CHAPTER TWO (5) Mitzi's dream continued...

After all, he was part of an organization now, and his job had to be done.

All Mitzi was given on Katz was a minilla folder with a brief history and his recent whereabouts. Katz was originally inducted into NORML in ’74 and worked his way up to the title of Officer, apparently in charge of District 11. The memo said, explicitly, that Katz “was known to be a force to be reckoned with in his day”, but had recently diverged from NORML’s game plan. All the other Officers back at the base claimed that he “really was something,” but that he had tragically fallen off; he had become mad. Mitzi’s mission was thus created, and the aim was to get Katz in one piece – and if in one piece, perhaps even alive.

And so he was informed of exact proceedings regarding the mission early yesterday morning. Procedurally, he had to be checked by a physician, which, Mitzi mused, was an odd experience. An odd experience, indeed. But it wasn’t just the physician, it was the entire event that made him squirm in his seat on remembering it. The two women, dressed completely in black, who welcomed him into the office had been watching TV, and one, who was many years older than the other, stared at him with almost sympathetic eyes from time to time, probably during commercials. Oh quite an odd feeling it gave him! He could remember rather vividly her cold stare that stuck to him and penetrated his flesh, her gaunt eyes embedded in an emaciated face; her cheekbones protruding from her skull casting shadows onto the crevices and wrinkles in her skin. The horror!

But they went on watching television. The younger one was a tad more attractive, but it must have been the flashing light thrown from the television that gave her that insensitive look, as well. But dim rooms with fluorescent light never did a woman any good. He blamed it on the light.

After about fifteen minutes, the older more grotesque of the two raised herself from her eternal seat and ushered him into the back room. For a doctor’s office, the room seemed steril but grimy: all the nooks were filled with grunge. Sometimes mops couldn’t reach such crannies. He blamed it on the mops, but reckoned that the mops simply needed to be thrown out and new mops purchased to replace them. Yes, it must have been the mops.

The physician walked in almost immediately and starkly contrasted the receptionists from the front room. He was carrying his token clipboard and a stethoscope draped carelessly round his neck onto a standard doctor’s coat. The rest of the visit had gone pretty much as Mitzi expected, however, his impression of the two women was still with him as he exited the car. He had be warned that there were two accomplices to greet him at his destination, District 11, whom had been waiting for his arrival.

CHAPTER TWO (4) Mitzi's dream

The Bellie, a cruising mustang, as his cheuffer called it, began to heave it’s steel –framed body up the busy street. The wind was calm, and beginning down the street he was bewildered. Things looked oddly obscure tonight, perhaps it was the lack of heat ripples ascending from the concrete; it made the night look too still, too dark. I have been here before, thought Mitzi, but everything is so dark it is hard to tell. Regardless, he laid back and relaxed in the seat cushion and let his mind wander. The Indians must have been mighty pissed that we took their land, he thought, but that was the way the world worked.

All places had at one point been taken over, right? Could the road he was driving on possibly be the exception? Doubtful. Once, a Native American walked on this very earth, the earth now covered by concrete and asphalt, rubber tires, and a retro steel-framed mustang. A beautiful mustang it was! How glad those Indians must be to have things like Mustangs and concrete and asphalt to drive them on. That sucks though about the smallpox and the firewater… well you win some, you lose some. After all, we brought civilization and women like Amanda, and apple pie and Levi’s and… what am I thinking? My parents were still in Ukraine living like paupers when old Chrissy Colombo came over… what was the saying? In 1492, Colombus sailed the ocean blue? That had –

“We have arrived, sir.”

“Ah, yes.” Mitzi pulled a twenty from his pocket and handed it to the driver over the front seat.

His mission was clear: NORML had hired him on the low to salvage an insider of the operation – a Mr. Katz – and return him to their base in Los Angeles. Mitzi was possibly up for Mr. Katz’s position, and upon learning that Katz had gone psychotic because of various reasons, Mitzi had last week pushed his name up the agency’s ladder until the VP got wind of his it. He was promoted and sent on this mission, and he was positive beyond doubt that this was his chance to prove himself. NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, since early 1970, had had its stingy voice in the public policy debate; claiming to represent “those Americans who smoke marijuana responsibly.” Recently, a more aggressive approach had been advocated by its private endorsers and the branch Mitzi was currently working for was thereby developed. He took his oath and began the grudging task of paperwork, “advertising assistance” as his seniors termed it (a euphemism for coffee-runner), and getting out on the street for public protests and so forth. He had shown his loyalty, and three years after his oath, he became a senior himself and was briefed on the upcoming mission in the newly developed and highly classified branch, christened “Project Violet.” The name had been too classified for even Mitzi, but he let that bygone go and aimed all of his attention towards Katz.

 

CHAPTER TWO (3)

Somehow, he felt clearer, and cleaner. His thoughts began to order, and he found himself perfunctorily exiting the apartment out into the light of day. He had his weed, which was exactly what was intended of the visit. He felt suddenly thrown upon the blistering pavement lining the Mile – it was a completely different world. No, that was just the pot. To his right, there was a scuffle occurring between a Mexican man and woman – their voices were raised and the woman’s arms flailed wildly about her as she spoke. Mitzi could barely understand them due their the distance, but they were apparently speaking coherent English, and he heard expletives among other slurs. Abandoning his place in front of Squirley’s door, Mitzi continued walking towards his car fearing that it might be stolen or tagged. One never knew on the Mile. But the woman’s arms were flailing so wildly that he had to look, it was too entertaining. The golden cross that laid between her cleavage glinted and flashed in the sun causing Mitzi to squint. Quite annoying. The heat waves from the asphalt rippled their image so terribly, that it seemed the two must fly away from each other at once.  

The man held out a bill. She stopped the wailing and cursing, and Matt could see her contemplating. Her mascara was heavy, so heavy that from a distance her eyes looked but two horrendous pupils bulging from her abnormally hollow face. She seemed not a day older than fifteen, and so her legs and arms seemed emaciated in the current circumstance.  Ah, thought Matt, a prostitute, of course. How perfect. The woman then began to caress the man and lead him down an alleyway. Losing his attention, Matt entered his car: No tagging, though one hubcap had been pried loose in an effort to steal it. That could be fixed.

The hit he had taken was wearing off. Mitzy saw the man and his apparent neighbor again. The whole damn scene seemed staged, wistful, like a camera-man had expertly panned the entire complex. Mitzy felt desecration creep under his skin again and quickly slammed the door. The thought of the woman – the girl, really - disturbed him, but that was just how it was on the Mile. What folly. He smoothed his hair with automatic hand, and put a CD in the player. He’d be back next week.

But in Mitzi, Ryan instilled the thought of growing weed. “I wish I knew someone who grew” resounded in Mitzi’s head. And here he was today, fixing his eyes on those two wonderful vessels nearly a year and a half later. But enough with nostalgia, now was the time to plan – preparation was key. He laid out the sheerers and canisters in which the tiny little blossoms tomorrow would be deposited. Tomorrow, they would find themselves into carefully weighed baggies, the scale (of which he’d stolen from his 10^th grade chemistry class) sat with its electrical cord neatly wound beside the sheerers. All of his utensils – Mitzi, afflicted somewhat with a tad of obsessive compulsiveness – were arranged concisely in the order in which they would be drawn on tomorrow. Oh tomorrow! Yes, tomorrow was the day of recognition, the day in which his life had culminated. How beautiful.

He took another hit. It had been a long day and his eyelids were heavier than he had expected.

It was on these nights, when he had so little weed, that he would dream of Amanda before falling asleep. She was a transfer from Denver, and moved down here to attend the University in order to obtain her bachelor’s in theology. A bright girl of twenty-two, Amanda had grown up in a small town outside of Denver – a suburb packed with symmetrically grided streets and children destined to be loitering heirs of city directors – and, wanting to break free of her father’s also symmetrical Christian-reform ideals, decided to move once she was of age. Her father, of course, was heart-broken by this fact and removed himself from her life almost completely. The first hint of spite began to well in the both of them, but, the guilt that so often accompanies a father in addition to a Priest, allowed him to help her financially. Thus, Amanda had situated herself in a moderately priced one-bedroom apartment near the University campus and as far away from Miracle Mile as possible. She figured – it being the dregs and impiety of the city – she might only have to pass through the Mile three or four times a week to facilitate her making a little extra pocket money at Corrotto’s.

It was at Corrotto’s that Mitzi first caught site of Amanda SevenBarge. It was this moment in which his impervious obsession began, but so sadly juxtaposed with its vanity. Amanda was quite literally Matt’s antithesis in every way: she had neither smoked marijuana or taken a sip of alcohol (ruling out the fact that the Blood of Christ was alcohol) and claimed never to have wanted to. She depended almost entirely on her father financially and Matt hadn’t spoken to his parents for years, justifying this fact by declaring he had simply “become bored with them.” She, on the other hand, spoke to her father once or twice a week as a token of love, but really as a ploy to keep the flow of money constant. Plus – her father had ignited in her passion for religion and to him she owed more than one phone call a week. They both seemed in two entirely different worlds in which neither of them could even remotely comprehend the other’s.

The most manifested of differences was Amanda’s virginity. She was not a shy girl, this Amanda, and she certainly let it be known to the front of the house where her values stood: in complete and utter chaste. No nicotine, no weed, no alcohol, only the occasional over-the-counter painkiller, and for goodness sakes (never say the Lord’s name in vain!) no sex. No sex. No sex. Her prudence, “come fire and brimstone” will never retract, less she meet the man that might take her hand. “And he himself must be a virgin,” she would repeat endlessly. And Mitzi was certainly no virgin.

CHAPTER TWO (2)

He procured his small glass pipe and began to load it with the last bit of weed he had in a Carmex container. Mersh, despicable. The worst weed there was; made you giggle. No, he needed his batch to be ready – there were too many injustices going on in his life, God! He thought, If I could just smoke some hydro. He took a hit off the small pipe. Well, it’s better than nothing… at least this mersh didn’t have paper clips in it.

A while back, Mitzi had entered Squirley’s apartment on Miracle Mile, with  hesitation of course for it was dangerous to be white in that neighborhood unless you were Toddy. The day was filthy, but then, days and weeks, months and years always seemed to be filthy on the Mile. Mexican prostitutes, fresh from south of the border always seemed to settle on its every corner and their Josés were forever close by. Regardless of environment, the aim at all cost was to secure some kind bud, but if all else failed, some mersh.

Mitzi knocked and cautiously scanned the apartment complex: a black man speaking to his “neighbor” – which he kept calling him his neighbor for some reason – and shaking the other’s hand the whole while. Matt could see money in his shake. Children crying desperately, Crack babies, no doubt, he thought. These were the dregs, the ass of man-kind in which only destitution and addiction spawned like a viral infection. He suddenly felt the urge to shower, if not, at least to wash his hands.

“Who is it?” yelled a voice from inside the door. The peep hole had been turned inside out – probably some hair-brained scheme by Toddy. Matt peered into it curiously and a colossal brown eye appeared and disappeared. Through the cracked window, the same ordinarily-sized eye appeared.

“Would you mind letting me in, Squirley?”

“Password, please.” There was no damned password, but Mitzi played his game to get out of the bedlam of the complex and into the probable fire of the studio.

“Uhhh… Kind?”

“Enter.”

Matt stepped into the filthy apartment, disregarding the fact that Toddy was asleep on the fold-in bed. The carpet had probably never been cleaned, it seemed to be a shag from the seventies or even earlier. Probably fairer at its installation, now it resembled the oily brunette of the Mexican prostitutes, but much, much older. The smell of Scwampagne wafted through the stale air, and Matt felt nauseous. It was as if the infection was seeping through the cracked window and slowly consuming them, too. By god, how did they look so clean at work?

“Mitzi – I could only score some mersh. I hope you don’t mind.”

Not at this point, he was too dry.

“Naw, its cool.”

“Its just that everyone’s dry, even Pruge. Apparently there’s a war in some Mexican border towns and the Feds are cracking down. So I’m gonna have to steep you, man. Sorry, but I’m not even making a profit. I wish I knew someone who grew.”

“Yeah, me too.” Said Matt.

Squirley handed Mitzi the plastic casing of a cigarette box full of mersh, and Mitzi methodically put it to his nose. Toddy had started to snore.

“Yeah, its mersh alright.”

“Sorry, dog. It’s the best I could do.”

Ryan seized the tiny back and began to burn the plastic to seal out the air. Mitzi noticed the paperclip at the bottom of the bag and a few strands of brunette hair.

“You measure that?” Mitzi asked.

“Sure did.” What a piece of shit, that Squirley was, weighing in a paper clip! But Mitzi refrained from speaking; the sooner he got out of here, the better.

After Ryan sealed the bag, he produced from his pocket a similar bag and ripped it open. “You wanta taste? It’s the same stuff.”

He did. They smoked. It hit him like a small ton of bricks. Mersh could sometimes do that. 

CHAPTER TWO (1)

And so, nothing was resolved, but that was normal. Todd and Ryan gazed at the board in awe, neither of them pondering on what to do about the debt, nor about how to start selling Mitzi’s crop, nor about anything much for that matter – in reality, they knew very little what was going on in each other’s seemingly tiny mind and that was okay with them. They seemed both alone in a world of misdemeanor and felony: one living complacently through life, drifting on a thin, anarchic breeze accompanied by the after taste of Schwampagne and marsala, while the other forlorn in a jungle of skepticism deserted by mankind, believing himself better than the rest of the useless automatons that surrounded him. They floated in that unstable air together, yet so far, far apart.

“We should just smoke it all, Squirley.”

“You baffoon.”

 

CHAPTER TWO: Mitzi’s Harvest and Reality

 

Mitzi walked into his one-story house that evening after an intolerable day of work. Not much money tonight, just like last night, and the night before. He was always broke. His roommates had already retired to their rooms, and he felt like an island in the midst of a darkening sea; cold, futile, white… cold and white. I feel white, he thought, ahhh to understand symbolism.

Anyways, first thing’s first! I must check on my babies.

Matt entered his room and the smell hit him immediately: Mmmm, a skunk. No, a skunk in a wondrous forest – a pastoral scene of black and white flashing in a forest of green and oh the aroma! Nothing could go wrong here, not in my forest, thought Matt. He sat down between the budding weed plants (weed trees rather) and tenderly took a mister to their trunks. He knew paternity like no one else; how tenderly he would mist the trunks, how painstakingly he would adjust their photon intake. No soil for my precious Mary Jane, instead the two plants hung grotesquely suspended from the ceiling in oversized hydro-tomato vessels. The whole get-up resembled an engine: from the top hung the canister filled with the marijuana’s lifeblood (water – only filtered), but there was no suck, squeeze, pop, or wheeze. Rather, it was an organic machine in complex and deliberate flux – the lights would slowly dim as the day wore on, set to a perfect timing in congruence with the daily patterns of the sun mid-spring in Southern India – only the perfect climate for cultivating cannabis sativa.

At night, he would fall asleep to the gentle hum of the drip drip, a small suction noise, the flow of water subtly gurgled against its will through a cylinder, the wondrous workings of Nature in his very bedroom. The day was nearing when harvesting would begin, then one might see Matt’s oblong figure in silhouette – his almost monstrous figure by their pseudo-illumination. Yes, the harvest would begin soon. 

CHAPTER ONE (10)

That night at 930, the duo sat in front of the Board. A piece of cork board with a rough frame hung perilously on paper thin walls. The damned Mexicans were fighting still, or maybe they were partying. One could never tell with Mexicans. The Board was divided into three uneven columns, each column consisting of sticky-notes. Some seemed ancient. The Board required order to be effective, but grasped onto only a tiny bit – even the writing on the sticky notes were illegible and smudged. However, it was enough to get the job done, and Shirley and Toddy currently stared at it as if in awe of its clout. It was their filing cabinet; their means of control; their input and output.

“Did Hugo pay up the other day?” Asked Ryan.

“He gave me half.”

“Where’s the money, then?”

“I dunno. Maybe I spent it.”

Shirley crossed out Hugo’s total and entered the new total – half of the former amount. “Make sure you get that from him tomorrow, you hear? I ain’t no charity.”

Todd sipped his Schwampagne submissively. It would be a great day to get trashed, he thought.

The Board had grown throughout the years into a great web: sticky notes with names scribbled on them represented people and the amount owed for various types of weed. “Nothing was to be advanced” was Ryan’s maxim, but he always let things slip. The first rough column was comprised of people who owed. The middle column was for what he and Todd owed the dealers higher up than themselves; the ones they bought from in large quantities, namely Gato (a man who spoke little English and had lost his left pinky to frostbite while coming across the border from god-knows-what small town in Mexico; They called him Gato because he told them, “I make like cat. I lost a life in desert) and Pruge (A Russian born mafia wanna-be from the upper-north side who’d made it big in the upmarket but realized he could scam the up and coming drug dealers). And the third column, which was always greater in its total, was what Ryan and Todd smoked themselves, therefore, the money they lost. The utter madness of the Board made it hell to interpret.

“We owe quite a bit to Pruge. Whatdyasay we tell him about Mitzi’s batch and try to make a deal with him?”

“That guy always creeps me out, Squirley. Don’t you get the feeling that he’s gonna hit you over the head with his bottle of vodka and shank you with some home-grown Russian spear or something? I don’t like that guy. I don’t like him at all.”

“Well what about Gato?”

Todd mused on this idea. Gato could barely speak English, and dealing with him was hard enough. Plus Gato always wanted to party – “You like to party? Party wit me – I give you weed free homes.” No Gato couldn’t be dealt with.

“Why don’t we just sell the weed that Mitzi gives us and take our cut. Then try to – “

“But wholesale means money fast.”

“I know. But who the hell cares, anyways. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

“No we don’t.”

“Why you in such a hurry, Squirley?”

            “You never know when Gato’s gonna be caught, or Mitzi, or one of us, and then the whole thing is gonna be exposed. I don’t want to be in their system Todd: the fingerprinting, the records. Hell naw, dog. That ain’t  for me.”

CHAPTER ONE (9)

After Mitzi’s discourse, the conversation lead to the normal chatter. More about Todd’s whereabouts in the late nineties, which server was a whore (“No,” said Tori, “a whore does it for money. You’re thinking of a slut, obviously”). Nothing relevant was usually said while the servers endlessly waited for tables. Often it was a complaint about the horrible management and the lack of advertising for the restaurant. That had to be the reason why no one was coming in to eat tonight. Sometimes judgments on the few incoming customers; the glare from Vanessa when a couple with an accent came in towards the hostess saying, “Do NOT seat these people in my section.” The well-worn hostess was sensitive to this, and Vanessa received no foreigners. It was a common Tuesday evening – easy-going and useless.

But that was not on Squirley’s mind today. Upon hearing word that Mitzi’s first batch was ready to be sold, he immediately found Toddy amongst the sea of servers. They lined themselves next to the entrance, in case fate should send a lucky server a set of customers or two.

They look like white pigeons sitting on a telephone wire, Squirley thought to himself and chuckled, Idiots. And there was Todd, in the center, talking about some useless mischief he got into last night. Ryan had heard enough of the story and stole him away from the line-up. He would lay out the plans for Toddy and later on that night they would consult the Board. There would be error, for sure, but Ryan and Todd would make an awesome duo nonetheless.

“Guess what,” said Ryan under his breath.

Todd already knew.

“When do we start?”

“Tonight after our shift. Matt said its primo…”

“Oh shit! Kind or hydro?”

“Hydro.”

Toddy tried to focus for a moment. That could mean into the thousands. Payday.

“What cut do we get?” A good question which took Squirley by surprise – Toddy normally sold weed for the enjoyment.

“I dunno,” he replied, “like 25 percent.”

“Why are we whispering? Squirley my man, we ain’t gotta hide this shit. Let’s tell the world! Remember – the world’s a stage, and we are merely men and women selling weed ontop of it.”

“Ha. Only you could quote Shakespeare while talking drug deals.”

“To be or not to be that is…”

Squirley gazed through Toddy. When he got into these moods, generally what Todd felt claimed was “Enlightenment”, Squirley would cut out the verbal Toddy. Rather, he would drift away into later dealings or women, mostly dealings though, and wait for Toddy to finish. Todd must have quoted at least six plays, some in which he thought was Shakespeare, some actually Shakespeare, and took them all out of context. Most of the clichés he had been quoting weren’t even said correctly. Ryan had taken many course in Shakespeare, his major being English, and had gotten to the last semester of his collegiant career only to drop out; the bursur had gotten hold of his credit card.

“… like an Othello without his occupa-“

“Shut up already. Jesus Christ you’re obnoxious dog."

“It’s what I do, Ry – It’s just what I do.”