The
innocuous gets you the worst. Of course I’ve known that all along. Knowing
means nothing. I shake my head to
clear it of these thoughts as Kelly brings out a package that looks for all the
world as though it just contains gum. Gum, the most innocent of the innocent.
But this isn’t gum.
“This
is indica,” she says. “It’s a head high. That means you can still be in the
game, just more relaxed.”
I’d
forgotten that I’d known her. When she came up to me at the party and threw her
arms around me, I thought: Oh shit. Damn
my faulty memory; it’s only a failure when I need it to help me. Eventually
it coalesced: her name, a few scant details about her. It didn’t much matter.
She was determined to get high and to take a few of us with her.
We
gather in a back room that the apartment dwellers call the garage. Shit is everywhere. A bike, a few couches, bags of
crap. It puts me at ease. I like the people who live here. I like how they
inhabit space, how they are comfortable with their own footprint.
“Okay,”
Kelly says, leaning against an ironing board. “Who’s going first?”
My
husband’s voice hard in my head: You never say no, can you? But he’s nowhere near. He doesn’t have to know.
