“You got any more of that Bay One?” said Sean Barry.
“Sold out.”
“You were sold out last time. You have a supply problem.”
“I’m aware,” Timmy said.
Sean Barry took rolling papers from his pocket. “How about some of those gummy bears?”
“You’re kidding me. You ate them all?”
“I got half of one left. I already bit the fucker’s head off.”
“All right. Hang on.” Timmy hoisted himself out of the chair and stepped into the bedroom. His inventory was stored in a fireproof, coffin-sized strongbox beneath the bed.
When he came back, Sean Barry was trying to roll a joint. “I can’t see a fuckin thing. Turn on a light, will you? It’s like a cave in here.”
Timmy did.
“Seasonal affective disorder,” said Sean Barry. “It’s a problem in the northern latitudes, which we are a part of. It affects your serotonin, your melatonin. All the tonins are affected.” He ticked off the symptoms: low energy, oversleeping, overeating. “Not to mention,” he added.
“What?” said Timmy
“When’s the last time you got laid?”
“None of your fuckin business,” Timmy said.
Sean Barry seemed pleased with this answer.
“This is my point. Low libido is a notorious symptom. Get yourself a light box. Full spectrum, to get the longer wavelengths.” He took a drag off the joint, which was burning too fast on one side. He evened it out with a wet fingertip and passed it to Timmy, who eyed it with distaste.
Since Tess there’d been no one important, and almost no one unimportant. A year ago he made a mistake with a customer. She arrived on a bicycle—a skinny little thing, wide-eyed like a girl in a Japanese cartoon, a ripped T-shirt over black spandex, a metal stud in her nostril that made him wonder where else she was pierced. They started on the couch and finished in his bed. When he woke several hours later, the girl was gone. She hadn’t paid him for the weed. He figured he’d never see her again, but a few weeks later she knocked at his door.
I can’t give you any more free product, he said. I don’t work that way.
The bike girl said, It wasn’t free.
For months afterward, Timmy was haunted by this vision of himself: a clueless participant in prostitution, dumbly taking what was offered, believing, foolishly, that her motives were the same as his: simple desire, aching need. He’d failed to understand the terms of the transaction, the girl paying for her purchase with something of equivalent value. He was disgusted by her but mostly by himself, a middle-aged guy with a receding hairline, going soft around the middle.
Of course she didn’t want him. She only wanted his weed.
So no customers. He needed another way to meet women. He made himself a profile on a dating site, with a ten-year-old photo and a career he invented on the spot—driver’s ed teacher, something he’d always thought he’d be good at. He went on one date with a woman named Sharynn and heard the stupid spelling every time he said her name. She asked him about teaching driver’s ed, and Timmy made up answers he would never remember. They made a second date he later canceled. It was all too much fucking effort.
He needed a woman who understood what he did for a living, the one advantage of dating a customer. He didn’t have the energy to pretend to be something he wasn’t. The problem was that he’d never be able to break up with her. A pissed-off ex-girlfriend could call the law on him.
Before he’d even met her he was planning their breakup. That was how his mind worked.
He could date a customer only if she had no vindictive impulses whatsoever. Timmy had never met such a woman.