“Winky, man, how long you been standing here?” Timmy glanced up and down the block, at the cars parked on either side of the road. Ten, maybe fifteen, had a clear view of the porch.
Winky Blanchard was a fucking moron.
“You could’ve texted me,” said Timmy.
“I did,” Winky said.
Timmy reached for his phone and sure enough, there was Winky’s text: This is Anthony. Are you home?
Inside, Winky settled into the couch. Timmy clicked on the television. Then he reached behind his chair and fished two fat buds out of the jar. “I’m out of Bay One. This is Bay Two.”
Winky did his signature blink: left eye first, then the right, like a breeze blowing across his face. He said, “I like the One.”
Timmy was tired of hearing this. All his customers liked the One, which should have been good news but wasn’t. His inventory was unreliable—and in the retail space, supply chain was everything. In the retail space, you lived and died by its whims.
Bay Two was a dense bud, slightly seedy so it weighed heavy. Timmy placed two fat buds on the scale between his feet. The digital display read .125—an eighth ounce precisely, Winky’s usual order. Week after week he rode the commuter boat up from Grantham, forty minutes each way, to buy his tiny bag of weed.
Winky Blanchard was a fucking moron, but this was possibly not his fault. There was a story Timmy vaguely remembered—an accident, a lawsuit. Somewhere along the way, Winky had gotten his eggs scrambled. Whether he was any sharper before the accident was impossible to say.
As he double-bagged the weed, Timmy found himself telling the story—he wasn’t sure why—about the douchebag in the SUV. This ain’t the drive-thru.
“I can’t play it like that,” he told Winky. “I have a kid.”
Winky’s eyes darted around the room—nervously, as if he expected Timmy’s kid to jump out of a closet. “You have a kid?”
“In Florida. He’s fourteen.” Was it possible he’d never mentioned his son? He lost track of what he said to people. He’d known Winky his whole life, in the same vague way he knew everyone who grew up in the neighborhood. Winky still lived in Grantham with his mother, two blocks away from Timmy’s parents.
“He’s not getting along with his mother. Which, believe me.” Timmy reached for the clicker and turned up the volume. “I tell her, send him up here if you can’t handle him.”
They stared at the TV screen. The NECN news anchor was a woman who didn’t belong on television. On every other network, the female reporters looked like porn stars. This one was sturdy and plain-faced, like an intrepid mail carrier who spent her days out in the cold.
Winky took a pipe from his pocket and packed a substantial bowl. Say what you want about Winky, he always shared his weed.
IN THE AFTERNOON TIMMY SET OUT DRIVING. HE MADE THE trip once a month—oftener than he’d like, oftener than he should have to, but Marcel was stubborn about how much weight he’d sell.
Timmy didn’t mind the drive north. Driving was his favorite activity, his one talent, the thing he did best in life. The return trip was the problem, untold hours idling on Route 128 with several pounds of Class D controlled substance stashed in his trunk.
He weaved along surface roads, through dense neighborhoods. The snow piles were stupendous. The narrow side streets were lined with decrepit cars—wounded veterans of the traffic wars, the city’s disintegrating roads and bridges; cars in such beshitted condition nobody would believe they were still operable and yet you saw them everywhere, locked bumper-to-bumper on Storrow Drive, muscling into packed rotaries, crowding onto the Tobin Bridge.
His favorite activity, despite the dangers. The simple fact of owning a car exposed him to risk. It was how the government tracked you, monitored your movements: title, insurance, licensing, inspections; an E-Z Pass transponder stuck to the windshield. He’d drive ten miles out of his way to avoid a toll booth, the Commonwealth’s cameras pointed at his license plate. Speed limits, moving violations, parking tickets, traffic court. If you drove for any length of time in the state of Massachusetts, sooner or later you’d have to deal with cops.
Here Timmy thought of Dennis Link, the childhood friend he’d smoked his first joint with: a teenage burnout who, for inexplicable reasons, went on to become a Massachusetts statie—a grown man who spent his days hiding under highway overpasses with his radar gun, waiting for speeders to blaze past. It was, Timmy felt, an undignified way to make a living.
He merged onto the interstate.
His favorite activity, and yet it made him lonely. A passenger only made it worse. Conversation of any kind blunted his enjoyment. What he wanted, truly wanted, was someone to drive with him, to participate wordlessly in the unending series of decisions: when to signal, to change lanes, to overtake or yield.
His ex-wife had viewed long car rides as opportunities for conversation. She particularly enjoyed starting arguments when he was trapped behind the wheel.
On the open road he looked for drivers like himself, fast but cautious, who sped down the middle lane and used the left lane only for passing, as the God he’d like to believe in intended it to be used. When he spotted one, an exchange was sometimes possible. Timmy passed courteously, then retreated to the middle lane, an invitation for the other guy (it was always a guy) to pass him. In this way, a rhythm was established. They shared possession of the passing lane, swooping in and out at intervals like cyclists in a peloton. It was the best conversation he’d ever had.
MARCEL WAS CANADIAN BUT CALLED HIMSELF FRENCH. HE lived on a farm in far-north Vermont, twenty miles from the Canadian border. What unlikely circumstances had landed him in that remote place, Timmy had no idea. As a kid, on a school trip to the whaling museum in New Bedford, he had marveled at a piece of scrimshaw—a fragment of whalebone no bigger than a nickel—carved, in letters so small you’d need a magnifying glass to read them, with a single Bible verse. That was how much he knew about Marcel: one scrimshaw’s worth. Marcel’s entire biography would fit on a Bazooka comic, a scrap of paper so small you could swallow it whole.
The house sat at the end of a gravel lane, wooded on both sides. From somewhere in the distance came a breathy whistle, like someone blowing across a bottle. An owl, maybe? Timmy peered into the forest looking for movement, a rustle of wings.
The place looked deserted, which was intentional. He waited, idling, until Marcel appeared on the porch and waved him around to the barn behind the house. He was dressed in his usual attire—jeans, leather vest, some kind of weird paisley blouse. He had a distinctive style, like a journeyman folk musician: flowing silver hair, beard neatly trimmed. Nicotine-stained teeth, the color of buckwheat honey, gave him a rakish air.
The barn doors were open. Timmy pulled in and parked, twisting a little to unkink his back. Marcel pulled the doors closed.