“So you’re not new to the reefer?” Kevin pries.
   Impartially, “I’ve smoked before, but it gets me headachy the next day if I have too much.”
   With a hose of the loaded hookah in his grip, “But I thought you couldn’t smoke too much pot,” Brent fends.
   Allison, leveling, “You can smoke too much.” 
   “Are you kidding, Brent?” Kevin, with a stunted laugh, “Did you see Larry?”
   “He’s okay. Kinda out there.”
   “He is fantastically functional given all the weed he smokes, but he’s chronically forgetful, it can desensitize him to compassion, and, uh, sometimes he’s bananas.”
   Brent’s fear is renewed. “Then it is a dangerous drug.”
   “No more dangerous than your coffee.” Kevin spurs, “Do it. That is some high-caliber green medicine that will do you a world of good. But remember, this is how much weed you need now to balance the speed. Tonight you can smoke it like a chimney but don’t – make a bad habit of it.”
   “If I made it a habit,” Brent applies logic to naiveté, “that would be bad, wouldn’t it?”
   “Naw. You could do it regular without problems, depending on your tolerance and the kind of herb. This is sativa, which makes for a more energetic, cerebral high. Some of the indica breeds can knock you right on your ass.”
   “Sativa and indica?”
   “Those are the two smokable species of cannabis. Larry’s strictly a sativa man, and he grows the milder ones. When it’s too strong, you get real vegetative, but that can be good medicinally. With a joint a day of most kinds though, you’d have nothing to worry about. It’s when it becomes an all day/every day thing …”
   “Wake and bake …” Allison reckons.
   “Never giving your brain any time off it …”
   “You’ll know when you’ve gone too far. Your moods and memory will be affected even when you’re not smoking it. And it’ll make you both more impulsive and compulsive.”
   “And paranoid,” Kevin rounds out. “But other than that and some ‘senior moments,’ the impact is negligible. The thing is, if you do go too far, you can cut back and your tolerance will go down. In moderation, it’s harmless.”
   Brent listens queerly, far from pacified.
   Standing up, Kevin lights the buds. “No matter how much you smoke tonight, it won’t make you a pothead. Go on. Have fun! Like Larry says, one hundred percent guilt free.”
   Brent takes a bubbling toke on the hookah hose, blows, and tokes again, the cherry in the bowl growing. His respire fogs the center of the room.
   Kevin, “Damn!”
   “You got some lungs there, Brent,” Allison laughs.
   Taking a sharp inhale, the sophomore smoker coughs and it gets worse until finally, wheezing, he’s good again.
   Allison passes him his water. “You okay?”
   With a few easier, quick coughs, Brent merely nods, slapping his chest. He empties his glass.
   “Drink more water,” Kevin champions. “Dehydration is the biggest side effect of pot, and you’ll be in a much bigger hurt, hung over from the speed, if you don’t keep your insides wet.”
   Eyes red as fire engines, Brent nods again and gets up. He sets a near-empty jug of spring water on the floor and another glass on the small table and pulls up his chair. He’s hoarse from the spasms. “My throat’s gonna feel this tomorrow, isn’t it?”
   “It’s not so bad.” Kevin pulls out his pack of cigarettes. “You want some wretched morning hackage, you need to smoke too many of these.”
   “That, I am smart enough to avoid.”
   Kevin, acerbically, “You’re smart enough to avoid cigarettes but not speed.”
   “I wasn’t doing the speed to get off.”
   “Why were you doing it?” Allison asks.
   Brent glances up at the gambrel peak wearily, “You’ve already heard the worst, huh?”
   Bluntly, “Have I?”
   “This has been some week.” Brent turns to the patterns on the walls, the hypnotic shapes and colors and pearlescence, and then stonedly comes around to his new friends, who restrain their laughter. “What? Oh.” He takes a slow breath, of euphoria rather than procrastination. “I was trying to kill myself,” he finishes with a cheerful smirk.
   “How did we miss that?” Allison is astounded.
   Kevin grins at his still highly preoccupied friend, “Brent?” 
   “Wuh? How did we miss the – suicidal? There was a lot going on, a lot to tell. There was so much going on to – to … hey … I’m really, really, really high.”
   The other two are suspended in jocular dismay. They segue with their friend from deadly serious to stoned zen. Like Brent, they find his earlier mortal crisis to be irrelevant.
   “Do you guys like caramel corn? I love that shit.”
   Allison and Kevin giggle at Brent. He joins in with some throaty chuckles and carries on after the others have ceased, thoroughly enjoying himself and the loopy liberation of the cannabis.
   Kevin, loud through the laughs, “Brent … Brent!”
   “What?”
   “What’s so funny?”
   Allie’s bright with a big smile. “Yeah, that’s a little inappropriate, isn’t it?”
   “Kind of … maybe … what were we talking about?”
   This sets the other two off once more.
   Brent’s brow creases in the struggles of sess-soaked memory. “Were we talking about caramel corn?”
   Kevin and Allison are in stitches, with each glimpse of the other, or at Brent’s perplexion, making them laugh all the harder. Kevin squeezes out, “Caramel corn and suicide.”
   Allie, amidst her own jollity, “Caramel corn, crystal meth, and suicide.”
   “Not necessarily in that order,” Kevin amends.
   “Yeah.” Brent retraces, “I tried to kill myself this morning … what was I thinking?”
   “Exactly! Because if you’re dead, no more caramel corn.”
   Allison settles down. “I wasn’t judging you. I wished I was dead twice today.”
   “Some things about life are hell – even two hells to go through.” Brent declares grandly until he loses the train, “But if they’re the price we have to pay for times like this, then … then … I had this – you guys – you guys are great, you know that?”
   Kevin, solemnly, “My friend, you are well and truly stoned.”
   “And hungry. Man!”
   Indicating a cupboard behind a vibrant blue drape, “Help yourself to Larry’s snacks. But don’t clean him out.”
   Brent jumps into the exploration.
   Allison smiles to Kevin. He melodically mutters, “Hey, hey, it’s the munchies.”
   “No way!” Brent brings back a holiday tin the size of the mini-fridge. Opening it up, he jabbers with joy, “Ask and ye shall receive!”
   The tin is in thirds, with full bags of popcorn and caramel corn and one section emptied.
   “How old is that?” Allison beholds the package with trepidation.
   “Who cares? They’re sealed.” Brent tears open the caramel corn.
   “Isn’t it from at least last Christmas?”
   Through a mouthful of bliss, “Tazeshd grade to me, man.”
   “It’s not gross?”
   “Try some! This is heaven!” He stuffs his face again. “Diz shid is sho good.”
   Kevin and Allison each try some, ready to be disgusted, but are unexpectedly pleased.
   Allison, reading the tin, “All the cheese popcorn is gone. Is that the only kind Larry likes?”
   “Prefab, it is. Larry loves his cheese popcorn. You can clean him out of this if you want, Brent.”
   He sizes up the multi-gallon tin with goggling hunger, “We’ll shee.”
   “Suddenly I don’t feel so desired,” Allison deadpans.
   “Hmm?” Brent, cheeks puffed with caramel corn, turns to Allison and his chewing slows.
   “Up till the munchies attack, you couldn’t take your eyes off me.”
   He swallows, enthralled all over again. With the frank expression of intoxication, he says, “You’re so hot in the flowy hippie-wear.”
   “Thank you, Brent. Now quit staring so hard, you’re creeping me out.”
   Then he fulfills the self-control capacity of the herb, “Sorry. You’ve clearly set the line.”
   “Brent, if things were remotely normal, we could mess around and see what’s what, but – we just met.”
   “He still has a shot?” Kevin quizzes. “Lucky guy.”
   With a shy peek to Brent, Allison clarifies, “It doesn’t have much to do with luck.”
   Brent rewinds, “You’re right though. Things are jacked, for all of us.”
   She adds, “And who can say where we’ll be in a week?”
   “I, sadly, will be here.” Brent edits, “Or hereabouts.”
   Allison nods but looks long at Brent with speculative appetite. “What about you, Kevin?”
   “There’s no other place for me to go.”
   “You gotta get back to your job, Allison?” Brent asks.
   “I should.” Bleakly, “What am I gonna do here but be more miserable about my – dad?”
   “Shit!” Kevin barks.
   Allison and Brent are alarmed, “What?”
   “I don’t have any other place to go. My aunt disowned me this morning.”
   “Why?” Allison questions.
   “Because she thought I was mixed up with the drugs and the dealers and the fire – which I was, but not like she thinks. I don’t want to be on the streets again.”
   “Couldn’t you stay here?”
   “I could, but I don’t want to impose on Larry and Cathy – aw hell, I might be out of a job too.”
   “Lemme talk to her,” Brent offers, “I can convince her of the truth.”
   Extremely doubtful, “Is that the speed talking again?”
   “No! Maybe. But spending most of my life as the All-American Boy Scout has to pay off somewhere. I’m a good talker and people trust me.” Kevin still doesn’t believe him. “I can get her to see your side, really, I can. I could sell shoes to a snake.” Appreciating his disheveled, up-all-night-and-day appearance, “Not like this, obviously – but I clean up good.”
   “You better,” Allison baits.
   “Are you trying to torture me?”
   She endears with diffidence, “I’m sorry, Brent. I’m trying to encourage you.”
   “As well as being clear about your boundaries.”
   “Exactly.”
   Brent’s smile charms, “But I can’t look at you?”
   “Don’t stare at me like a dead shark. I want you to look …”
   “Oh yeah?”
   “Mmhmm.”
   Shaking off the sexual tension, “This is not – we better stop talking about it. It’s getting me frustrated.”
   “I’m a terrible flirt, Brent. I don’t want to get you frustrated.” Allison sighs, “Bear with me. I’m still trying to feel like myself.”
   “I understand. But you’re an extraordinary flirt. And my frustration’s not your fault. I think the speed is making me more – hard up than usual.”
   “Or the Mary Jane,” Kevin updates.
   Brent, apprehensively, “The weed too?”
   “Some people get extra sexy with the doobage – our hosts, for example. But if you guys could ease off the romance in front of me, maybe I could stop feeling so hard up.”
   “Of course,” Allison remedies.
   “Sorry, Kev – Kevin. I don’t want to make you feel like a third wheel. We aren’t – did they come up with that after the invention of the bicycle or something? Which wheels do they mean?”
   Kevin, “You got me.”
   Allison, sniggering, “Larry was wrong, you are funny.”
   “Apparently only when I’m not trying to be.”
   Getting up, Kevin selects a jazz station from the stereo. The smooth, cool tune is Cannonball Adderley’s version of “Autumn Leaves.”
   “Jazz? You?”
   “What? Something wrong with old music?”
   …
   “No.” Brent grooves to the tempo. “I never would have thought of you as a fan of jazz, though.”
   “I love it when I paint.”
   “You’re gonna paint?”
   “The jazz might get me in the mood. Or help me visualize the middle.”
   “Still, you and jazz.”
   “Bebop is improvisational, intuitive – it helps me do the same. Didn’t Einstein say something about inspiration through music?”
   “I have no idea.” Allison drinks her water.
   Brent, pondering, “Yeah, he did. I know this! Uhhh …”
   Kevin goofs to Allison, “I’m like that even without pot. I can barely remember a name, much less a whole quote.”
   She shams prim, “I don’t quote, I paraphrase,” but shortly de-facades with more giggles.
   “No, he did, wait – I love that quote. He was talking about his insight into special relativity, but I always linked it to string theory’s vibrations as quantum music. Hold on.” Brent appeals over their silly sputters, “Lemme think – shh! – umm … ‘The intuition occurred to me –’ wait. ‘It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.’”
   Attraction curls into the levity of Allison’s smile. For this, Brent is visibly tantalized.
   “George Clinton wrote a song about musical perception,” Kevin snarks.
   “George Clinton? P-Funk?”
   Surprised, “You’re less whitebread than I gave you credit for.”
   “Thanks,” Brent voices sardonically. “What’s the song about musical perception?”
   “Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow.”
   Brent smirks for the corny joke.
   Then Allison splices in, “‘The opposite of a great truth is also true.’ Niels Bohr.” Brent and Kevin stare at her, ready to burst. “Well, it is.”
   They all three fall into laughter once more. Subdued sooner, they quiet to nourishing diversion, a forgetfulness that heals faster than time.
   
   ‘The artist in disgrace discovers grace, playing on, the plaintive jazz ballad a balm over a past, relinquished. He’s no longer aware nor given to care for the lines that defined him for years.’
   ‘The bereaved daughter of a lie finds the light, in the exotic bands and colors, in the curtains and tribal patterns undulating all around her, helping her lose her mind on an easy tether.’
   ‘The problem solver sees no problem at all. Absorbed in the dog paintings, and the energy actualized in their making, he’s no longer on the run. In unframed fate, he finds faith without seeking.’