Winky Blanchard was a fucking moron.
“You could’ve texted me,” said Timmy.
“I did,” Winky said.
Timmy reached for his phone and sure enough, there was Winky’s text: This is Anthony. Are you home?
Inside, Winky settled into the couch. Timmy clicked on the television. Then he reached behind his chair and fished two fat buds out of the jar. “I’m out of Bay One. This is Bay Two.”
Winky did his signature blink: left eye first, then the right, like a breeze blowing across his face. He said, “I like the One.”
Timmy was tired of hearing this. All his customers liked the One, which should have been good news but wasn’t. His inventory was unreliable—and in the retail space, supply chain was everything. In the retail space, you lived and died by its whims.
Bay Two was a dense bud, slightly seedy so it weighed heavy. Timmy placed two fat buds on the scale between his feet. The digital display read .125—an eighth ounce precisely, Winky’s usual order. Week after week he rode the commuter boat up from Grantham, forty minutes each way, to buy his tiny bag of weed.
Winky Blanchard was a fucking moron, but this was possibly not his fault. There was a story Timmy vaguely remembered—an accident, a lawsuit. Somewhere along the way, Winky had gotten his eggs scrambled. Whether he was any sharper before the accident was impossible to say.
As he double-bagged the weed, Timmy found himself telling the story—he wasn’t sure why—about the douchebag in the SUV. This ain’t the drive-thru.
“I can’t play it like that,” he told Winky. “I have a kid.”
Winky’s eyes darted around the room—nervously, as if he expected Timmy’s kid to jump out of a closet. “You have a kid?”
“In Florida. He’s fourteen.” Was it possible he’d never mentioned his son? He lost track of what he said to people. He’d known Winky his whole life, in the same vague way he knew everyone who grew up in the neighborhood. Winky still lived in Grantham with his mother, two blocks away from Timmy’s parents.
“He’s not getting along with his mother. Which, believe me.” Timmy reached for the clicker and turned up the volume. “I tell her, send him up here if you can’t handle him.”
They stared at the TV screen. The NECN news anchor was a woman who didn’t belong on television. On every other network, the female reporters looked like porn stars. This one was sturdy and plain-faced, like an intrepid mail carrier who spent her days out in the cold.
Winky took a pipe from his pocket and packed a substantial bowl. Say what you want about Winky, he always shared his weed.
IN THE AFTERNOON TIMMY SET OUT DRIVING. HE MADE THE trip once a month—oftener than he’d like, oftener than he should have to, but Marcel was stubborn about how much weight he’d sell.
Timmy didn’t mind the drive north. Driving was his favorite activity, his one talent, the thing he did best in life. The return trip was the problem, untold hours idling on Route 128 with several pounds of Class D controlled substance stashed in his trunk.
He weaved along surface roads, through dense neighborhoods. The snow piles were stupendous. The narrow side streets were lined with decrepit cars—wounded veterans of the traffic wars, the city’s disintegrating roads and bridges; cars in such beshitted condition nobody would believe they were still operable and yet you saw them everywhere, locked bumper-to-bumper on Storrow Drive, muscling into packed rotaries, crowding onto the Tobin Bridge.
His favorite activity, despite the dangers. The simple fact of owning a car exposed him to risk. It was how the government tracked you, monitored your movements: title, insurance, licensing, inspections; an E-Z Pass transponder stuck to the windshield. He’d drive ten miles out of his way to avoid a toll booth, the Commonwealth’s cameras pointed at his license plate. Speed limits, moving violations, parking tickets, traffic court. If you drove for any length of time in the state of Massachusetts, sooner or later you’d have to deal with cops.