“You hear about the weed, Spider?” Fury was leaning in towards him.
All the conversation so far had been shouted over the thump of the music but Johnson’s concentration was slipping badly now. He tried to focus on the ring of faces sharing his table, particularly Fury. He had to learn to stay sharp even when he was bombed. Saying Sooth seemed to have done wonders for his social life in a matter of hours, but how did they know? Had the dealer told them, or was it just the fact that people had started to accept him anyway? The bartenders certainly seemed to know what he liked to drink—they placed it on the bar the moment they saw him walk in. With a contraction of his will, he managed to bring everyone back into sharp relief and get his mind on the matter at hand.
“What weed?”
“It’s a mutation or something. Growing in every part of Tier Two.”
“Sure. I got some in my place. I snapped the little fuckers off and threw ‘em in the trash.”
Fury looked shocked.
“You didn’t get bit?”
Johnson laughed.
“Course not.”
“Well you were lucky, man. This weed thing is carnivorous.”
“Fuck you, Fury.”
“Seriously. Guys, isn’t the weed carnivorous?”
Everyone around the table nodded, suddenly serious.
“See, Spider, no shit. I heard this old lady came home to find her poodle tangled up in the grip of this fucking vine. It was sucking the dog dry. She called the pest guys and they burned it. Took the root out and everything but it just keeps growing back. It’s everywhere. “
“Guess I better get some weed killer.”
“You can try, but they say it doesn’t do any good.”
Johnson shrugged. He was too high to care about rogue plants. Fury and the rest of them, Ragman, Pincer and Dorff were either shitting him or too high to make any sense at all.
He sympathised. Now was not the time for intellectual or taxing conversation.
“Hey, guys.” He said. “Let’s do a Mist rota.”
They all nodded.
“Who wants to come back first?”
Fury raised a hand.
“I will.”
So Johnson and Fury fought their way through the dancers, drinkers and hustlers into the cramped back corridor which led to the stinking restrooms. At the end of the corridor there was a small knot of regulars taking various kinds of drugs before rejoining the endless communal bender that was McLaughlin’s. Spider rolled a Mist cone and handed it to Fury to light. Fury inspected his handiwork.
“Good job, Spider.”
Johnson had been practising at home.
Fury took a couple of tokes and closed his eyes. Johnson did the same and leaned back against the badly painted wall of the corridor. The pulse of the music still found its way down this artery—sclerosed though it was with human detritus—but it was muffled. Every few moments the door would open into the bar and someone would arrive or leave for the toilets or the drugs. The music would gain in strength and then soften again as the door closed. Johnson drifted on the smoke. His body vibrated with music and vapour until he felt insubstantial and had to open his eyes to make sure he hadn’t physically come apart. Any more Mist and he would be losing control.
“I’ll send the next one out.” He said.
Fury didn’t reply but Johnson saw his slight nod of the head. He wondered very briefly and with divine clarity, what the problem was with reality that so many people felt they had to alter their perception of it in order to be happy. The lucidity of the thought left just as quickly when no answer came.
On the other side of the door, the throng of ecstatic revellers rippled as if it was a single organism. Pushing through it, the sense of isolation settled onto him once more. He did not know the mind of the organism; he was too trapped in his own.
He changed direction and made for the bar where they placed a pint and a shot for him. He finished each in a single movement before squeezing back to the table.
“Next.”
Dorff struggled to his feet to continue the rota.