Aditya Shetty inhaled deeply as he kicked off his Bolvaint loafers and rolled up the sleeves of his blue Oxford shirt. The windows of his penthouse stood open and Union Square was alive with the sound of street musicians and the smell of New York. It was the smell of sewers that swallowed the dreams of men whole. The odors of waste wafted up from the city’s manholes to blend with the smell of cheese bubbling in ovens at pizzerias across its five boroughs, bringing together an unavoidable marriage of the heavenly and the putrid. Aditya took it all in.
Though September had begun, Mother Nature was still stuck in summer, as evidenced by the tangible smell of humid air. Aditya’s fingers thrummed on his counter to the beat of trumpets and violins outside, a mix of cultures one could only find in the capital of the world. Opening a drawer his interior decorator had fallen in love with, Aditya retrieved a plastic bag and carefully poured its contents onto the marble countertop. This was the good stuff, straight from Guatemala and cut with caffeine to give it a purity level above fifty percent. Using his credit card to separate out what looked like ten milligrams, he spooned it up and set it on a digital scale to confirm the dosage. He’d only been using for a few months, but was smart enough to know a person should always triple-check. Satisfied, he bent down, inhaled, closed his eyes, and let the drug transport him to a new world.
Though Union Square was eleven floors below, conversations floated up to Aditya’s ears like balloons. He heard everything—from the sweet nothings of a man whispering in his lover’s ear to a street musician riffing to the tune of “La Bamba.” The sun would rise in less than six hours, but for now everyone could be their true selves under the calming presence of darkness. Opening his eyes, Aditya heard the whispers of the wind speak to him. It was the wind that told a lion to tackle a gazelle, and it was the wind that now compelled him to run out to his balcony. Jumping higher than any man his height should be able, he did a flip and landed right on a table he used to entertain outside. The wood snapped under his weight and he would have fallen on his side if not for his heightened alertness.
Oh well. He didn’t care about money right now, not when the world made sense to him for the first time.
“How did we live so long without this stuff?” No wonder the government doesn’t hand this out like candy.
Aditya wanted to tell his mom, his dad, but no one could ever understand what he was going through. He would never share the drug known as WP with anyone. Yes, he pulled in an annual salary in the seven figures running his hedge fund, Adrsta, in Bryant Park, but he only got a taste of real power after midnight most days. Not only could he hear his neighbors “sleeping” three floors above, not only could he smell the onions and parathas below as a street vendor made kati rolls, but he could also hear the tempo of the city. It beat in his ears like a tabla, calm but persistent. If something was off, if a silent intruder mugged his doorman or somehow made their way into his apartment, Aditya would sense it. The beat of the tabla would alert him long before the hairs on his back could.
Yes—WP was a hell of a drug.
Aditya moved to his bedroom, but sleep wasn’t on his mind. Though it was a Tuesday and he had a big pitch tomorrow, how could he care about anything but the power coursing through his fingers? How could anyone walk away from this type of raw energy?
I need more. Investing in the Medulla account would propel Adrsta to the next level. It would also mean more WP for Aditya, since start-up companies founded by Caucasians frequently offered up the drug to investors in lieu of more equity. As the drug was almost impossible for non-Caucasians to acquire legally, it was a much more attractive option for someone like him.
Taking WP the night before the meeting was risky, but Aditya knew the boost to his senses would be worth it. He’d spent months snorting the drug weekly, hoping it would stay in his system beyond his next bathroom break. So far, no luck. Still, there was always tomorrow. If he was a little late because of the WP—well, Rakshan would keep the Medulla brothers happy if he knew what was good for him. And if not? Aditya had been thinking about canning the man-boy, anyway. His initial thoughts of grooming Rakshan faded with each day. In Rakshan’s year at Adrsta, he’d never signed a client all on his own. The kid had hustle and a sense of humor that delighted clients, but also a girlfriend and childhood friends who still lived in the city.
What a waste. Such things slowed a man down.
Licking his lips, Aditya slipped into the king-sized sleigh bed in his bedroom and grabbed a book from his side table: A Dark Moon Rises: WP and the Vietnam War. It was an old book from the ‘80s, written for conspiracy theorists and published anonymously, but it had some key insights about WP and Aditya absorbed any information about the drug like a sponge. Though many claimed to know the drug’s full powers, the government most of all, Aditya doubted anyone really understood what the drug was capable of, what it enabled. How could anyone truly say they understood privilege and power? Because that was what the drug stood for above all else.
The book’s author claimed to be a West Point grad who’d fought the Vietcong and seen the Johnson administration test-drive a new campaign to distribute WP to American allies. In the decades since the book’s publication, no one had found any record of anyone resembling the author’s description in either West Point’s or the government’s records. He was informed, though, that was apparent. The author knew about key battles and negotiations and the whole cast of characters involved in that godforsaken affair. But claiming the U.S. government had given WP to the South Vietnamese? And that those savages had then, in turn, distributed the drug to African-American soldiers? That the drug had addled their untrained brains and led to such epic blunders as the My Lai Massacre? That was insane.
Personally, Aditya wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that someone within the government had written the book under President Reagan’s orders. The 1965 Civil Rights Act had infamously left out any mention of expanding WP access to non-Caucasians, and it’d left a bitter taste in the mouth of Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill. With the Drug War in full swing and people like Pablo Escobar and Whitey Bulger in the public’s lexicon, blaming Black people for a war crime committed during an unpopular war seemed like a convenient way to convince Democrats it wasn’t worth their time to keep fighting for WP distribution rights to be expanded. That, and losing forty-nine states to President Nixon, had scared them out of ever mentioning it again. It was only now, almost fifty years later, that Democrats were willing to fight over the issue again.
Not that it’ll matter, Aditya thought. The house always wins. Legalization would never happen, no matter what Congress said. If WP was legal for minorities, everyone would have it. And if everyone had it, it wasn’t special. Privilege and power, these were the keys to American success. Now, Aditya had both.
Putting the book down and telling Alexa to turn off the lights, he noticed a fly enter from an open window—thanks to the WP, Aditya saw every flap of its wings. Snatching it in mid-air, he snuffed the creature’s life out like it was nothing.