Mat Johnson - Drop

‘All right, we’re set. Now follow me, quickly. We haven’t much time,’ David said when he reappeared, and then scuttled off in front of me. We were walking towards a security gate, metal detector and cops in goofy looking sweater uniforms, and then walking faster towards the gates beyond.

‘Yo, sir, where we going?’ The answer was the back of his head, those beaded black naps bobbing as he hustled that body forward. Out among others, David was so much wider than normal folk. So broad that, walking as fast as he was, they must have felt a breeze when he passed.

‘Yo, sir, for real, where we going?’ As if to answer me, David turned in at a gate that seemed to be at the end of its boarding: a flight attendant just standing by a door waiting for her chance to close it. David stopped in front of her, turning to me while she took his ticket to hand me mine and say, ‘I’ll meet you by the baggage return when we get there, right?’ Then he was gone down the white tunnel towards the plane, lost in the turn of the hall. It wasn’t until the smiling lady took my ticket that I noticed the Amsterdam sign at the center of her podium. At the plane door I thought I saw the back of a black man’s head to the left, in first class, but I was ushered to the right towards coach before I could be sure if it was him.

When we landed I tried to get out of my seat quickly, make it to the front of the plane, but there were too many others in my way. He wasn’t there when I left the gate, and I started hustling past the herd towards the baggage claim, certain he would leave me or take a flight somewhere else or do something similarly fucking crazy. At the baggage area, he wasn’t there, no surprise. I kept searching, rechecking that I was in the right place, searching through the growing crowd around me, looking on to the conveyor belt as if he might appear from the magic hole, rolled into fetal position amid the luggage, between an oversized suitcase and a folded stroller. After a few minutes the crowd began to thin, and it was very clear that there was no David anywhere, and that was simple to discern because a random turn of the room showed there were no negroes anywhere at all.

‘Chris!’ David’s baritone echoed, poking his head through the glass exit doors as if I was late, smiling politely and waving quickly for me to follow. Outside it was even colder than London, wind blowing at my non-coated self. David’s steps before me were long, stomping, reaching too far for those little legs. People he passed turned after his wake to see if he was joking. Behind him I could already smell the liquor; in the back of the chauffeured car it was like my nose was in the bottle’s mouth.

‘Bit of a road trip, this.’ David put his head against the window and started humming to the song the driver was playing on the radio. Outside was another place I didn’t know. Bright advertisements for products I’d never heard of in a language I couldn’t speak. New and shiny things in a place that was as old as Philly pretended to be. Look at this. So much beauty and I was in it, zipping around in an unmarked cab that was a fancier car than I’d ever been in. Going into a city that looked so good I wanted to walk the ride. Beside me David had gone quiet, no sound except for heavy breathing and occasional near snores. He didn’t move again until we were way into the city, over canals and amid narrow cobblestone streets bumpier than Germantown Avenue. When the car died he came alive.

‘This is it,’ David said, smacking his lips and giving some notes to the driver. He opened his car door, so I did the same with mine. David glanced around and then started walking towards a shop without even looking back to see if I was following.

Inside the door was the stank of pot smell. The place was set up like an old tobacco shop, with the product in large containers behind humidor doors. David put both fists down on the glass counter and said to the man behind it, ‘Give me a sample of the freshest stuff you’ve got.’

‘Any particular taste or high you’re going for?’ The clerk was David’s age, English also. His hair had been sawed down to an uneven brown turf. Maybe he’d done it himself, without a mirror.

‘Only that it is the absolute best, truly best, and freshest bit of spliff in here.’ The clerk gave a squinty smile of stained teeth, then reached under the counter, lifted a lid, and stood up with a small silver dish filled with the stuff. ‘Hawaiian,’ he offered. David looked at it close, bending down to smell it, and then without standing back up said to me, ‘Chris, do us a favor. Tell me what marijuana is like, physically.’

‘I don’t know much about it. I don’t really smoke this shit. And I don’t plan on changing that.’

‘Right, but that said, describe the product for me, the uninitiated.’

‘It looks sort of like tobacco, except green.’

‘Right. What about its consistency.’

‘Dried. A bit brittle, I think.’

‘Very good, Chris, very good.’ The clerk had found some way to make his silly smile even bigger, watching me.

‘Now, Chris, look at this.’ David took a pinch at the substance under his nose and lifted it to the air, and then to my nose. It didn’t smell like anything you’d smoke if you were afraid to die. Its color was dark green and brown, moist and soft like moss.

‘Watch.’ David held it about a foot over the countertop, and those big ham hock muscles flexed. There was trembling in his hands, like he was trying to pinch coal into diamond. Then, like a forced birth, it dripped. One perfect drop, heavy, dark and thick, fell down to the glass. I bent down to look at it, this oily emerald swirling on the counter.

‘Do you see that, Chris?’ David asked in awe.

‘I see.’ Look at that thing. A kaleidoscope of reflections swimming on its surface.

‘That’s the stuff, that. That’s what you should be doing. Everything you create, everything you bring to the world, that’s how good it needs to be. A drop. I know you’re capable, because you’ve done it before. And I can tell you got more than one drop in you.’ David turned his pinching fingers up to me, revealing the pulp that was stuck there. ‘That, that’s you, that is. Fresh, gifted, brought all the way from America. You have it in you, Chris. You just need to accept that.’ I nodded, but didn’t. But he did. Thankfully, enough for both of us.

Later that night, after we were in the hotel room, David made me call Margaret and tell her where we were. He sat in the next room with the door open, smoking from the ounce he’d bought at the shop, sitting on the edge of the bed watching French TV. I couldn’t figure out if he understood it or if he was too stoned to care. Margaret picked up after the first bring-bring .

‘Hi, it’s Chris. We’re okay.’

‘About bloody time. Good to hear that, seeing how it’s almost two in the morning. Where are you?’

‘Amsterdam.’ Margaret was silent for a moment. Then she was sucking hard on a cigarette, I could tell. Somewhere a little orange fire was beaming.

‘Lovely.’

‘David told me to tell you we’ll be back tomorrow night, after I finished the project we’re working on.’

‘Great. Could you put him on?’

‘He went to the store.’

‘Did he tell you to say that, too?’ David, forgetting he wasn’t supposed to be nearby, let out a shriek of laughter at something he was watching.

‘Uh huh.’

‘Is he getting stoned?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Let me guess: he’s sitting right there smoking, staring at the wall or something.’

‘Yup.’

‘Oh God. Do try to keep him out of trouble, all right, Chris? From now on, when I’m not around, he’ll be your responsibility. Promise?’