Hank turned on a fan. The leaves shivered in the breeze. He guided his hand over them, as if calming them.
“We do a couple hundred thousand dollars a year,” he boasted.
“You want some?” Savannah asked, chewing on a dread. “We can send you some.”
“Just a couple of ounces,” Hank clarified. “Margeaux will give us your address.”
Margeaux probably would do such a thing. When she returned from San Diego I would tell her everything about my Bridges of Sonoma County weekend. I would tell her I was starving and wound up trolling through a catalogue of scrotums with the neighbors. She wouldn’t even flinch.
“I don’t want to trouble you,” I said. “I can always sneak some in my luggage.”
I had no intention of doing that either.
“It’s no trouble,” said Hank. “I ship it all the time. I seal it in duct tape.”
The truth is I am not a big weed person. I say this as someone who has given it more than its fair share of chances. In return, it often makes me paranoid, stupid, and prehuman. If weed and I were dating, it would be one of those on-and-off relationships that goes on for years, the kind that usually ends with one of us in a bathtub at 4 a.m., saying, “My feet hurt, let’s get nachos.”
“Let’s go upstairs.” Savannah removed a bag from a temperature-controlled humidor. “Hank refuses to smoke in front of the plants.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Would you eat meat in front of a cow?” he asked me.
I would not. But I had also never been to a restaurant that offered.
* * *
Alex had put his earrings back in. Savannah blew smoke through his lobes. I was instantly, embarrassingly, uncontrollably high, but in a more delightful way than expected. Delightful to me, at least. I took a corner of the blanket and rolled myself up in the style of a human croissant. I could feel a layer of myself separating from the rest of me like the sole of a worn shoe. Hank squinted at me in the dark.
“What are you laughing at?”
“I’m not laughing,” I said.
“You are.”
“I can see up all your noses,” I announced, lying on my back like an overturned bug. “You know what word you don’t hear enough of? Cilia.”
“You’re coming with me,” Savannah said, steadying one of my ankles to keep it from hitting her in the face.
* * *
Never having owned a hot tub, I didn’t realize they could be locked. I assumed they just got covered in trash bags to prevent woodland creatures from falling in and that was that. Apparently, what one does is purchase a zippered cover, put a padlock on the zipper, crisscross the entire tub in wire, and tie the wire in a knot.
“Are you sure your neighbors are okay with this?” I whispered.
I took a sip from my wineglass, which I had brought with me, like a blankie.
“Yeah,” Savannah said, waving me away. “I do it all the time.”
She fiddled with the wire knot, bending down so that her tunic gaped open to reveal her braless chest. A motion-sensitive light turned on, attracting moths.
“Hey,” I spoke to the ground, “when’s the last time you saw me with shoes?”
She was growing frustrated.
“I can’t get this thing open.”
“Here,” I said, setting my drink down, “let me do it.”
She stood upright with her hands on her hips, hovering above me while I leaned down and pretended to listen for clicks in the padlock wheel.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
During college, I used to cram a dining hall pass into my door frame when I forgot my keys. This was the extent of my lock-picking expertise.
“You’re blocking the light,” I said. “I can’t see.”
“I thought you were listening.”
“I’m doing both.”
“Do you know what might help?” she whispered. “Pliers.”
“Pliers,” I agreed, “or permission.”
“I have permission,” she insisted. “I do this all the time.”
Just then a popping sound ripped through the air. It whistled over our heads like a comet rustling through the braches. If wildlife scampered, I didn’t notice. Probably because I was distracted by the sound of someone trying to kill me. Savannah and I hit the deck just as an authoritative male voice called down from the porch.
“Goddamnit, Savannah!”
Was everyone handed a shotgun when they bought property around here? Savannah and I hid behind the wall of the tub, legs forward as if we had been wounded on the battlefield.
“Are we gonna get murdered now?” I whispered, trying not to laugh.
“Nah,” she said, “it’s too dark to get murdered.”
My hazy mind instantly accepted this logic. Even if it hadn’t, I was in Savannah’s hands now, living by the rules of her territory. Which felt like my territory too, a hella magical place of weed and creativity and pancake nipples. It’s easy to be dismissive of people like Savannah from a distance, specifically the three thousand miles of gradating culture that separates New York from California. For New Yorkers, the assumption is that, given a Xanax and a hammock, we could survive in their world, but they could not survive in ours. But I have rarely known New Yorkers who are as up for anything as Hank and Savannah.
“I know you’re out there!” cried the hot tub’s owner, firing another shot straight up into the air.
“You do this all the time, huh?”
“Some of the time,” she admitted. “Twice.”
“Should we?” I mouthed, making my fingers run in the air.
Savannah shook her head no. We listened to the crunch of her neighbor pacing back and forth on dry pine needles. It sounded like the marching of an entire army. At long last, he gave up and went inside the house. Savannah turned to whisper something soothing in my ear, but I will never know what it was because I
