Snowstorms in a Hot Climate by Sarah Dunant Read Free Book Online Page A

already become an in-joke between us, something I could tease him about. Although even then I think the reason I teased was that at some level I resented his sense of superiority, his possessiveness toward the drug. In all other things we thought and argued equally.
    “The women I’ve been around usually get to like it a lot. Maybe more than the men. Yes.”
    “Are you warning me?”
    “No. I was just thinking out loud, that’s all.”
    He got up and came over to the table. I pushed the mirror toward him. He sat down and plucked a note from his wallet, rolling it carefully into a funnel. Holy communion. Getting ready for the host. I watched in silence. Then he put out a finger and rubbed a little of the powder on his gums.
    “The first guy I ever scored from in Colombia had been doing coke for fifty years. He was a walking history book. He’d lived through civil wars, revolutions, you name it. He had a face like the north side of the Eiger, and he dressed like a fashion plate. He was right out of Carlos Castaneda, a mix of streetwise and mystic. I never really figured him out. But he never fucked me over, and he taught me a lot about cocaine. He had a particular attitude to it. Very Latin American. You won’t like it. He saw it as a power relationship. He used to say that coca was like a certain kind of woman, the sort who isn’t satisfied until she takes over a man. Once you understood that, you could resist her, and if you resisted her then she would love you even more and the affair would go on forever. But once you let her in, let her take you over, she’d suck you dry.”
    He was right. I didn’t like it. “He may have felt like Castaneda, but he sounds more like Norman Mailer to me.”
    He shook his head impatiently. “Sure. I know it’s a stereotype, but don’t jump on it just because you don’t like the analogy. Get behind it. What he was saying is true. If you get involved with coke, you have to work out a philosophy, some ground rules. And his advice is as good as any. Use it, but always make sure it’s that way around.”
    I felt like a child who’d been caught playing adult games, tryingtoo hard to be grown-up. I didn’t like feeling so young to his age.
    “Thanks for the lecture, Lenny. Don’t worry. I think I’ve done enough to understand a little.”
    “And how much is enough, Elly?” he said softly. “If you stay around me, you’re going to be swimming in it. So much you could drown. All I’m saying is don’t go out of your depth. Because I won’t come out and save you. The reason I’m good at what I do is that I never go that far in. We’re good together. I want it to stay that way. But I won’t break my rules for anyone. Not even you.”
    There was no reply. The words were hard and cold and deliberate. I couldn’t shrug them off. It was a declaration of intent, a kind of prenuptial settlement, and I didn’t want to sign. He watched me while I tried to disguise my discomfort. Then he handed me the rolled note and pushed the mirror toward me. I shook my head, got up, and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind me. He didn’t follow.
    I had been warned, Marla. He’d said it. On a straight fight between me and the coke, he would protect her first. I couldn’t say I hadn’t been told.
    Of course, in the beginning none of it mattered, not for the first few months. When we got back to New York he made a couple of calls from the airport, put me in a cab to the apartment, and went off to move the coke. He didn’t tell me where and he didn’t tell me how long he’d be away. He was gone three days. During that time he picked it up, cut it, subdivided it, and moved it on. The shorter the time he held it, the less the risk. And it was all big deals, that was the other trick. Lenny dealt only in kilos upward, and he sold only to a few chosen people. They in turn would recut it into smaller amounts, and others would cut it again into grams. By the time it hit the streets,