Marijuana Girl

by N. R. De Mexico

  "Not like that, honey. Watch me," Jerry said. He put the flattened end in his mouth, lighted the spiral with a quick touch of a match and without drawing on it When the tip was clearly aglow he drew the cigarette from his mouth. "Pinch a hole in one corner of the flat end with your nails--like this, and then press on the edge of the flat part so it makes a little hole." She followed his instructions carefully.

  "Now, don't put the stick in your mouth. Make a mouth like whistling, and breathe in, holding it just in front of your lips." She did that, too, drawing in heavily. Suddenly the strong sweet odor, like burning hay, filled her throat and lungs.

  "Don't cough, Joyce," Frank said. "The next puff wont seem so rough."

  She drew again on the stick, more lightly, this time.

  "Solid," Jerry said.

  She took the stick down from her mouth. "What'll it do to me?"

  "Maybe nothing," Frank said. "Some people it doesn't do anything to."

  "But what's it like when it does do something?"

  "There's only one thing charge does for you, honey," Jerry said. "It makes you feel good. That's all. Just good," He turned to Ginger. "This grass is great. The best. I dig it."

  Joyce took two more drags on the stick, watching the little amber fire creep upward on the thin roll. The strange odor and unpleasant taste were gone now. It felt almost as though she were drawing very cold air into her chest. But nothing was happening. She said it. "Nothing's happening."

  "Maybe it won't," Frank said, discouragingly.

  "Will I do anything funny--I mean silly?"

  "Of course not," Frank said. "It's not like liquor. You don't lose control or anything."

  She drew again, still aware that it had no effect, then let her hand hang down holding the tiny cigarette. Suddenly she became aware of the night beauty of Washington Square Park. The cross atop the Judson church, glowing against the deep blue of the sky caught her eye, and the streetlamps against the facade of the arch. Each was a detail worth infinite attention. There was a faint, warm haze lying low against the ground, lending the whole park an atmosphere of unreality. Beyond the Square the lighted windows of a row of tall apartment buildings had a crystalline clarity--so clear were they that even from where she sat, nearly a sixth of a mile away, she could see well into the rooms, see the people moving about, see what they were doing.

  It was as though every window of those huge apartment buildings were a stage on which a special performance was taking place for her benefit. Even the sky was richer and more velvety ease. How strangely wonderful and lovelier than any she had seen before, with deep-glowing blue stars--all warm and close and friendly--peering down at her. "God!" she said. "It's beautiful here." Then she remembered the stick and drew on it again. She turned to Frank, "But nothing's happening."

  "Are you kidding?" he said. "No."

  "Look around again. Here. Lean back against me." He put his arm around her shoulders as she sat on the bench and drew her close to him. Her skin was suddenly tremendously sensitive. She felt that she could count the individual strands of the wool in his sports jacket where it touched her shoulders. The warm breeze, more like July than May, caressed her skin, touched her instep, her toes, her ankles--slipped lithe fingers of air over her calves, fluttered her skirt and drifted upward over her thighs, passing over her stomach and chest like a sensual caress. Her body felt weightless, and her mind at complete rest.

  Jerry said, "We got to get back for the next set, folks. You coming?"

  Frank said, "We'll be along in a while."

  "See you," Don said, and the three went off together. Joyce was hardly aware of their going, watching them as they walked through the archway of light formed by the trees. All they had become was part of the absolute, inutterable beauty of the park.

  The important thing, though, was the feeling inside her--the wonderful, wonderful feeling. Now, as never before in her life, she felt safe, protected by Frank's arm about her. She snuggled closer against him, and his arm tightened responsively. It was like--like being in Daddy's arms, protected and safe and warm.

  She turned, suddenly, and kissed Frank full on the lips.

  6 ~ Compulsion

  "What time did you get in last night ..."

  The sharp voice tore at the lovely fabric of the dream, shredding it into smoky tissues.

  "Did you hear me, Joyce Taylor? What time did you get in?"

  Slowly, with deliberate insolence, Joyce let herself come awake. She stretched luxuriously and yawned, half-rising on the bed to lend herself greater ease. The covers fell away from her; and there was another, immediate shrill outcry.

  "Why aren't you wearing your nightgown?"

  "Aunt Priscilla, can't you leave me alone?"

  "What is the matter with you, Joyce. You've been acting like a maniac, and you've had that Thrine boy nearly frantic--calling me at one o'clock in the morning ..."

  "Oh! Tony."

  "Yes, Tony," her aunt said.

  "What did he say?" Joyce demanded, suddenly frightened.

  "He didn't say anything. He just wanted to know if you had come home."

  "What time is it?"

  "Eight o'clock. Now tell me, what time did you get in last night?"

  "Aunt Priscilla, I don't have the faintest idea. Does that satisfy you? Now I've got to get up." She started to scramble from the bed.

  "Don't you dare get out of that bed. I'll get your robe for you. What will the neighbors think?"

  "As far as I can see they won't think anything, since they can't see in. All right, give me the robe. I've got to hurry."

  "And for what, may I ask?"

  "I have an appointment for a summer job, and I have to be there at nine o'clock."

  "Oh!" Priscilla Taylor was faintly mollified. "And how do you expect to hold a job if you keep this kind of hours."

  "Don't worry," Joyce said. "I'll hold it all right." She was a little proud of the promptitude with which she had come up with this particular lie. Now it occurred to her that she could admit to working afternoons and Saturdays for the Courier preliminary to the end of the school year.

  She showered and dressed as quickly as she could, coming downstairs to find her aunt sitting opposite the place on the table where Estelle had arranged her breakfast.

  "I don't want any breakfast," Joyce said. "Just a cup of coffee."

  "You sit right down and eat your breakfast," Priscilla said.

  "All right." The fact was that she was almost starving. She remembered the huge meal she had eaten with Frank and Jerry and Ginger in the early morning before driving back to Paugwasset, and wondered if marijuana could have given her this voracious appetite.

  After a while Priscilla said, "Do you or do you not intend to tell me where you were last night?"

  "Oh, Aunt Priscilla, why carry on this way?"

  "Have you been drinking?"

  "No."

  "Don't lie to me!"

  "I don't care whether I do or not. But I wasn't drinking. You know I don't drink. You'd think from the way you talk I'd been doing something terrible, smoking marijuana or something." She suppressed the laugh that bubbled up inside her. The fact was that she felt particularly well this morning.

  "I wouldn't put it past you," Priscilla said. "Well, if you won't tell me I'll just have to talk to that Thrine boy."

  "Oh, all right. I had a fight with Tony yesterday so I went into New York last night with a couple of kids. We went to a late show at the Paramount."

  "How did you go in?"

  "Drove!" Her voice shrilled her impatience.

  "Who with?"

  "Charlie Case, if you must know--and his sister."

  "Doesn't he have a junior license?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, I'm sure he does, and he's not allowed to drive in New York."

  "All right. Now I have to go." She rose from the table.

  "Well," her aunt was weakening, "All right. But if you stay out like that again I'll just have to write and tell yo
ur father."

  She caught the bus on the corner.

  Frank Burdette came out of the front door of his house on Randolph Road wondering why he felt so much like a sinner. After all, looking back on it, he hadn't done anything wrong. What was there wrong with taking a girl to a night club. Nothing. And the marijuana? Nobody in all of history had ever been hurt by marijuana, at least to Frank's way of thinking. There were traps to the stuff, of course, as nobody knew better than Frank: psychological traps, the traps of getting to depend on the stuff to fill psychological needs--the way a person might get to depend too much on liquor or the movies. But there was all sorts of medical evidence to prove the stuff itself was harmless and non-habit-forming and that all the things usually said against it were no more than the meaningless nonsense of ignorance. Take the investigation once sponsored by New York's Mayor La Guardia, and that Academy of Medicine report ... Oh, anyway, anyway, that wasn't it. Not the grass.

  No. The trouble was the girl. Something about her touched him and held him. And that could assume the proportions of tragedy. After all, she was just a kid. A beautiful kid, with a body like a dream and a mind that maybe threw off sparks like Einstein on a hot night--but a kid. He turned the key in the lock and went down the steps.

  Still, there was something about the way she cuddled up close to you, as though she trusted you--depended upon you for protection--that kind of caught at your heart and made you feel strong and wonderful. But you were a married man. You couldn't let this kind of stuff go to your head.

  No. The solution was to have nothing to do with her. But she was working on the Courier. Could you keep the relationship on a nice impersonal basis?

  Of course, you could fire her. But that would be a rotten trick. After all, she worked there last year for Harrigan and she did a good job, and yesterday she'd shown she could continue to do one. There was no legitimate reason for canning her; besides, it wasn't her fault if Frank found her attractive.

  He waved good morning to George Gernert who was watering his front lawn, and a second later to George Jr. who was watering a corner of the lawn right through his romper.

  He called, "Hey George! Junior's sprung a leak?"

  And George called back, "Not again! That's the third time this morning."

  That was the way to handle things, Frank decided, throwing back his shoulders and inhaling the fine air of early summer on Long Island. Just be firm and responsible and careful and friendly. Never let it get beyond being friendly, because that would be a terrible mistake.

  All right, now. That was settled. And here came the bus. Frank stepped out from the curb and the bus pulled up. He got aboard, deposited his money in the receptacle and headed toward the seats. There was only one empty seat and--by heaven.

  Oh, well. You couldn't make yourself look ridiculous and stand when the only empty seat was the one next to her. Frank sat down. "Good morning, Mr. Burdette."

  "Not mister--remember?"

  "Frank!"

  "Lunch with me today?"

  7 ~ Conflict

  Tony swung the car around the corner and braked to a stop on Randolph Road in front of Burdette's house. He turned to Joyce on the seat beside him. She was leaning forward, adjusting her hair against wind-damage with the aid of the rear-view mirror.

  "I don't see what you want to come here for," he said. "And I don't see any reason for dragging me along. Why should the city editor of the paper invite a copy girl to his house? After all, they're older people."

  "If you don't want to come," Joyce said between clenched teeth that held a bobby-pin, "nobody's twisting your arm."

  That caught Tony enough off base so that he lied. "Of course I want to," he said. "I want to spend a little time with you now and then. After all, I've hardly seen you this week."

  His real purpose in coming had been to dissuade her. But now he allowed her to urge him out of the car.

  Joyce said, "How do I look?"

  She was a little worried about this. Frank had asked her to come tonight specifically to meet his wife, and it was not exactly the kind of thing she could approach easily. It brought to mind, somehow, one of those rare times when her parents had been at home. Her mother and father had planned to take her to New York. Mr. Taylor had driven downtown alone in the morning, and had then come home to pick them up. Joyce came out to meet the car and said--for some reason she had, by now, forgotten--"Daddy, Mother's not coming. She said for us to go ahead." And they drove off together.

  She could not understand why this recollection kept to mind as they approached the front door. Unless it was because Frank had invited her to go to New York with him--although it might be better if she didn't mention it tonight. Since then, she had only had that one lunch with him during the week.

  As they mounted the steps, Tony suddenly took fright. "Look, why don't you just go in alone. I'll only be bored with old people like them. I'm going. You go ahead and stay here." He released her arm and turned to go back down.

  Tony!" Joyce hissed. "Don't you dare. You come right back here."

  She seized his elbow and pulled him along with her. Janice Burdette opened the door to the bell. She stood slender and blonde, with an alert look about her blue eyes, and a set of features to which animation and intelligence lent a beauty beyond features themselves. She said, "Hello, Joyce. You are Joyce, aren't you? Of course. Frank said you would be here this evening, and I'm afraid it's my fault that Junior isn't in bed yet Come on in, and I'll whisk him off to dreamland."

  In the middle of the living room floor a small boy, a very small boy with his little finger deeply intruded into his mouth, eyed the newcomers with a critical expression. He was standing a little straddle-legged, and the trap door of his pajama dangled open. Janice caught him up in her arms.

  "You just sit down here, and Frank'll be right in. Frank! Frank! Company! Would you like a drink? Of course you would. I'll have Frank make you one while I stuff the by-product into his bed." She fled from the room trailing a wake of friendliness just as Frank came in.

  Frank studied Tony Thrine as he performed the ritual of drink-making and strove, simultaneously, to keep up a flow of light, meaningless conversation. This was, of course, the cure that he needed. Once it was done--once this evening was over--he would see Joyce in her true perspective and she would see him. That was why he had insisted she bring Tony. Generation would belong to generation. Age to Age. And this would clearly point up the difference.

  He counted on Janice to fall in with his plan--perhaps not knowingly but still to fall in with it. Her maturity would fit together with his, like matched parts of a whole, while Tony and Joyce would naturally go together. And then he would be rid of his obsessive interest in this--this kid.

  Tony was a good-looking boy. You had to give him that. His dark hair was unruly, but not untidy. And at first, what seemed an entirely disjointed array of arms and legs and trunk on the divan became, on closer observation, a figure of graceful, feline ease--of total relaxation that could, catlike, instantly spring to action.

  Then the most appalling thought struck Frank. He wondered if Tony had--that is, had known Joyce intimately, as a lover. After all, they were the right age for it. Nineteen, Joyce was. How old was Tony? Frank asked him.

  "Eighteen," Tony said. "I'm just a year older than Joyce. We have the same birthday."

  It was like a stick of dynamite going off in his brain, and Frank almost spilled the brace of highballs he was carrying over to the pair on the couch. Seventeen! Holy cow! And here he had almost ... No. Hadn't thought of it for a second. Not a second. He rattled away furiously to conceal his shock. "You know, you two can get passes to anything you like. Movies. Even the major league ball games. After all, Joy--ce is a full-fledged newspaperwoman now." And then, "Where are you going to college, Tony?" Then, "I wanted to go to Harvard, too, when I was a kid." When I was a kid! Holy jumping Jesus! Look, Ma, I'm spinning.

  The pressure had eased a little when Janice came back downstairs. She led the
talk into feminine channels: clothes, travel, her trip to Maine on which she would leave tomorrow, how very easy was knitting once you got down to it, the latest rumor from Hollywood. It was amazing how easily Joyce and Janice got together. And yet, Frank thought he detected a certain tightness, as in the feeling-out thrusts of fencers, or the cautious sniffing of two suspicious dogs. But Janice was good. Really good. She could get along with anybody.

  Like with Jerry. He remembered the first time Janice had met Jerry. He had always known Jerry--before high school, even. But Janice had never met a Negro socially before, and he could imagine her New England background really getting in the way the first time. But she had fallen right in the groove. Not a word about the tea, even. You expected these upcountry girls from Maine and places like that to be real prudish. But once he and Jerry had explained about it, she'd fallen right in. Once she got it straight that it wasn't even as bad for you as liquor--well, now she was a regular old viper, like anybody else. That was the difference between Janice and other girls ...

  Other girls? Hadn't Joyce taken it the same way. But Joyce was only a kid and he was thirty-one--and what the hell was he thinking about!

  Janice said, "How do you feel about working on newspapers? Frank says you worked for the Courier last summer too, so I guess you must have made up your mind by now. Do you think you want to make a career of it?"

  "I've been thinking about it," she said. "I guess I'm still a little young to get steamed up about it, but I'd like to work on newspapers for a while and then somehow get on a big magazine like Seventeen or Harper's Bazaar."

  "I used to work for the Bazaar," Janice said. "I was an editorial assistant there. That's how I met Frank. We were both assigned to cover some demonstration of a new laundry machine. They always serve drinks at these press previews, and we both got a little tight and then he insisted on dragging me to some place in Harlem where he knew all the jazz musicians ..."

  Good old Janice, Frank thought. Consciously or unconsciously. She knew what she had to do, and was doing it.