Riffing on the dance motif, Greg came to mind. The bearded hulk of an ex-cop, who was always making lame jokes about the black market, also had a thing for old Broadway shows. He whistled the tunes when he figured nobody was listening. Ernie had heard him lots of times. Cabaret, A Chorus Line, Gypsy, Guys and Dolls. Late one Friday afternoon when Greg thought everybody else had gone home, Ernie saw him dance. Who knew. He was amazingly light on his feet and did an elaborate jazz walk down the length of the admin section. He ended with a pirouette. Then he ducked, swayed and leaped with a weird kind of grand jeté into the security office.
When he realized Ernie had seen him, he blushed as deeply as only a fair-skinned brute of a redhead could. It didn’t help that Ernie was doubled over with laughter. Then Ernie had said in all honesty, “Man, I wish I could do that. It was spectacular.” They went for a beer. Ernie talked about his teenage basketball incompetence and Greg told him how he’d taken tap and jazz until he was fifteen, before he unexpectedly grew the body of a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound linebacker.
Maybe it was just the dope, but as Ernie got drowsy and stared up at the stars he got the feeling probably nobody was who they appeared to be. Not Greg, not Guido or Jason, not Lydia, not even himself. He was betting people showed up on the planet in fractions, and the whole of them had to be way more mysterious than the world imagined.
Chapter 47
Alice was doing her best. She always did, but she was getting discouraged. She didn’t think the dispensaries would prosper no matter how well she organized them. She couldn’t do much if the grow facility still wasn’t meeting demand and she had to fill her inventory with other dispensaries’ products. Ironically, CannRose was occasionally selling off dried product to other dispensaries. It could get a better price for intact buds from the other companies who weren’t averse to irradiation than it could for milled product under the CannRose brand name. Caldwell had managed to convince the board to stop to selling irradiated buds because it could be bad for future recreational marijuana sales. Irradiation was for milled product only and for the one oil Stoyan had formulated so far. So she was actually selling CannRose product but under another dispensary’s name. It wasn’t how things were supposed to work.
When confronted recently, Caldwell opted for distraction. He claimed the other dispensaries were all cheating and he pointed to the various pesticide problems that were showing up in the news. Her son Zack had made the observation that CannRose was basically a mom-and-pop operation with a very dysfunctional family.
To add to the discouragement, Ms. Ligner, that unpleasant inspector from the DOH, was throwing her weight around again. Sammy told Alice that the woman had treated her like she was a criminal during the last inspection and had demanded to see all the financial records at the Lyston dispensary. Alice was quite sure access to most of that information was outside the DOH’s medical cannabis mandate. But maybe she’d missed some notification. “Lord knows they amend the marijuana regulations every month,” she muttered to herself.
As Alice was thinking about this, her phone rang. It was Nina from the dispensary across town and she was in a panic. The very same inspector was threatening to shut the place down because they couldn’t find a simple document, a chain of custody. Alice grabbed her purse, jumped in the car and raced over there.
When she arrived, Ms. Ligner was in the back room, pacing back and forth on her stilettos while Nina sat at the table crying and blindly going through several open file folders spread out in front of her.
“What’s the problem?” Alice said, removing her coat.
“You don’t have a chain of custody,” the inspector said. “You’ve lost a shipment! Or diverted one.”
“Excuse me. There would be a receiving log and inventory records.” Alice looked at Nina, who nodded through her tears. She busied herself with the laptop in front of her. After a few seconds she handed it to Alice.
“See, it’s all here,” Alice said. “The date, the time, the products, the quantity. So the shipment has not been lost.”
“Dispensaries must maintain chains of custody. You’re in noncompliance.”
Alice took a deep breath. “I’m sure it’s just been misfiled. I believe a company is given some time to produce records during an audit.”
“This is no audit, ma’am. This is an inspection. May I remind you, dispensaries operate at the discretion of the Department of Health.”
“And may I remind you the Department of Health is funded by the taxpayer. And as a taxpayer I don’t find your insinuations or your threatening my staff to the point of tears acceptable.”
“I’m merely doing my job.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“I repeat, the state does not tolerate diversion.”
At this point Todd, the other dispensary technician, came rushing in. “Found it!” he said. “It was on the bottom of the drawer, under all the files.”
Alice smiled. “There, you see.”
Ms. Ligner briefly looked at the document and handed it back. “Perhaps you should review your filing system.”
Alice stayed for the rest of the inspection. The woman wanted to see financial records for this dispensary too. For inventory, sales, suppliers and purchases maybe, but surely not the bookkeeping for the whole operation. The inspector looked daggers at Alice when she was confronted and insisted she had the authority. She was all over the security details too, picking nits at the littlest imperfection. She wrote up findings about the surveillance camera at the back of the store. It didn’t show the bottom two feet of the back door, and five minutes of video from it was blurry. She found other minor issues too. Mostly in record-keeping, a missing initial here, a date there. And she didn’t approve of some packaging from one of the other dispensaries. She said the type was too ornate on the product brand and the logo too large. It was too much like advertising.
“It’s not even our product,” Alice said, “and it’s clearly passed inspection on the other side of the state.”
“Some inspectors miss things.”
“Ms. Ligner, this product is being sold and has been sold for the past year. It was one of the first products available and it’s very popular.”
“Popularity is not my concern. If the packaging doesn’t meet regulations, it’s noncompliant. This has to come off the shelves. If you choose to repackage it, make sure the labeling meets the requirements.”
Alice and Todd looked at each other in resignation. Nina stared down at the floor. The three of them took the offending product back to the vault, where Ms. Ligner randomly picked three packages of CannRose product for testing, signing for them with unmistakable disgust. Ms. Ligner would be sending the official report within ten business days, and without any goodbye she vanished out the door.
“I can hardly wait,” Alice said, folding her arms.
“What’s her problem?” Todd’s exhale was almost a raspberry as he stared after her.
“Who knows? But I’m going to make some more problems for her.”
Todd turned to Alice, eyebrows raised.
“She’s way out of line,” Alice said. “I’m reporting her. The DOH can’t expect dispensaries to function with inspectors like that.”
That very evening Alice wrote a letter to the director of the medical marijuana division at the DOH and cc’d the state commissioner himself. She sent it by registered post the next morning, though it might not get very far. Dealing with the DOH was like talking to a great abyss staffed at various tiers by headless officials. A little Kafkaesque. But the letter would be unusual, arriving as a physical missive instead of an email, and might actually catch someone’s attention. Plus she felt a whole lot better having written it.
Still, the episode was worrying. Was there really some new legislation she hadn’t heard about yet allowing the DOH to go through finances like that? These days criminality and even regular pharmacies were being mentioned in the same breath because of the opioid crisis. Alice had limited what she would s
ell at her own pharmacy years ago because of the robbery problem. She never kept a stock of opioids on the premises and let it be known to all. Anyone with a prescription had to wait a day or two for the order to come in. If they needed it right away they could find another pharmacy.
#
Alice woke up at three o’clock in the morning, her son on her mind. She realized she hadn’t heard him laugh or seen him smile in a year or more. Nor had she heard of a new girlfriend since the last one left, and that wasn’t like him. The notion that she would see more of him because of CannRose’s involvement with the law firm had been an illusion. Even when he came home at Christmas he was out with old friends most of the time. So Alice hadn’t been keeping track. Only at three o’clock on that particular morning did she see the whole picture. Her son was miserable.
So that Saturday after breakfast, she sat in her favorite armchair reading the local newspaper and kept calling until she got hold of him. “Zack, honey. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about you. Are you okay?”
“Must have been boring dreams if they couldn’t hold your attention.” Zack snickered.
“See, this is just why I was thinking of you. You’re unhappy, aren’t you. You sound cynical. That laugh . . . What’s going on?”
Her son wasn’t expecting this. And maybe he didn’t want his mother knowing all that much anyway. She seemed to be everywhere. People at the firm spoke so highly of her, while he spent his days in a quiet hell, wading through documents and case files. He’d woken up himself at three o’clock in the morning several months ago and realized he hated being a lawyer. “Um, I guess being a lawyer . . . sucks,” he said.
“You don’t like law anymore?” Alice maneuvered the stool over so she could put her feet up.
He snorted. “Don’t like it? I’d prefer sticking a hook up my nose to pull out my brains.”
“Are you drinking?”
“Single malt helps the work go down, Mom.”
“Honey, I don’t like the sound of this at all.”
“That makes two of us.” Zack started twirling his pen.
“You need to do something.”
“Maybe I can change my alarm to ‘Zen Bells’ or ‘Birdsong of Paradise.’ Did you know I have twenty-two alarm sounds to choose from on my company phone? Isn’t that inspiring?”
“Can’t you change the type of work you do there?”
“No. I do the type of work they do here. I do what they do.”
“Have you really thought about it though? Investigated? I mean changing what you do somehow?” Alice could hear the ice rattle as Zack took a drink from his tumbler.
“Sure!” he said. “I think I’d like to be a tennis pro!”
“Honey, you’re drunk!”
“Maybe a little.”
“It’s eleven o’clock in the morning!”
“I know and I’ve got ten hours of work left on this case today.”
“You’re working today?”
“I work most every Saturday, Mom. Sundays too.”
“That’s crazy.”
“That’s law.”
“How does Luther—”
Zack slurped his drink loudly enough to drown her out. “I don’t work with Luther, Mom. How’s your work? How’s the world of high times and total cray-cray. Let’s just talk about your job satisfaction for a moment.”
“Honey, you need to stop with the scotch and drink some water. I know you don’t work with Luther. I just wondered how he manages to be CEO of CannRose if he’s doing law seven days a week.”
“Who knows? Helps if you’re sleeping with a weed dowager, I mean the company president. He probably gets a load of work done in bed.”
“Did you just say he’s sleeping with Lydia?”
“Thought everybody knew.”
“He’s married!”
“He’s in the middle of a divorce. Did you know lawyers have high divorce rates?” He started to laugh uncontrollably. “Law joke, Mom.”
“Oh my goodness. Where have I been?” Alice reached for her own glass of water and took a gulp. “Isn’t he rather young for Lydia?”
“I don’t know. She’s rich. That should make up for it, don’t you think?”
PART TEN
Processing
Oh Handlers and Crafty Ones, the drought turns us delicate, our thirst exhumed for a benevolent trust. So severed and parched we fade to a pale presence. Husks of ourselves. Barren and yet you would love us more now. Our essence so much the richer as you are the poorer. We lead you without care it seems. Hurried runs to a solvent heaven, made weightless by sad angels. They sing of scarcity and grief. And the fool’s lame resolutions. Can you hear them? No discernment or grace? They pick and they chose. The pulling of best, the culling of less. Oh that you might love us for more than refinement in pieces and haste. Would that our hearts’ richer notes sing straight to yours. But you must hear your own blood pump to notice.
from Cannto VI, Cannabidadas
Chapter 48
The three young devotees were cleaning up Flower Room IV after the most recent harvest. They had bushels of waste from the troughs. It consisted of grow media and roots, and there were six big bags of plant waste already signed out of the live inventory and waiting for disposal.
“This is so fire!”
“S’up?”
“We got waste for the new rotating composter.”
“Awesome!”
“Time to check out the waste management, bro.”
“Yeah. Check out the waste management!”
“I thought they were getting a conveyor belt right to the loading dock.”
“Conveyor belt! That’s lit, bro!”
“When?”
“I don’t know. When they figure it out.”
“Is that a new door?”
“Everything’s new.”
“It’s really shiny.”
“This is sick, bro!”
“Look at this! Totally fucking awesome!”
“So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Automatic feeder. Says right here.”
“AF! Automatic feeder.”
“It’s the hopper.”
“The hopper is fire!”
“Put the stuff all in there.”
“Okay.”
“Now what?”
“Bye-bye.”
“What’s with the bye-bye?”
“It’s part of the kush, ladies. I’m bein’ respectful.”
“Push the Start button, bro.”
“Woooah!”
“Dude, that’s loud!”
“That’s the chopper, bro.”
“The chopper kills!”
“Chopper after the hopper! Awesome. Yeah!”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
“We should turn it on if the other stuff is on.”
“Yeah.”
“Totally.”
“Okay.”
“It’s turning!”
“It’s supposed to turn, bro. It’s rotating.”
“Fucking fire!”
“That is so lit. Turn, turn. It’s turned, dude. The rotator in the rotating composter.”
“Bro, I think it’s speeding up.”
“Yeah, awesome.”
“Is it supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“So dope.”
“Yeah it’s going faster.”
“Yeah.”
“Faster. Fucking fire!”
“Bro, that’s starting to go really fast.”
“That’s fucking awesome!”
“Dude. I don’t think it’s supposed to be going that fast. I think you should slow it down.”
“Yeah. I don’t know how to do that.”
“Dude, I think you should shut it off.”
“I just tried.”
“Dude! You should like, shut off that switch!”
“I’m trying, bro. It won’t shu
t off.”
“Yeah, it shouldn’t go that fast. Basic.”
“Shut it off, bro!”
“Fuck off! I can’t!”
“Shit! I don’t think that flap was supposed to open.”
“Fuck!”
“Stuff just hit me in the face!”
“Fuck!”
“Bro! It’s all over your back.”
“It’s in your hair!”
“Open the fucking door!”
“Yeah. Fucking get out of here!”
“Fuck!”
Chapter 49
“Anger management wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” Cassie said. “Might help me with the kids when they start driving me up the wall.” It was four o’clock in the morning and Cassie and Joe were sitting up in bed.
“Honey, the kids are nothing like that situation at CannRose. Besides seeing a shrink is trouble. You’re branded for life.”
“We’ve been working with marijuana. It’s still federally illegal. We’re already branded.”
“I think a shrink is worse.”
“They never specified we had to see a shrink. They didn’t say what type of therapy. I bet we could see anybody. Take a yoga class!”
“I don’t think yoga was what they had in mind.”
“Joey, I don’t think they had anything in mind. They’re just covering their butts. I think they actually want us to come back. Anyway we’ve already run a successful business and sold it for a profit! We don’t need them. What do we care what’s in our personnel files? And I think they need us, and we have way more power here than we know.”
“Lydia did seem genuinely concerned.”
“That’s why I think we should reconsider.”
“But that company isn’t going anywhere. We should get a job with the competition.”
“Or start another nursery? Hullbrooke doesn’t have anything close by.”
“Not enough people.” Joe yawned, stretching his arms up and back as far as the headboard would let him. “We should figure out something easier. Supply the marijuana industry! Make something essential for hothouse production and make it cheaper. Mildew-resistant pots.”
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