In this regard only, Kevin was as good as his word. The weed was excellent quality, worth every penny, the first and last part of the trip that went as planned.
Kevin’s sister, it turned out, lived in a crappy one-bedroom condo. Kevin would sleep in the living room, on a child-sized love seat. For Timmy there was an air mattress on the kitchen floor. Each day, the sister and brother-in-law drove together to work, leaving Kevin and Timmy stranded in the apartment. To get to a beach, or anything else you’d actually want to see, they would have to rent a car.
At this point Timmy made a terrible discovery. Kevin had come to Hawaii with thirty dollars in his pocket. If they were going to rent a car or eat in a restaurant or do anything at all besides sit in the sister’s apartment, Timmy would have to pay for it. This was no accident. Kevin had planned it that way.
Fine, Timmy thought, I’ll sit here. I’ll sit here all fuckin day and watch TV and smoke my weed. And for two weeks in Hawaii, that’s exactly what he did.
One afternoon when he couldn’t stand it any longer, he hiked along a busy highway to the one place within walking distance, an Outback Steakhouse. He sat at the bar nursing a beer and staring at the Weather Channel, the city of Boston buried in snow.
The one thing he’d wanted to do was see Pearl Harbor. To get there, they’d have to fly from the Big Island to Oahu, two more plane tickets he’d be on the hook for. A different type of person would have surrendered at this point, bought the tickets and rented the car and seen Pearl Harbor, but Timmy was not that type of person.
He sat in the sister’s apartment and smoked his weed.
HIS STORY ENDED, TIMMY REACHED FOR THE REMOTE. HE FLIPPED past music videos, the shopping channel, a cartoon dog speaking Spanish. NECN was rolling footage of a press conference at the State House. A crawl skated along the bottom of the screen: ATTORNEY GENERAL OPPOSES RECREATIONAL USE.
“You think that’s going to pass?” Claudia asked.
This was the other thing they did together. They talked about what was on television.
“Nah. Never happen,” Timmy said.
The couch embraced her like quicksand.
The crawl continued. IF THE REFERENDUM PASSES, MASSACHUSETTS WILL BECOME THE THIRD STATE TO LEGALIZE. COLORADO AND WASHINGTON APPROVED RECREATIONAL USE IN 2012.
“Colorado,” Timmy said.
Those four syllables seemed to trip a switch in his head. As often happened, he told her something he’d told her before. Last summer, he’d gone to Denver for a buddy’s wedding and was amazed to find a weed store on every corner, marked with a green neon cross. He chose one at random and went inside.
Long ago, when Claudia was briefly married, her in-laws took a trip to China. When they returned, they threw a party for themselves, featuring an hour-long slide presentation narrated by her mother-in-law, who had some sort of rapturous experience seeing the Great Wall and couldn’t shut up about it.
The weed store in Denver was Timmy’s Great Wall.
In a trance of stoned wonderment, he described its interior, the track lighting and exposed brick and blond wood floors. The product was displayed in glass jars, spotlit like sculptures in a gallery. He’d counted forty kinds of flower, from commercial-grade to fancy heirloom varieties, vials of cannabis oil, shelves of hookahs and ornate pipes, expensive LED inhalers kept under glass. The store stocked a full range of edibles, not just candy but tortilla chips, granola, frozen pizzas in slick packaging, all clearly labeled with grams of THC per serving. An entire convenience store worth of processed food, guaranteed to get you high.
“Capitalism run amok,” he said, his final words on the subject. “The little guy can’t compete.”
He reached for the remote and began clicking through the channels. Finally he settled on a car show, which was what they usually watched. This one featured American cars of the 1960s: Falcons, Thunderbirds, the era of heroic winged creatures. It might have been ten minutes or an hour before the doorbell rang.