Drop by Mat Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

even colder than London, wind blowing at my non-coated self. David’s steps before me were long, stomping, reaching too far for those little legs. People he passed turned after his wake to see if he was joking. Behind him I could already smell the liquor; in the back of the chauffeured car it was like my nose was in the bottle’s mouth.
    ‘Bit of a road trip, this.’ David put his head against the window and started humming to the song the driver was playing on the radio. Outside was another place I didn’t know. Bright advertisements for products I’d never heard of in a language I couldn’t speak. New and shiny things in a place that was as old as Philly pretended to be. Look at this. So much beauty and I was in it, zipping around in an unmarked cab that was a fancier car than I’d ever been in. Going into a city that looked so good I wanted to walk the ride. Beside me David had gone quiet, no sound except for heavy breathing and occasional near snores. He didn’t move again until we were way into the city, over canals and amid narrow cobblestone streets bumpier than Germantown Avenue. When the car died he came alive.
    ‘This is it,’ David said, smacking his lips and giving some notes to the driver. He opened his car door, so I did the same with mine. David glanced around and then started walking towards a shop without even looking back to see if I was following.
    Inside the door was the stank of pot smell. The place was set up like an old tobacco shop, with the product in large containers behind humidor doors. David put both fists down on the glass counter and said to the man behind it, ‘Give me a sample of the freshest stuff you’ve got.’
    ‘Any particular taste or high you’re going for?’ The clerk was David’s age, English also. His hair had been sawed down to an uneven brown turf. Maybe he’d done it himself, without a mirror.
    ‘Only that it is the absolute best, truly best, and freshest bit of spliff in here.’ The clerk gave a squinty smile of stained teeth, then reached under the counter, lifted a lid, and stood up with a small silver dish filled with the stuff. ‘Hawaiian,’ he offered. David looked at it close, bending down to smell it, and then without standing back up said to me, ‘Chris, do us a favor. Tell me what marijuana is like, physically.’
    ‘I don’t know much about it. I don’t really smoke this shit. And I don’t plan on changing that.’
    ‘Right, but that said, describe the product for me, the uninitiated.’
    ‘It looks sort of like tobacco, except green.’
    ‘Right. What about its consistency.’
    ‘Dried. A bit brittle, I think.’
    ‘Very good, Chris, very good.’ The clerk had found some way to make his silly smile even bigger, watching me.
    ‘Now, Chris, look at this.’ David took a pinch at the substance under his nose and lifted it to the air, and then to my nose. It didn’t smell like anything you’d smoke if you were afraid to die. Its color was dark green and brown, moist and soft like moss.
    ‘Watch.’ David held it about a foot over the countertop, and those big ham hock muscles flexed. There was trembling in his hands, like he was trying to pinch coal into diamond. Then, like a forced birth, it dripped. One perfect drop, heavy, dark and thick, fell down to the glass. I bent down to look at it, this oily emerald swirling on the counter.
    ‘Do you see that, Chris?’ David asked in awe.
    ‘I see.’ Look at that thing. A kaleidoscope of reflections swimming on its surface.
    ‘That’s the stuff, that. That’s what you should be doing. Everything you create, everything you bring to the world, that’s how good it needs to be. A drop. I know you’re capable, because you’ve done it before. And I can tell you got more than one drop in you.’ David turned his pinching fingers up to me, revealing the pulp that was stuck there. ‘That, that’s you, that is. Fresh, gifted, brought all the way from America. You have it in you, Chris. You