The Marijuana Chronicles Read Free Page A

spent a hard minute looking at me, and then she left the room again. The car service was due in about twenty minutes. The ride downtown would take another twenty. Plus another twenty milling around before we all got down to business. Total of an hour. The aborted breath would have seen me through. I was sure of that. So one more would replace it. Maybe a slightly smaller version, to account for the brief passage of time. Or maybe a slightly larger version, to compensate for the brief upset. I had been knocked off my stride. Ritual is important, and interference can be disproportionately destructive.
    I sparked up again. The yellow lighter. A yellow flame, hot and pure and steady. Problem is, the second pass burns better. As if those lower seasoned layers are ready and waiting. They know their fate, and they’re instantly ready to cooperate. Smoke came up in a cloud, and I had to breathe in hard to capture all of it. And second time around the bud doesn’t extinguish quite so fast. It keeps on smoldering, so a second breath is necessary. Waste not, want not.
    Then a third breath.
    By which time I knew I was right. I was getting through the morning just fine. I had saved the day. No danger of getting sleepy. I wasn’t going to look spacey. I was bright, alert, buzzing, seeing things for what they were, open to everything, magical.
    I took a fourth breath, which involved the lighter again. The smoke was gray and thick and instantly satisfying. I could feel the roots of my hair growing. The follicles were thrashing with microscopic activity. I could hear my neighbors getting ready for work. Stark and absolute clarity everywhere. My spine felt like steel, warm and straight and unbending, with brain commands rushing up and down its mysterious tubular interior, fast, precise, logical, targeted.
    I was functioning .
    Functioning just fine .
    A fourth hit, and a fifth. There was a lot of weed in the bowl. I had packed it pretty tight. A homecoming treat, remember? That had been the intention. Not really a wake-and-bake. But it was there.
    So I smoked it.
    I felt good in the car. How could I not? I was ready to beat the world. And capable of it. The traffic seemed to get out of the way, and all the lights were green. Whatever it takes, baby. A guy should always max himself up to the peak of his capabilities. He shortchanges himself any other way. He owes himself and the world his best face, and how he gets it is his own business.
    They took me in through a private door, because the public lobby was a zoo. My heels tapped on the tile, fast and rhythmic and authoritative. I was standing straight and my shoulders were back. They made me wait in a room. I could hear the crowd through the door. A low, tense buzz. They were all waiting for my entrance. Hundreds of eyes, waiting to move my way.
    “Time,” someone said.
    I pushed open the door into the well of the court. I saw the lawyers, and the spectators, and the jury pool. I saw the defendant at his table. The fat guy in the uniform called out, “All rise!”

J OYCE C AROL O ATES is the author most recently of the novels Mud-woman and Daddy Love , and the story collections Black Dahlia & White Rose and The Corn Maiden & Other Stories . She has appeared in a number of mystery/suspense anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories of the 20th Century and The Dark End of the Street edited by Jonathan Santlofer and S.J. Rozan. Her next novel is the Gothic mystery The Accursed . She is a recipient of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, and the National Medal in the Humanities.

high
    by joyce carol oates
    H ow much? she was asking.
    For she knew: she was being exploited.
    Her age. Her naïveté. Her uneasiness. Her good tasteful expensive clothes. Her hat .
    Over her shimmering silver hair, a black cloche cashmere hat .
    And it was the wrong part of town. For a woman like her.
    How much? she asked, and when she was told she