Chapter 6
For several days I’ve been playing out the potential repercussions of having broken my manager Tutu’s ribs with a bike lock. I’m smoking copious amounts of Catatonic, an Indica strain that deals with anxiety and migraines while wondering if I should tell Steve what happened. We’re old friends, but I can’t say he would fire our manager over me. I decide Tutu is probably pondering the same thing, and besides, he broke my iPhone to set off the dust up.
Our dispatcher’s code name is “Lily.” I’m not supposed to know anything more about her and was told to communicate with her strictly via text. This is by design as that she is in possession of “the phone” and the entire customer database which is worth $500k to a rival delivery service.
Over the course of 6 months, I’ve made some emergency calls to dispatch, along the way gathering little morsels of info: Lily is a single mother in her late 30’s, living in Brooklyn with her 3-year-old son. She enjoys hearing out my paranoid diatribes as I pace in front of buildings, convinced the authorities are waiting for me on the other side of the door. She’s good at walking me off the ledge, convincing me to enter.
Today I call Lily to complain that we’re now selling mushrooms. I don’t mind, but we are entering into a different classification of drugs, and it’s a worthy conversation to have with her, or at least an excuse to talk.
“You don’t have to sell them if you don’t want to. I won’t say anything,” Lily promises. I bullshit with her for a minute, digging around, wondering if Tutu’s been acting strange. “No, he’s an asshole as per usual,” she says without question.
I ask her about her kids, and she complains that she had to wait 15 minutes for the F-train last night. I wonder if she lives in Carrol Gardens…
I bike uptown to Anthony’s apartment. He's surprisingly upbeat considering the loss of his aunt, uncle and their infant child who crashed into a barrier in the outskirts of Orlando last week. He actually went through with it and quit his job on Wall Street and for some reason is eager to ride the bike, delivering weed. We go over all the strains, prices, and I give him a prepaid phone. “It’s a piece of cake,” I tell him as he takes out his $3,000 Trek Madone that he’s only ridden a few times before.
I drop my dog Goof off with Jamie. Post abortion, she’s pretty beat up and in need of some company.
I borrow my cousin Jimmy’s ’74 Plymouth Fury and pick up Lottie in Bushwick. She comes out of a shabby apartment complex, skipping like she’s about to do a Maypole dance. Not to say she’s a Nazi, but if she were born a century ago, she would have been pursued by some high-power Nazis. She’s wearing a white dress with beat up white Chuck Taylor’s. She came to NYC with nothing and doesn’t have any dress shoes for the wedding. I take her to a vintage store and buy her a pair. She promises to pay me back, but I’m not counting on it. Lottie is so fucking sexy that out of defense, I check my Raya app for new connections.
The Mexican festivities ahead have me feeling ethnic, and I’m pumping Wolfetones Irish rebel music as we pull up to the wedding. Back when Steve and I were moving weight, Santana would take 20 pounds at a time, and in spite of Steve and Santana’s falling out, we always remained close. I’ve known his daughter Laura since she was born and am feeling pretty old that she's getting married.
Mariachis are jamming out, and Santana forces Lottie and I to join in. I’m not a good dancer, but the place is so packed with carefree cowboy hat wearing Mexicans that I’m feeling comfortable in my goofiness.
Dinner is served as my phone begins ringing uncontrollably. It’s Anthony, frantically trying to catch his breath.
“They tried to kill me!” he finally gets out.
“Who?”
“Three guys.”
The mariachis are really hitting a crescendo as I quickly walk into the bathroom. Anthony explains that he went to do a delivery on 147th St. As he came down the stairs to exit the building three guys attacked him with baseball bats. He took a few blows before they robbed him of his box of weed and his expensive bike. He seems ok. He’s not going to the hospital, or the cops.
“I don’t think I’m cut out for this,” Anthony says, quitting on his first day.
Laura and Herman take their first dance as man and wife. Santana’s family is very old school Catholic, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they stay married for the rest of their lives.
“Blanquito!” Santana calls me. We do some more awkward Mexican dancing, but he can tell something is off with me. When he pulls me aside, I tell him, “I might need your help with something.”
Lottie comes back to my house, and we smoke a joint of Dosi Do. I attempt to have sex with her, but Dosi Do numbs the senses and awakens the devil’s advocate inside that laughs in the face of impotence. I can’t stop thinking about Anthony getting robbed. I’ve got 6 missed calls from Steve and Dispatch, but I decide to deal with it in the morning.
“What’s going on in there?” Lottie taps on my head, referring to my erectile disfunction. I try to focus on the blood that I need to flow into my penis to make my cock hard, overanalyzing my anatomy. Dosi Don’t is more like it.
After failing to launch, Lottie starts talking about this psychology class she’s taking, and I realize that I don’t really know much about her. I thought she was just a waitress, when in fact she’s studying to be a journalist at Columbia University graduate school. She tells me that she wants to be a journalist, like me.
“I don’t write for a local paper,” I cut the bullshit. “It’s been years since I’ve published anything.” I show her my closet full of marijuana vials, expecting her to think less of me. She doesn’t flinch.
We do a blind taste test of the marijuana strains, and Lottie chooses the Citrus Burzt to smoke out of my bong.
Newly reenergized and feeling absolved of my dishonesty, in between tokes of the tart THC. I fuck her standing up with reckless abandon.
With Lottie asleep next to me, I stare at the ceiling, wondering if it's at all possible Anthony and his family just have really bad luck. Wishful thinking. I’ve never been robbed before, and deep down in my gut I know that I was supposed to be working tonight. I can be very begrudging, and even in my sativa inspired dreams, I begin plotting.