats. But I –“ he said, interrupting himself to take a drag off the joint he had rolled. He passed it over to his companion. The young man held the smoke in his longs not long at all before expelling it from his body. Funny, he remarked evenly to himself. I don’t seem to be getting any more stoned.
He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, and reached into his pocket for a cigarette. When he could see again – when the cigarette was lodged safely between his lips – he noticed the stoned Dutchman still staring at him. That was when he remembered he had been in the middle of a sentence. “I’m sorry, man,” he said aloud, the hint of a smile creeping onto his face. “I forgot what I was saying.” To himself, he was wondering where he had put his lighter, because it wasn’t in his pocket. But the stoned Dutchman just nodded, still smiling red-eyed at him and ready to drop the joint. The young man was puzzled only for a moment. “You don’t speak English, do you?” he asked, resuming possession of the joint.
“No,” answered the stoned Dutchman, pleased to be communicating at last.
The young man, an unlit cigarette cupped between his dry lips in such a way that the end of the filter wouldn’t get wet, sat uncomfortably with the joint in one hand (and with no place else to go) and his other hand delving through a jacket pocket in search of his elusive lighter. Where the fuck is it, he was wondering. And what was I saying? And why is this guy staring at me like that? He was, in fact, wondering all of these things at the same time, and then not at all as they one by one disappeared like actors from the stage of his mind. “Aansteker?” he finally asked the stoned Dutchman, irritably, both because he wanted his cigarette lit and because he had just bought that lighter.
“Oh!” the stoned Dutchman cried out – a bit too loudly the young man thought. “You speak Nederlands!” No, the young man thought distastefully to himself, actually I speak Engelands. What followed was a slew of questions about his family, not all of which the young man was able to digest. At the same time he was handed an exceedingly familiar lighter – his own, in fact.
What the fuck was I saying? the young man wondered again as he lit his cigarette, calmly ignoring the stoned Dutchman’s excited questions. He couldn’t seem to remember. What day is it today? He doubted he would have known anyway.
But miraculously enough, he had remembered the day his flight took off from Amsterdam. He had remembered to get to Schipol on time. As he and the rest of the passengers disembarked from the aircraft in New York City, the United States of America, the young man took a brief moment to congratulate himself. He was looking forward to visiting an old friend with good taste who might be interested in the package that, luck permitting, would soon be arriving via the United States postal service. He thought it was awfully kind of the United States postal service to take the trouble to do this for him.
The young man grew quickly annoyed, however, when the tall man in a blue, polyester suit wearing sunglasses took hold of him inside the gate. “Excuse me, sir, but would you please come with me?” the tall man purred in his ear, tugging insistently on his arm. The young man resisted instinctually. He felt his body was his own property, and that he should be the one to decide where it went. The first thought to touch his mind as he looked cloudily into the tall man’s mirrored lenses – found himself, in fact, staring into his own beleaguered face – was a rather simple question: why is this man wearing sunglasses at all? How strange. But these thoughts were washed away in a matter of moments and the young man found himself admiring his dreadlocks. I’ll have to grow them longer, thought the young man. What the fuck is this shithead looking at? the tall man was wondering. He tugged on the young man’s arm again. But the young man was not ready to move. The tall man’s grip tightened. The young man realized he was close to changing states of mind; he hadn’t been anything but content for several weeks now. He frowned at the crabby customs official who was standing in front of hm. You little shit, the young man thought. The crabby customs official was smiling stupidly back at him, as if pleased with himself. That was when the young man realized he was, in fact, no longer content at all.
Just a few moments before, the young man had been trying to explain to the crabby customs official that he had no luggage except for the worn, green rucksack he wore over his right shoulder. “You’re coming back from Europe with only that monstrosity?” the crabby customs official had sneered at him. “I guess you didn’t go to Holland to see van Gogh.” The young man tilted his head as if not able to understand the crabby customs official’s reaction. It seemed to imply that normal people in the United States would never want to go to another country except to flock to preapproved tourist sites. However, the fat, wheezing man behind the young man seemed to find the crabby custom official’s last remark quite amusing. The fat, wheezing man had started to wheeze harder. The young man had looked at his rucksack and thought: I rather like it. “It’s comfortable,” is what he said aloud. To himself, he had been wondering how long this would take because he was tired and all he wanted to do was go to his apartment and smoke some more of the blond hash. Farther back in his mind he was wondering whether or not the fat, wheezing man behind him was about to explode.
“I think, Clara,” the young man had heard the fat, wheezing man gasping to the shriveled woman standing next to him who was probably his wife, “that this person here is one of those marijuana-smoking sex maniacs that are corrupting the youth of our country. Didn’t we see something about them on Jerry Springer?” The young man had detected something mildly malicious in the fat, wheezing man’s voice and decided he didn’t like it
“How long have you been away and what were you doing in Holland?” the crabby customs official had wanted to know, reaching out an eager hand for the rucksack. Either this guy is stupid, thought the crabby customs official, or he’s really stupid. I wonder how much he has on him? But the young man had decided that he didn’t like the crabby customs official, either. He hadn’t removed the rucksack from his shoulder.
“What awful hair,” the shriveled woman had whispered loudly to the fat, wheezing man who was her husband. The fat, wheezing man had wheezed his agreement.
“Your bag, sir!” the crabby customs official had insisted a bit more loudly. But the young man had been busy ignoring him. Usually he was quite passive; he believed in letting things be unless the situation clearly required action. But there were some people who were always pushing, and sometimes even his limits could be reached. The fact was, he didn’t like people talking down about his hair. So, rather calmly, he had turned around. In an instant he had seen the shriveled woman’s parched face hovering delicately over the fat, wheezing man’s flank. She looked like the sort of woman who had bad breath. He had also seen the fat, wheezing man’s round head settled precariously atop a quivering pond of flesh. His face had the same featureless roundness as a child’s drawing of a smiling sun.
“You know,” the young man had calmly begun to lecture them, “if it was okay for people to go around telling everybody else exactly what they thought was wrong of them, we wouldn’t have got very far as a civilization. For example, I have not seen very many people as fat as you are. Naturally, I wondered how you got that way. It must have taken a very long time! But I did not ask. Why? Because asking would have insulted you, and just because you may be addicted to food as some sort of compensation for one or more of the gross inadequacies in your personality doesn’t mean that I should expose them to everyone standing around you. Not that they aren’t wondering the same things as I am. I know, it’s not fair, but very fat people tend to be the objects of other people’s attention. But being on the butt end of so many jokes, I would rather have thought that most fat people are sympathetic to those a step or two lower on the rungs of the social ladder than the norm. But seeing that you are married to this haggard old wretch, I can very well imagine that you are so tortured by your everyday existence that you have been overcome by bitterness. Therefore, I forgive you.” The young man shrugged.
The fat, wheezing man had stopped wheezing. He looked as if he were sure that he had been terribly insulted, but terribly unsure about how.
“O, goodness,” the shriveled woman had exclaimed, regarding the fat man as if expecting him to do something.
“Hey, I asked you some questions!” It was the crabby customs official. The young man had turned disinterestedly around, blinking several times because his eyes were dry. The crabby customs official came into focus. From the look on the crabby customs official’s face the young man had been thankful that he didn’t have to go home to the crabby customs official’s wife. “How long were you over there?” the young man was asked again.
But the young man hadn’t really heard him. He had been listening to the shriveled woman trying to start the fat man wheezing again. “O goodness,” she had been muttering. The young man could hear the pond of flesh gurgling behind him. He wondered how often the shriveled woman had to start him up.
That was when the tall man grabbed the young man’s arm. That was when the young man decided that he was annoyed. Almost unconsciously , he shifted his weight between his feet. The whole idea was unsettling. “Excuse me, sir, but would you please come with me?” Why don’t you just relax, the young man thought. That was when the fat man burst out coughing, like an old engine in need of oil, and resumed his wheezing, only this time with an added sense of urgency. The shriveled woman let out a tired sigh of relief. The young man wished she hadn’t, and mumbled childishly to himself.
“Excuse me?” the crabby customs official exclaimed, taken aback. He seemed to be mistaking the bad breath for his own.
The tall man tugged firmly on his shoulder. “Come with me,” he repeated, and this time the young man did not resist. He supposed as the tall man began leading him away that he would not be able to smoke any more of that blond hash for a while. He grew sullen as they walked. He wished the tall man would let go of his arm. Maybe I should have worn a hat, he suggested to himself. Almost angrily, he shifted the weight of the rucksack on his shoulder. No, I should have stayed in Holland.
The tall man led him into a private room somewhere in the bowels of John F. Kennedy International Airport. It was a small, white room where a simple man sat in front of a computer. The young man wasn’t paying much attention to where he was, though. He was busy remembering that two Presidents at least – that he knew of, that is – had tried smoking pot, and a least one vice president. For some reason, that thought eased his annoyance. After all, this airport was named after one of them, just another spoiled rich kid from Boston who happened to be handsome and intelligent and have a father who was demanding enough to be obeyed. I am a rich kid from Boston, too, noted the young man. He didn’t think of himself as spoiled, though. Maybe I should run for Congress.
“Hello, Harry,” the tall man said to the simple man as he led the young man towards a door at the other end of the room. “Hello, Jack,” said the simple man in front of the computer. The young man took a moment to look around himself and was struck by the pungent emptiness of the room. There were only the simple man and his computer, keyboard, and mouse on an otherwise sparse desk. There were the white walls and the two doors opposite each other. The young man decided that he would not have wanted to spend a large part of his existence there. “What have you got there, Jack?” asked the simple man, smiling at the young man with that same self- congratulation as the crabby customs official outside. “Another punk pot smoker who thought he was going to take some vacation back home with him,” said the tall man. The simple man nodded and looked back into his computer.
The young man was considering reminding these two how easy it was to buy pot in New York City. There’s a one-eight-hundred number, he thought smugly to himself, that anybody can call, at any time. Of course, they only deliver shwagg at ridiculously high prices. But they deliver it. Fortunately for the young man, kind bud was easy to come by at any time of the year.
“Have you searched him yet?” the simple man asked into his computer screen.
“Don’t be so simple, Harry,” the tall man responded coldly. “Where do we always conduct the strip searches?”
The simple man did not remove his eyes from the screen; he seemed to shrink a little. “Well,” the simple man started to explain, “you said he tried bringing stuff back –“
“It’s a suspicion, Harry,” the tall man said. “All these dreadlock freaks are the same. They think it’s a sport. They think like they are making a point.”
“Yeah,” the simple man agreed sullenly, but he still did not look up.
The young man was not pleased to hear that he was going to be strip searched in the absence of incriminating evidence. He did not feel that his hair was incriminating evidence enough. “Why don’t you go catch some criminals?” the young man suggested freely as the tall man opened the door for them. But his soft, soothing voice was sucked up hungrily by the white walls. The simple man looked up at the young man and scowled. The young man remarked to himself on the simple man’s white, pasty skin, like the walls and the floor and the ceiling. The simple man looked to the young man as though he were simply fading away.
The tall man tugged the young man through the door into a hallway as white and bare as the room behind. He did not say a word to the young man as he was pulled past several closed, plain doors. The tall man’s body was straight and his metallic gaze behind the sunglasses did not seem to waver. His steps were stiff with a purpose in which he had lost interest, or had repeated too many times in the past. A silence hung heavy like lead in that stale air between the close, white walls – or like a room filled with the dense pot smoke and no open windows, thought the young man. “Jesus Christ, you reek!” the tall man commented aloud. He spoke without condemnation, without any emotion for that matter. The voice that had come from beneath the mirrored sunglasses had been as cold and white as the surroundings. After a brief moment of contemplation, the young man was not even sure he had actually spoken.
The room into which the tall man led him was a bit more hospitable than the simple man’s abode. The walls were white, of course, but the space between them far from empty. There were two comfortable looking leather couches, facing each other on either side of the doorway, and a small fishtank against the far wall between them. The bottom of the fishtank was blanketed with multicolored pebbles. There were plastic plants rooted in the pebbles, and in the middle of the tank a plastic replica of a shipwreck infested with algae. A gaping hole in the side of the shipwreck seemed to be looking directly at the young man. In the center of the room, between the two couches, there was a medium sized coffee table with two identical house plants. “Sit,” instructed the tall man in the sunglasses. The young man shrugged and moved to sit on one of the couches. “No,” the tall man said from the door. “The other one.”
The tall man quietly closed the door and sat himself on the couch the young man had chosen first. The two house plants on the coffee table obscured the young man’s view of him. The top of the tall man’s head was visible over the rightmost plant. The young man remarked almost absently to himself on how neatly the tall man’s hair was combed. Thinking of the tall man’s hair, the young man was reminded of his own and ran a tentative finger through it. It definitely needs to get longer, thought the young man.
The tall man remained still and silent behind the house plant. The neat mat of hair capping the plant neither moved nor shook. After a couple of minutes, the young man wondered whether or not the man was still alive. After a couple more minutes, the young man contemplating getting up and leaving. He coughed uncomfortable, trying to get some reaction – any reaction – from the tall man with the mirrored sunglasses, but there was none. The humming of the fishtank’s filter was suddenly much too loud in his ears. For some reason, he couldn’t imagine being strip-searched in front of a fishtank.
One of the fish was staring at the young man. The young man was brought to wonder whether or not it was possible to get a fish stoned. He knew that you could get cats stoned; he did it all the time. He had his own cat named Shotgun. His cat loved to get stoned. His cat would meow whenever the young man took the bong out of the closet. He imagined his cat coveted using the bong. Fortunately for his cat, all the young man had to do was breathe smoke on its ears and soon the cat was purring contentedly. Thinking of his cat the young man realized how much he missed him. He also remembered that he had to stop by an old girlfriend’s apartment to pick him up. Now there were two reasons for stopping by her place.
“Your passport,” the tall man said coldly into the silence. The young man was startled. As he reached into his rucksack, he wondered why the tall man hadn’t asked sooner. Maybe he is trying to intimidate me, the young man theorized. The young man smiled to himself mysteriously as he stood up to hand the tall man his passport.
Save me, said the fish in the fishtank on his way by it.
Save me, implored the young man in return, rolling his eyes. He remained standing silently beside the tall man, who sat examining his passport. As if in interruption, the door opened. The tall man looked up at the three people who were suddenly in the room. Standing in front of the young man was a small man in a neutral suit – exactly the same as the tall man’s. The young man caught a familiar glimpse of himself – albeit passingly startled – wavering in the lenses of a pair of sunglasses that happened to be of the same make and model as his seated companion’s. The sunglasses would have been much too large for the small man’s face were it not for his heaviness. Everything about the small man was round, not excluding his bare, pudgy head. “Hello, Jack,” said the tall man evenly. “Hello, Jack,” the tall man responded in much the same tone of voice. He returned his attention to the passport in hand.
Standing behind the small man in the open doorway – seeming to tower over his roundness – stood a sensuous woman and a perturbed young man. The perturbed young man seemed considerably agitated. His eyes jerked uncontrollably, and his hands were flailing about near his chest. His breathing appeared irregular. Not taking this too well at all, noted the young man as his gaze shifted quickly to the sensuous woman. Her subtle beauty had deceived him at first. Almost relaxed she stood easily in front of her squirming boyfriend, eyeing the young man with something like mischief in her cool eyes. No makeup marred that chiseled face; no fear chaffed her features. Her face was soft and trim behind her shoulder long hair. It looked like hair that was quite soft, and the rich auburn strands quite real. As the young man looked her over, he found himself musing as to whether her pubic hairs were the same color.
“Passports,” demanded the small man, whose head rose not much higher in the air than the tall man seated beside him. A small hand snatched two blue booklets, the young perturbed man almost dropping his on the floor. He seemed to have something to say, something jarring his lips, but he seemed to doubt his own self control and so remained dubiously silent.
“Arthur Sextus Winfrey II,” the tall man read aloud as if trying out the words. The young man cringed. The sensuous woman laughed delightedly at the look on his face. The perturbed young man looked as though he were about to vomit. The face behind the sunglasses shifted slighly; the young man knew that he was being eyed questioningly. The young man could not ignore that accusation. “My friends don’t call me that,” muttered the young man in his own defense.
“I’m not your friend,” replied the tall man.
“Sit,” ordered the small man, jabbing a pudgy finger toward the couch where the sensuous woman and the perturbed young man had already found refuge. The sensuous woman was no longer looking at the young man. She was whispering something angrily in her companion’s direction.
“I didn’t have anything to do with this.” The words had seemed to tumble in spite of themselves from the perturbed young man’s lips. He looked surprised down at his lap, as if he had cum too quickly. The sensuous young woman shrugged her indifference to the perturbed young man’s assessment of the situation.
“Shut up,” said the tall man and the small man in unison. Sitting beside one another on the couch – the small man’s feet barely brushing the floor – the first’s leanness seemed to compliment the latter’s roundness. The two of them were busy examining passports from behind dark, watery lenses.
The young man sat next to the sensuous woman, who pretended not to notice him. She seemed completely unaware of the perturbed young man to her other side, who had managed to gather himself together somewhat, and yet all too aware of the young man of whom she was pretending to be completely unaware. The young man found himself considering her thigh. It was held alluringly close and yet starkly not rubbing against his worn jeans. He decided that she was attracted to him.
The tall man and the small man seemed to taking an inordinately long time with the passports. Several long moments passed during which the perturbed young man tried to whisper something discretely into the sensuous woman’s deaf ear and succeeded only in producing a string of incomprehensible vowels that everyone could hear plainly.
“What do you think, Jack?” the tall man asked without looking up from the young man’s passport. What is he looking for in there? the young man wondered with a flicker of the fading but still smoldering annoyance. “What do you think, Jack?” the small man echoed. The young man frowned. He couldn’t decide who had been answered and who had been asked.
He decided that they were going to find it on him anyway so he took the remaining gram of the blond hash from his pocket together with some rolling papers and a maltreated pouch of Drum tabacco. “I’m gonna roll something, okay?” he asked through the heavy silence to the two suited men across from him. “You guys want in?” He laughed then, quite naturally. “Figure I’d have to ask you guys for an ashtray anyway.” The young man had sounded as though asking a friend, or the sensuous woman seated beside him, but truth be told it had also been with a great deal of difficulty. Even though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone afterward he was rather concerned about what their reaction would be.
The tall man and the small man looked up at him silently, then at each other. Jack, get a load of this guy! the small man was thinking. What do you think, Jack, the tall man was answering. It was a precious moment of silence broken only by the buzzing fishtank. The young man found it strangely amusing that he had taken the two suited men off guard; whatever happened now he had at the least been allowed that sole pleasure. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the fish staring at him. The young man shrugged. The fish seemed to smile. It was a smile the young man thought he was familiar with, especially when he announced to whomever was in his company that he was in possession of Northern Lights #5.
The sensuous woman was smiling now, too, but not in the same manner. Her eyes were fixed on him intently, but the young avoided looking at her. He knew quite well how to play this game. The perturbed young man beside her, however, had his head in his lap. He was happy that the young man had been so daring, but not because he wanted to get stoned. He thought maybe the two suited men would become so angry at his presumption that, as is only natural, they would want to abuse their power over him in private. The young man, however, imagined in the foggy background of his brain that the perturbed young man was not very good at satisfying the sensuous woman in at least one of the ways she required. But the observation found a muddy death in the great, empty abyss that also lurked there, and the young man moved on to more pertinent matters, such as why the two suited men seemed so amused.
Their smiles were very slight and very much the same, but so much more enthusiastic than the sensuous young woman’s. There seemed to be something akin to excitement in the soft curving of their lips. “Okay,” the small man began, throwing the passports down on the table and turning to look at the young man. “You get one try. Roll us a joint.” The young man nodded at his commission and reached for his lighter. “And it better be good. Some advice: make sure you put in enough hash.” “Yeah,” agreed the tall man sardonically, “that blond stuff sometimes isn’t so good.” The young man shrugged and started breaking up some of the hashish.
The perturbed young man was suddenly standing up. His mouth gaped and closed in a muddled imitation of the fish in its colored fishtank. His freckled eyes peered over the tops of the fresh, green houseplants at the suited, sunglassed men. At his sides his hands were balled into tight fists. Standing tall and rigid, leaning forward only slightly as if facing a stiff wind, he emitted a strangled, wrenching sound. “What?” It seems that it was actually a word. There was no one thought on his mind but rather several confused, gasping questions all fighting for real estate inside his mouth.
“Sit down,” snapped the small man, tiredly rubbing the top of his bare head. “Shut up,” the tall man ordered blandly. Needless to say, the perturbed young man did as he was told.
“I like your hair,” the sensuous woman told the young man as he softened some more hashish with the flame from his lighter. He worked intently, but with a skill and agility that only comes from much practice doing something you really enjoy, like lovemaking. The young man smiled.
“I think it’s disgusting,” the perturbed young man said in hard tones, intending to convey brutality.
“Nobody asked you,” the sensuous young man retorted, her head turning on a fraction of a degree in his direction.
“Got things living in it?”
“Would you like to touch it?” the young man asked, not looking up from his delicate work.
“Excuse me?” But there was no excuse for the perturbed young man’s behavior. The two suited men across the room snickered. The sensuous young woman coughed loudly, trying unsuccessfully to cover up a snatch of healthy laughter. I don’t know why I still care not to upset him too much, she wondered to herself.
The sensuous young woman was watching closely now as the young man placed just the right amount of tobacco on the mound of hash bits that had accumulated on the table. “You don’t want to put too much tobacco in a joint,” the young man told her, “because you’re not smoking it for that. But you don’t want to put too little in, either, or else the joint gets angry and spits tiny, hot flaming flecks of hash all over the place. Usually where you happen to have some skin exposed.
The perturbed young man seemed to have finished digesting his latest defeat. He was ready for another one, this time at the hands of the silent, suited men across from him. “Am I missing something?” he demanded of them suddenly.
“You will be,” the small man responded.
The young man was rolling the hash-tobacco mixture in his chosen brand of thin rolling paper. “The whole key to rolling a good joint,” he was telling the attentively sensuous young woman, “is getting it tight enough around the filter and keeping it that way. It’s pretty easy from there.” As he spoke he tucked the corner behind the filter and advanced the paper. “In order to keep it tight, you want to tuck and then crease the inside flap, so that when you roll the outside paper over it the inside flap fits as tightly over the tobacco as possible.” The young man did as he spoke.
“Well,” said the perturbed young man finally, “I think I’m going to have to tell somebody about all this. I mean, you can’t do this!” He turned to the sensuous young woman beside him and was daunted only for an instant by the hardness of her back. “You were the one carrying, Jacqueline, but I won’t say anything about you if –“ The threat was plain, and plainly ignored.
The tall man leaned forward, his mouth parted in a soft smirk. “You don’t get it, do you? You won’t be saying anything to anybody when you get out of here. For a long time.”
“But I have my rights!”
“Rights,” the tall men echoed, leaning back. The small man laughed and rubbed the top of his head. “Right,” he said. The two men looked at each other and smiled.
The perturbed young man was trying his best to remain calm. “I’ll scream,” he threatened.
“Not for long,” he was answered.
The young man burned the extra paper at the end of the joint and was left with a sizeable bat. This ought to start us off, he thought to himself. “I used two papers,” he explained while crossing the room to hand the joint to the tall man. The tall man nodded his approval, and the small man simply repeated what he had said earlier: “It better be good.” But the young man hadn’t been expecting any differently. As he started back across the room, the tall man called to him. “Lighter.”
Between the four of them they smoked two medium-sized joints, both of which were crafted by the young man. The perturbed young man was offered a puff by the young man, but he refused it rudely. For an hour the four of them sat and talked. The tall man and the small man turned out to be quite lively fellows. After the first joint they relaxed their act and it became quite apparent that they were normal, functional men. They even took off their sunglasses. Somewhere in the billowy region of the young man’s mind where fantasy affects reality lay the expectation of something hideous and horrible underneath (perhaps empty eyesockets) but the matching pairs of brown eyes were quite soft and looked to be made of the usual material. The sensuous young woman was surprised by their healthy capacity for laughter. “I would never have thought,” she told the two of them during a particularly relaxed moment, “that you people had any sense of humor at all.” Then someone passed her the joint, and she shut up.
When it was finally time to leave, the young man was almost sad. He stood by the door, the sensuous young woman by his side, shaking hands with the small man. “You know what you need in here? A stereo.”
The small man laughed. A pudgy hand glossed the top of his head while he passed a congenial glance to his companion. “The fact is,” he started to say, but then he remembered the presence of the perturbed young man who was still seated on the couch. The perturbed young man had already been told that he was not to leave with the others. He had not taken the news too well. He was fraught with jealousy at the thought of the young man leaving with the sensuous woman. Presently, he sat attentively listening to their conversation. Obviously, the two suited, red-eyed men (sunglasses in hand) did not want him to hear what they were about to disclose. It was only when the four of them were standing outside in the white hallway, the door closed behind them, that the small man continued. “The fact is,” he whispered, his voice so soft that in his stoned haze the young man could hardly hear what he was saying, “we never get stoned with passengers. We usually take their stuff and scam some of it before turning it in.”
“It’s cheap that way,” the tall man told them. “And some of the stuff we can get our hands on…”
“Pollen hash,” said the small man, nodding and rubbing his head hungrily.
“Pollen hash,” said the small man, nodding and rubbing his head hungrily.
“Well, you had me there!” exclaimed the sensuous young woman a bit too loudly. Her voice flowed beyond the quiet perimeter in the dim, plain hallway in which they felt safe. The tall man looked nervously ahead and motioned for silence.
“Cool setup,” the young man told them as quietly as he could manage. The tall man and the small man beamed proudly. But the young man was thinking to himself that people should not go out of their way to create problems for one another.
“You’re not actually going to do anything to him, are you?” the sensuous woman whispered to the small man so softly that she had to repeat herself. “I mean, he’s not so much fun but he’s had a hard time recently…”
“Well, to be honest, depending on how much of a bigshot he’s feeling we may have to pin the whole thing on him.”
They all smiled at each other and then parted ways. The young man was rather pleased with the sudden turn of events. He had certainly never expected to be in the company of such a beautiful woman before even exiting the airport. It was only outside in the cold, noisy New York air – as the young man put his arm around the sensuous young woman’s waist and she smiled back at him – that he realized he could not light the cigarette that dangled precariously out of one corner of his mouth. His lighter was starkly absent from his pockets. The tall man’s face flashed briefly through his brain. Shit, the young man thought to himself.