June bubbled. “Can you imagine she was working at our tux rental store? Someone with a plant biology degree is right up our alley!”
Fox dug his fists deeper into his jeans pockets and said, “Yeah, you know what? Maybe I will take you up on that offer, Lytton. Let these gals show me some Mormon Lake sights. Sounds relaxing.”
We were supposed to take this paleface sightseeing? I had no idea how he was connected to the club—he didn’t wear a cut—but I didn’t need any lookie-loo getting in my way. I wanted to impress June with my pot knowledge. It actually wasn’t that extensive, just what I’d found time to study in the Corpus Christi cook house in between making batches of meth. But my science background was solid. I could fake it.
I was saved from playing tour guide when June said, “Well, we’re sort of in a rush, that’s the situation. I wanted to get up there to show her the CBD grow house before it gets dark.”
Fox frowned. “Isn’t there lighting inside it?”
“Well yes, but…”
Lytton stepped in to help his wife. “I get it. You girls are eager to talk shop. That’s June. Once she gets started—”
“Oh, but I love talking shop!” I said. I was just desperate to keep my new job. Blankenship had tentatively approved it, and it was ten times better than the evening wear rental place. And I really did have a great idea about CBD plants. I’d grown a few with an earthy aftertaste and a fruity aroma that was highly effective in masking the pain of a fractured rib from the day I was thrown into that awful warehouse. As a side effect, the burning and tingling in my feet from neuropathy almost vanished when I smoked it. I even had a name for it. Dabba Doo. That’s what I called my dog Monstro who I missed with a passion. The Department of Justice had given her to my sister Shelda, and I wasn’t allowed to know where they were, and so on.
“Yes,” agreed June, her eyes all lit up. “Let’s get going. You got your water? Good. Follow me.”
On the way out the side door, I bumped into a guy who fairly reeked of marijuana. This was going to be a good town for a dispensary, I could tell.
“Well, hello, gorgeous,” said the asswad.
I frowned at him. He was kind of a pudgy guy with frizzy hair cut into a clumsy pompadour. You could tell if he didn’t get it cut all the time, it would bloom into a ’fro. He looked like one of those high school losers who were a member of the student council and the chess club and tried to be cool by wearing Ray-Bans and smoking weed. Well, some things never changed.
“We’re in a rush, Wolf,” called June.
“Say hi to Tracy for me!” Wolf called.
Within ten minutes, we were snaking through a gloriously flaming canyon. The steeply banked walls and narrow road gave the appearance of shooting through an Egyptian temple, where brilliant sandstone obelisks towered above. I could’ve gone on and on there forever, but soon we popped out onto a plateau studded with gnarled Ponderosa pine. As if on a gentle roller coaster, I followed June over softly undulating fields of black-eyed susans.
It was starting to feel pretty good, living in Arizona. As long as I didn’t somehow blow it with this dispensary job, which paid about five bucks an hour more than the tuxedo job, I could see having a decent life. For the first time since the warehouse raid in Corpus Christi, things seemed to be on track. As long as I avoided all known felons and kept my head down, things would proceed apace.
I could even see finding a boyfriend. That fucker Russ had been the last one I’d banged, at least voluntarily. The past hundred men I’d been in contact with hadn’t made a good impression on me. There was one Jones affiliate who dropped stuff off at the warehouse. He always looked at me with the pity one reserved for that poor elephant in the zoo, stuck in a cramped enclosure, doomed to roam the same rocks and clumps of grass for all eternity. That guy had probably been decent. We held conversations in rudimentary Spanish. I knew he couldn’t handle coffee, it gave him the jitters. He was single. And he liked chalupas. He brought me some from a roach coach a few times. Then one day I heard rumors of a hijacking of a Jones truck, some couriers murdered. I never saw the guy again.