Frenzy

way in just a few weeks. But he was already beginning to bore of the game, and the more he tired of her treasures, the more difficult it would be for him to sustain the illusion.

'Have you loved these weeks together as much as I have, Tiff?'

'Oh, God. You know I have. I've almost forgotten what it was like before. I want you for my husband, Greg. I want us to settle down and raise a family together,' she said, her cat's eyes blinking. Her maternal instincts were very strong.

'That's what I want too. Look, I can just see us in that little snowbound log cabin up in the mountains, and the snow is falling, and we put another log on the fire, cuddle close together under the blankets, and make our first child together. Wouldn't that be wonderful?'

'Ummmm.'

They kiss. First soft, little tender smooches that he knows will light her fire, and then he's going to work with his hands and the hard, probing, wet kisses begin, and just as she starts lighting up, he pulls back a little and looks at her with his sexy California blues and says, 'If you help me, doll baby, we can have all that right away.'

'What do you mean? Of course I'll help you.' She smiles.

He kisses her and goes over and gets something out of his pocket and brings it back to the bed and shows it to her.

'What's that?'

'That is our ticket outta here, Tiff. That's our nest egg. That's what's going to let us be together and raise a family.'

She looks at the little vial with her wide cat's eyes. 'Yeah?'

'Dynamite White,' he tells her. 'Serpico, White Cloud Nine, Supersnow! I've got a way for us to get it all, baby doll, and I mean now. Me and Roger have this guy who can get us enough of this shit that one big sale will set us up and you and I can cut. We'll be out of this forever.'

'Wow.'

'Yeah. Thing is it is going to take one shitload of bucks to get us together. And we are stoney, man.'

'I thought we had lots of money. I gave you all I had and the jewelry and you had the —'

'Yeah. Right. But we been in the Deuville for thirty-eight days. Double occupancy is a bitch. Just our motel bill alone has tapped us out. And we've got to get a score while we can or we'll lose our man here, and I'll end up a bag boy somewhere and you'll be waiting tables in a greasy spoon.'

'I don't mind waiting tables, Greg. At least you can't get arrested waiting tables, ya know?'

'Yeah, well just forget that. We've got to move some shit, and I need bucks.'

'I gave you everything I had, except for maybe fifteen dollars or so. You can have that.' She starts to get up and get her purse.

'Hey, Tiff. Forget the fifteen bucks. Come on, man. Be serious with me. This is our future we're talking about.'

'I was being serious. I thought you needed money.'

'Yeah. Well, I need money. Not fifteen fucking dollars. I need three thousand bucks.'

'Honey, I don't have three thousand bucks.'

'Listen to me.' He comes back over on her with the curls and the beautiful eyes right in her face, talking very fast, almost in a whisper. 'You told me you wanted us to be a family. Look. Both of us are gonna have to make a big sacrifice if we're going to be together always and take care of each other. I got you. You're my only resource, Tiff. You gotta help me, baby. I'm going to ask you to do something that you're not going to want to do, but when I explain it all to you, you'll see it is the best way for us. I don't want you doing what I'm going to ask of you, but, baby, it's the only way, believe me. We've got to have enough to get our nest egg together, right? And I've got to be able to protect you — to keep you out of that prison you were in — and I'm the only one who can do that for you. Just like you're the only one who can do this for me.'

'What do you want me to do?' she whispered.

'We've got to get some good bucks together fast. You're all I've got. Listen, I need you to pull a couple of dates with guys. Now don't hit the ceiling. I —'

'You WHAT?' She starts laughing. 'You want me to what?'

'I don't want it any more than you do. I don't particularly get off on the idea of my future wife having sex with other guys. But if you just —'

'Come on. Don't talk like this. You're nutsy.'

'Like it's not such a big deal, anyway. Roger has this guy, nice-looking older dude with lots of money always wanting to get some young stuff. All you got to do is let him do it for a few minutes and we can —'

'GREG! Stop it.'

'Everybody hustles. Couple, three minutes with a guy. It's not like it was a big deal, and you'll come back to me and we'll do lines and fuckin' forget it. And pretty soon we'd have enough I can make our score.'

'Fuckin' forget it, all right. You got that part right.' She's still laughing at the absurdity of it. 'You crazy nut.'

'I'm not kidding you. You've got to do it to help us. I don't like the idea either, but we've got a big chance here. I love you, doll. I want to get a home for us. A new start. But it's never going to work if you keep telling me to forget it. How would you like it if, uh, when you told me you wanted me to take you away from that old man of yours, I'd said, Bullshit — forget about it. You wouldn't have liked it much, am I right?'

She looked over at him. He was serious about this. 'I want us to be together but I want it to be right. This wouldn't make it right. If you're really serious, just put it out of your mind. I couldn't do it if I wanted to, which I don't. I'm not that kind of girl.'

'I know that, angel. I know you're not that kind of girl.' He began backing off it as he always did. He'd accomplished all he'd set out to do — put the germ of the idea in there for her to play with. He gave her a big smile. 'We'll find a way. Don't worry about it.' He lit the rock and took a lungful of the wonderful Dynamite White. A little piece of the rock.

'Ooof. Awesome,' he said.

'Bastard,' she chided him with a smile as he offered her the little glass pipe. 'You really had me going.' Greg looked as handsome as a movie star to her, she thought.

'Ummm.' He smiled noncommittally.

She let out a big hit of it and they sat there on the edge of the bed together, listening to it crack as it cooked away, blowing both their minds with its magic, and they sat there quietly smoking, awed by the instant transformation. And the smoke made them both supremely intelligent, brilliantly wise, and impervious to the slings and arrows that wound lesser mortals.

As long as we're together we're never going to die, she thought, by chance quite correctly.

'How good is his shit?' Greg asked Roger.

'This is Cocaine MacNugget, my man.'

'Do what?'

'Superpure and superpotent. Guaran-fuckin'-teed to kick your brain in the ass, and it's our shot.'

'How cool is this guy?'

'Hey. He's fucking golden, man. He's never burned any damn body with this good shit of his. We can come out on top with this one. He's got the most unstoppable, unstepped-on Dynamite White you can buy. Shit we can cook up into the best crack on the street. Two ounces will make enough pellets for five hundred fucking vials, Greg, and that's not even counting our own smoke. It's a beautiful deal, man. But we gotta move on it.

'Fuck it. Let's do it.'

'Turn the bitch out, champ. We need it soon as you get it.'

'No sweat,' he said, grinning. 'She'll be a fuckin' gold mine down here.'

The new junk disease was endemic to neither ghetto, barrio, locale, region, country, nor people. It was ubiquitous, nondiscriminatory, and omnipotent. It could be found everywhere from East Forty-second Street to East L.A., and it was available to everyone from street animals to Granny. It would write some beautiful stuff on the slate of your mind for a heavenly quarter-hour and then take you back down on a roller-coaster rush ninety floors down to the basement.

The problem is that your brain loves the shit, and when you come down almost as fast as you went up, your