The Marijuana Chronicles by Jonathan Santlofer Read Free Book Online Page B

for eight days and then take a day of rest. Alice called him a miracle of modern medicine. Her father was a doctor and after he met Jimmy he said the same thing.
    Alice was divorced. She lived in a suite of rooms on the second floor of her father’s sprawling duplex on the Upper West Side, on the park. She kept a full bar in her sitting room. She had cable TV long before the rest of us. Her mother had been an alcoholic who died young, and Alice was moving in the same direction. She worked in a boutique off Fifth Avenue, modeling swimsuits and designing displays. One afternoon, Jimmy stopped by with a bottle of champagne. The sales staff gathered around him with the customers in the store. When the boss arrived, Alice was fired. Jimmy was her consolation.
    He’s been here for three days, she said, when I went to see her. They hadn’t slept at all. She was sitting on her bed, doing her nails. Heavy chains were nailed to the wall above. Leather cuffs dangled from the chains.
    Jimmy wasn’t just the best sex she had ever had, he was the best fun. I can’t describe it, she said. Bondage appealed to her. Something about the resistance, she said, nodding toward the cuffs. The friction. The harder he pulled the more she wanted him. They fucked all day, all night. They had takeout. He made phone calls and then they fucked again. Of course, there was booze. Of course, there was pot and cocaine and pills. I’ve never been so wet, she said. It’s heaven.
    Alice was my best friend. She was almost as tall as Jimmy, but had dark curly hair and wore exaggerated makeup. When she laughed you could see bubbles in the air. More often she was sad, adrift. She felt like an orphan. In her laugh you felt the depth of her.
    Jimmy appeared with a bottle of Johnnie Walker. He downed some pills with it and rolled a joint. It was football season and there was a game on TV that he wanted to watch. The only thing that Jimmy liked better than getting stoned was football. And guns. He collected firearms and subscribed to magazines for enthusiasts. In high school, he’d been the quarterback. His only ambition had been to go pro but something had happened. He’d broken training. He’d gotten a girl pregnant. He’d beaten up the captain of the team, I don’t know. He had stories.
    Now he was back on the phone. Not to his girlfriend. His bookie. He bet on games and he won the bets, for himself and others. When the game was over, he passed out.
    Don’t go, Alice said. I don’t want to be alone.
    Sometimes Jimmy called to complain about his girlfriend or Johnny. I don’t know how they met. Johnny got on his nerves. He repeated everything he said and needed constant attention. Sometimes Jimmy called to buy weed. I always had a connection. One day he invited me over to his place. His girlfriend was at work and he wanted to play.
    I lived in the Village. He was in Spanish Harlem. I took the subway. I had to change trains a few times. It took forever. You gotta get out of that habit, he said. He looked mad.
    He had a one-bedroom on the eighth floor. He poured me a cup of coffee and locked himself in the bathroom. Excuse me, he said. I gotta go shoot up.
    What a joker. I laughed. And I waited. I sat on the leather couch in his living room, thumbing through the gun and fashion magazines on the coffee table. Thirty minutes later, he emerged in full makeup and a dress.
    Am I gorgeous or what? he said, sashaying across the room, a hand on one hip then the other. His gravelly voice had become a breathy falsetto. He ran his tongue over his lips. Think I could get a guy to pick me up in a bar? he twittered. I could go for some handsome devil in a suit.
    His slinky blue frock clung to his body, which suddenly seemed curvaceous. The slender legs were good and he walked in his girlfriend’s gold heels as if born to them. I took out my lipstick and applied it, partly in self-defense.
    You ought to be a model, I said.
    I know, he replied. I’m wasting my time