In progress

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.