In fact she’d much rather spend time with her new tech. He was wonderfully conversant on matters of science. He was also thoroughly irresistible. She knew sleeping with somebody she supervised was never a good idea. It complicated emotions as well as logistics. But as it turned out, Sanjay was hardly new to the business of it, and Petra had to wonder how many jobs he’d slept his way into. It turned out Sanjay was as seductive with men as he was with women. At least he was honest about it. He seemed to treat himself like a personal experiment.
“There’s no point in being shy or coy about it,” Sanjay said. “Sex is great, no matter how you look at it or who you’re doing it with. It’s a gateway.”
“Sure,” Petra replied. She was almost more blown away by his candidly expressed opportunism than his prowess and perfect body.
“I don’t just mean, you know, securing a job. Sex is great because it’s a portal to another world. Even if it’s lousy, you get a hint of something more than this everyday stuff. Don’t you find?”
“Um, sure,” Petra said. “I guess.” She sat up and looked around the room for her clothes. The mention of everyday stuff reminded her she’d promised her mom a roast pork loin for Sunday dinner. She should probably get going.
“I know it’s a biological trick,” Sanjay continued. “But then so is chocolate. So is sugar, heroin. You name it. Mood altering is mood altering. And something, some living thing, is always gaining an advantage by it.”
“I’d have to think about that.”
“You know it’s true. It’s exactly how evolution works.”
“I don’t know I’d put it just like that.” Petra remembered her clothes were lying on Sanjay’s living room floor. She lay down again.
“To me, it’s all wonderful. You get to be here. You get to eat chocolate. You get to have sex. You can try drugs if you want to. You can kill yourself with them too. You get to have the experience. That’s all.” He rolled off his back, propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her. “I never judge. It leaves more room for wonder.”
In fact Sanjay found Petra’s body something of a wonder. Having no profound sexual preference and no great expectations around body ideals, he simply concentrated on its salient features. She had enormous nipples for starters. The diameter of one seemed to cover almost half the breast itself, and they were so sensitive. Just the slightest attention to them would have her moaning and panting in no time. He’d only ever had sex a few times with women who were that much older than he was. But none of them had responded quite like that. And even the younger women might be very touchy, sometimes even complain of having painful breasts, but regardless, they certainly did not have orgasms without significant attention elsewhere. In fact he was so impressed by Petra’s nipples he was beginning to wonder if they constituted some neural anomaly. Some evolutionary advantage even. She was the easiest woman to satisfy he’d ever been with. And her legs! So strong, long and lanky, the inner thighs also highly responsive. She would wrap them around him. Frequently. And he found this very comforting and exciting all at the same time.
And as for what Sanjay referred to as the “place of mercy,” he found its surroundings both surprising and enlightening. Petra’s head was covered in uniformly dark and straight short-bobbed hair that in no way matched the frenzied mass of salt-and-pepper curls rising out of her pubis. “OMG!” he’d exclaimed. “You know, I hadn’t really thought about this!” Petra, open-mouthed and breathing heavily, had briefly raised her head and peered at him before falling back onto the pillows.
PART EIGHT
Flowerings
Oh Lust and Lament that you can speak it but not feel it. That we must feel it and stay silent. Open wide to the wind and wonder how your natures have vanished. In every glistening petal we embrace the pulse that brings you back to your senses: your soft seeing and the sweet fragrance of lightness and love. We long for your simplicity, your guilelessness, in the face of such forcings. We long for the easy blooming of your hearts.
from Cannto II, Cannabidadas
Chapter 37
It was Sunday morning and Caldwell was eating his bacon sandwich out on the balcony of his Hullbrooke apartment. It overlooked the town park, and at the very far end of it, a good football field and a half away, was the skateboard playground or whatever that was with its bowls and ramps and jumps that led nowhere. He noticed the three young lads from the grow facility were there again, zooming, leaping and twirling. They were very good at it. He should mention that to them one day. He could never remember even one of their names, but Harper Koch, the motivational guru he was reading, mentioned that compliments about activities outside work were effective in maintaining employee loyalty.
Ha! Loyalty! Caldwell’s comprehension of it was becoming more acute by the day. Like most things it had two sides. In this case the lack of it was turning out to be a boon in disguise because most of the big CannRose rats couldn’t tell a sinking kayak from a Virginia-class nuclear submarine. Lydia’s boring advisory team, which checked his every inspiration, was finally shifting aside. Oh, they’d put the lid on expenditures. But so what! If Lydia wished to keep the place running on her disposable income — and there were some months where she was compelled to foot the bills — that was her business. And Caldwell would ensure that was his business too.
The rats had finally admitted mistakes had been made, though they still tried to blame him and Lazlo for most of them. At any rate they suggested if Caldwell could bring in a big investor or two they would not be at all averse to redistributing the pudding. They were clearing out, all right. They weren’t so confident marijuana was the next big thing. It was the next big competitive thing, and that meant lots of losers. They moaned the price of marijuana did nothing but drop as suppliers multiplied across the country. Cowards. Myopic morons. The fools even told Lydia she should make a break for it too while she could. He’d show them! He chuckled to himself at their inability to grasp the long view. All he ever needed was to find himself a rich ally who’d be happy to take a back seat. And Mother of Mary, Caldwell had the tingly feeling he’d just won the lottery.
Guido Batelli was, in Lydia’s words, “a sweet old Italian gentleman.” She’d met him at a charity function a few years before and he’d recently gotten in touch with her to enquire about a substantial donation he was planning. She told him she wasn’t on the board of that organization anymore and then of course she went on to tell him what she was currently doing.
“Lydia, you have no idea how perfect this is! I must meet with your people.”
From Caldwell’s perspective the old guy seemed to be just off the boat, though he’d apparently been in the in the US as a younger man. He’d moved from Milan back to Manhattan fifteen years ago and become an American citizen. Greg, suspicious by vocation, and having devoured The Day of the Owl as a teenager and maybe too many Mario Puzo novels, had been worried about this Italian connection. But after a good week or more of digging around in the man’s past, he was satisfied there was no mob affiliation. Besides, Guido was from Lombardy not Sicily. And he was a widower. A recent one, and as he told Caldwell, his wife’s illness had convinced him that marijuana was a wonder drug.
“My beautiful Rosa, mother of my children, in so much agony. She says to me, ‘Guido, the pills. They’re turning me into a zombie. I’d rather have the pain.’ Oh my God, it broke my heart. I tell the doctor, ‘You have to do something.’ Doctors, sometimes, they know nothing.” So at his wit’s end, her doctor had finally suggested she might want to try marijuana. “Caldwell, I tell you, it changed everything!” His wife even outlived the doctor’s death sentence by three years.
So Guido was a believer. “This is so important, Caldwell. I have faith in this plant. Utmost. Is so much more than the world understands.” And the more Guido had read about it, the more he was sold on the benefits of marijuana.
He brought Caldwell to tears when he told him how he wanted to give back in the last years of his own life. He’d promise
d to his wife that he’d do something good with his fortune. She was worried for his soul and she didn’t want to be in heaven without him. “It just wouldn’t be heaven then would it?” Guido wanted his money to make a difference to all the suffering in the world. He wanted it to be a tribute to the woman he’d loved for fifty years. Helping a struggling medical marijuana enterprise seemed like the perfect thing to do. Caldwell wept openly at all this.
Chapter 38
Joe was checking the auxiliary temperature monitors outside the grow rooms when Damian wandered by. He’s looking a little rough around the edges, Joe thought when he saw him. What exactly goes on at Lydia’s estate? Joe couldn’t figure out how a woman like Lydia would tolerate having an old stoner staying at her house. How did that work?
“Hey, Damian.”
“Hey, Joe.”
“You look . . . kind of like hell. You know, exhausted or something.”
“Guess I am.”
“Too much excitement up at the estate?”
“You could maybe call it that.”
“So what’s it like living up there? Place is huge I hear.”
“Yeah.”
“You do any riding?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“Oh yeah? How are you finding it?”
“I don’t know. Just . . . riding.”
“That’s putting the bags under your eyes?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“Trick pony. Trick question. No, you look tired, man.”
Damian caught the look on Joe’s face. “Yeah. Lydia likes to talk. About everything. All night.”
Joe didn’t expect such a forthright answer and was nonplussed.
“And we screw like minks too. For hours and hours. She’s insatiable.” Damian found Joe’s questioning absurd. Joe was nosy, likely because his own life was such a frigging monotony.
In fact Damian, who lived in the apartment over the five-car garage at Rosefields, mostly saw Lydia just in passing. If he socialized regularly with anyone there it was with Carl, the farm manager, and his wife. A few times over the last year, Lydia had invited him for dinner but mostly when Caldwell and the board members were there. One time when Lydia’s children descended upon the estate for a weekend, she’d invited Damian to the family barbecue. They were a weird, uncomfortable group and he’d claimed fatigue early in the evening. On only two occasions had he gone to dinner with Lydia alone. He didn’t fancy her cooking much — so he brought dinner the second time. She’d been impressed. And admittedly things had gotten a little out of hand. She was an attractive woman. Very attractive, especially after half a bottle of champagne (Lydia’s contribution) and some great Thai bud (Damian’s contribution). And Lydia did like to talk. But that had been just a onetime thing. They had an understanding. She was cool. Everything was cool. Besides Damian had a girlfriend back in Colorado.
It was true though — sex was keeping Damian up at night. It was spring. The frogs in the pond, a whippoorwill, red-winged blackbirds singing about it half the night and at it again before sunup. Rosefields was the noisiest place he’d ever slept in his whole life. He was going into Hullbrooke to buy some earplugs that afternoon.
“Wow!” said Joe. “You sure are a piece of work.” Joe could tell when he was being fucked with. No way Damian was doing it with the company president!
“Happy to oblige. At least I don’t let things get moldy.” This was an ongoing dig. Cassie and Joe had misted a stressed-looking crop the day before it was harvested. Of course it wasn’t supposed to have been harvested the next day. That was Caldwell, barging in, insisting they had to harvest then and there. It couldn’t wait. Damian had been in Colorado. And whoever had set the drying sequence — various people pointed fingers at each other — totally blew it the rest of the way. Damian liked to keep reminding them moldy crops had almost cost the company their registration.
Joe bristled. “Well maybe if everything wasn’t such a big fucking secret with you . . . maybe if you gave us a reason from time to time. You know, why you adopt aberrant growing methods.”
Damian chuckled to himself. So easy to get a rise out of these white-bread boys with their chubby pink progeny and perky pink wives. “You got to chill better, man,” Damian said. “You know, loosen up the bowels a little. Easier to learn when it’s not coming out of every other orifice.”
“Asshole!”
“Yeah, man. You should get one. It’ll change your life.” Damian swiveled away and sauntered off into one of the flower rooms.
Cassie came up behind Joe and put her hand on his arm. “I just heard the tail end. He is such a jerk. Don’t let it get to you.”
They stood staring down the hallway after Damian and then they both said in unison, “You have to consider who it’s coming from.” Saying it together like that made them look at each other and they kissed. They held each other for a few moments while Greg in the security office watched them on his computer screen.
Chapter 39
Alice put down the trowel and took her gloves off. That was enough planting for the afternoon. The thing about having a plot in the community garden was you had to tend it. But the little tomato plants she’d started from seed in a cold frame were looking splendid, and she would have carrots, peppers, eggplant and probably too much zucchini again. Ricardo, two patches over, had warned her about zucchini. But she’d kept ten plants anyway the first year. In no time they’d dropped down the side of the raised bed, made off along the interlocking brick pathway, and she’d given away zucchini until Thanksgiving.
“I got to thank you, ma’am.” It was the woman with the little girl who had seizures. She was always coming into the drugstore now and thanking her there too. CannRose finally had a few products for sale and the dispensary across town was doing a brisk business, even if most of it was for other companies. Sammy had given Alice a full report of how the woman with the little girl had actually wept the second time she visited the dispensary. The joy or relief was overwhelming because the number of seizures a day had dropped from over a hundred to a dozen or so in just two weeks.
“How is your little girl doing today?”
“Oh yes. Is really good. One fit only this morning. And now is four o’clock!”
“That’s pretty amazing.”
“Yes, ma’am. Amazing.” The woman held out a tray of a dozen seedlings — spinach or kale maybe — although when Alice looked more closely she realized they weren’t anything she recognized. “Is special, for you, ma’am. We grow in my country. Very good for you. Pick like this.” And the woman raised her hand about a foot and a half above the tray. “Plant like this.” And she dropped her hand to about five inches from the tray to show the spacing. “Special taste.”
“Would I cook it?”
“Just one minute, two, no more. Taste very good. Good health. Good for eyes and skin.”
They discussed the cooking a little more, exchanged several thank-yous and then Alice watched as the woman went back to her little girl sitting in the stroller. The child was facing them and she looked right at Alice and smiled. Alice was taken aback. She’d never seen the child focus on anything before, let alone make eye contact.
Alice took up her trowel again to put in the seedlings. It occurred to her that her involvement with this medicine, this weed, was changing her life in ways she hadn’t expected. People who needed it and knew about her involvement were appreciative in a way they’d certainly never been with drugs she sold at the pharmacy. It was like a new community. But Alice still kept a very low profile. Some nights she’d wake up worried. The laws could change again. Or the drug scheduling could change again. Then where would they be? And even though she made sure her contract with CannRose was crystal clear — the dispensaries and her involvement with them were completely separate from her drugstore — and her son assured her the best legal services in the state would be available to her at no cost, she wondered if she might wake up one morning and find herself in a fix.
Alice put away her gardening tools and sat for a moment on the edge of one of the beds. She’d call Zack when she got home. See how he was doing. Her son had grown a little distant since she’d had so many dealings with Luther and the law firm. She wondered if he regretted putting her name forward. Probably a little tricky working for people you know talk to your mother all the time. Alice certainly wouldn’t have liked it when she was that age. It made her laugh a little. She’d go easy on him.
#
It turned out Zack was having woman troubles. Again. The last one had left him just like the one before. And none too nicely. She’d brazenly come in with some big guy who was helping her with her luggage. He had his hands all over her. More so than the luggage.
“Well, sweetheart,” Alice said. “I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe you have to learn more patience with—”
“I am patient. I never made big demands on her.”
“Did you fight?”
“No. Well, hardly ever.”
“What did you fight about?”
“I don’t know. The usual. I’m home late. I don’t do the dishes. I leave the bathroom a mess. I didn’t find the movie we just watched uplifting. In fact I found it boring, stupid and saccharine. She wants a puppy. I like cats . . .”
“Zack, honey, I think you need to up your game.”
“I know. I just didn’t think she would be so . . .”
“So . . . what?”
“Predictable. I don’t know. Tedious?”
The Buds Are Calling Page 19