Don Winslow - The Kings Of Cool

(The community, not the drug.)

It’s timely.

Stan’s looking for something new, anyway.

He’s tired of selling the hippie stuff, worried he’s trapped in a fading culture, and, truth be told, he’s a little bored with Diane, too.

And she with him.

And the political scene?

The revolution?

That they thought they won when Nixon

— the Uber Villain

— the Evil Stepmother

— be honest, the Scapegoat

— (They are both conversant enough with their ancestral religion to know that the goat was loaded with all of society’s evils and driven from the town) fell from power and The War ended

It’s come to Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter.

Jimmuh Cahtuh.

With his lust in his heart.

Diane doesn’t want lust in her heart, she wants lust in her puss, in her yoni, if you must, and it’s been a while since she’s felt it with Stan. It’s all right… it’s pleasant… but… pleasant?

Funny thing is, even in the free love days-when people were twisted around each other like worms in a coffee can in the bookstore’s back room-she didn’t participate. Neither did Stan. She out of reticence and he, she suspected, more from a fear of disease.

Now they both wonder if they missed out on something.

The other thing they wonder about is money.

It used to be something you weren’t supposed to care about bourgeois but now people seem to want it and people seem to have it.

Like Doc, for instance

Taco Jesus has more than taco money, now, and he isn’t throwing it around or away. He’s buying things-clothes, cars, homes-and it looks good on him, and Diane can’t help but wonder are they missing out on something, or worse have they missed out on something like they’re standing on the banks of a river watching the future flow away from them, and now

Stan is looking at her as if he’s thinking the same thing, but she ponders if he is standing on the bank with her or floating away, and she also wonders if she cares.

She turns and watches John “do a line”-in this new vernacular. All traces of his adolescent cuteness are gone. He’s lean, muscular, and powerful, and suddenly she realizes that she is ten years-a decade — older than she was. This boy, this child who used to sell joints from the bottom of his skateboard, is now a young man. And rich, if you believe the gossip.

Gossip, hell, she thinks-certainly John owns the house two doors down from the one they still rent. And the parade of sleek young women going in and out screams of money, and one morning she saw Stan, his fucking teacup in hand, looking out the window watching one of John’s girls getting into her car, admiring-lusting after? — her long legs, her high breasts, her Charlie’s Angels blonde hair. (Who is the actress-the one with the fake, silly name?) And then he pretended he wasn’t staring, and she wished he had the honesty-okay, the balls-to come out and say, yes, he thought the girl was sexy, because she could see him chubbed up against his faded jeans, the ridiculous bell-bottoms, and if he’d been that honest she might have given him some relief, gone down on her knees and sucked his dick and let him shoot shiksa fantasy into her willing mouth, but instead he said some mealy-mouthed thing about the “superficiality” of it all so she decided to leave him hanging, as it were.

Now John hands her the rolled-up bill-it’s her turn again. Feeling a little silly, Diane pushes a finger against one nostril and inhales with the other and feels the coke blast her brain and then the acrid drip down her throat.

They each do another line, then, far too restless to stay in the store, decide to go for a ride.

Stan insists on driving and they all pile into their clunky old Westfalia van and she finds herself in the back with John as they cruise south on the PCH with her head and puss buzz-buzzing and she hears Doc talking to Stan about a “distributorship” like it’s Amway or something.

“Even if you just buy for yourself,” Doc is saying, “we’ll give it to you wholesale, so you’re already ahead. Then if you decide you want to make a business of it…”

Buzz buzz.

“… serious money…”

Buzz buzz.

“… can’t be a lot of profit in leather bracelets…”

Suddenly she watches herself turn to John and hears herself say,

“Kiss me.”

John looks startled. “What?”

She repeats herself with some urgency, with some heat, with her husband two feet away, she offers her mouth, her full lips, and John takes them and she sucks his tongue into her mouth and sucks on it like a dick and she feels moist, wonderfully wet, and then Stan pulls off the road into the Harbor Grill because apparently the men are hungry and as he turns off the engine he turns and looks at her and she knows that he saw.

The waitress hands them menus.

“I know that girl,” Doc says, watching her walk away. He turns to John, sitting in the booth beside him. “We know that girl.”

John shrugs. They know lots of girls, and he’s still a little blown away by Diane kissing him with her husband right there.

But if Stan is pissed, he’s not showing it.

Not showing it at all, because his hand is under the table, stroking his wife’s thigh, and she’s looking across the table straight at John, her lips curled into a smile that wants to become a laugh.

“I know that girl,” Doc repeats, then gives it up and asks Stan, “So what do you think?”

Stan strokes his beard.

Black and bushy.

“I don’t know,” he says, studying the menu. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?” Diane asks, as if she hadn’t overheard the conversation in the van.

“Doc has a business proposition,” Stan says.

“You know,” Doc says. “Business.”

“Oh,” says Diane. “ Business. ”

“Should we be talking about this here?” Stan asks.

Diane is surprised that she feels contempt for him.

The waitress comes back for their orders.

She’s pretty, Diane thinks.

A cheerleader.

They all order omelets.

Diane sees Stan (sneakily) look at the girl’s tits.

“Do we know each other?” Doc asks the girl.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think so.”

You couldn’t describe the girl as bubbly, Diane thinks, but you wouldn’t call her cold, either.

She’s reserved.

Older than her age.

“I just think I know you from somewhere,” Doc says.

Kim thinks, maybe it’s because you used to sleep with my mother with me there, but she doesn’t say anything. If Doc doesn’t remember her, good. If no one remembers her, good.

“Jesus, will you let it go?” John mutters at Doc.

Kim remembers him, too.

The boy who lived in the cave and ignored her.

Stan watches her ass as she walks away, then says to Doc, “I don’t think we have the money to buy in.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Doc says. “You don’t have to. You just go down to Mexico, bring some back with you, and keep a piece for yourself. Sell that piece and you’re in business.”

“I don’t know…”

Doc leans over the table and says to Stan, “You could sell right out of the store. I’m telling you, this is money. ”

“I don’t know,” Stan answers. “We’ll have to think about it.”

“Don’t think about it too long,” Doc says.

Cocaine doesn’t make you exactly patient.

Diane looks at John.

As they’re undressing for bed Stan asks, “So what do you think?”

“About the cocaine?”

“Yeah.”

Or about me kissing another man, Diane thinks. Nothing about that? We’re just going to let it slide? She tosses it back at him. “I don’t know, what do you think?”