Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [71]
Meadows moved out of Terry’s apartment into a motel room about five blocks from the Fort Lauderdale beach. The distance insulated him—physically and psychologically—from Nelson and the dope lunatics in Miami. In Lauderdale Meadows felt he would also be less likely to encounter old friends—and freer to do the necessary socializing.
The first night out nearly ended in disaster.
He had chosen Tony’s, an after-midnight disco with a five-dollar cover and a snowy reputation. Meadows sat alone at the bar, spellbound by the young crowd but repelled by the jackhammer music. After an hour of gawking Meadows realized he was blending in about as smoothly as an anthropologist in the Amazon.
He tried to loosen up, finally striking up a flimsy conversation with a man named Guy, who had come to the disco with two women. After a few strong drinks Meadows found them both quite breathtaking, even the one who made popping sounds with gum in her mouth. Soon the architect began telling amusing stories; Guy and the girls were in hysterics. One of the women, a model for a men’s magazine, had stories, too.
“One time they were doing a photo layout on circuses, and they asked me to pose naked with these midgets. All of them were made up just like clowns, and we were standing in the big top with about ten thousand people screaming in the bleachers. And I was supposed to ride through the middle of them on a unicycle, with no clothes, remember. Now I don’t mind taking my clothes off, not for that kind of money, but I can’t ride a bicycle worth a damn. You can imagine what happened when I got on the unicycle.”
Meadows nodded sincerely.
“They are very hard to ride, especially naked. And the midgets were no help,” she related.
Meadows was afraid Guy was going to come in his pants.
“That’s nothing. Cindy, tell Christopher about the time in Las Vegas with the man from the United Nations,” Guy spluttered. “Honest to God, it was the ambassador to someplace, right, Cindy?”
Meadows was numb. After a few minutes Guy turned to him and asked, “You wanna do a couple lines?”
“You bet.” Meadows was drunk, and Guy’s words pinballed around his head. He followed him from the bar to the rest room, where Guy entered one of the stalls. Meadows stood in front of a urinal, leaning his forehead against the grimy tile to prop himself up.
“Hey, hurry up,” Guy was saying. “Come here.”
Meadows splashed some water in his face. Guy pulled him into the stall and locked the door. “Sit, sit,” he whispered excitedly. Meadows slumped on the toilet seat and watched Guy take something out of a pocket and hold it up for self-approval. “Good stuff, buddy.”
Guy unraveled a packet no larger than a postage stamp. Meadows noticed it was a one-dollar bill, folded into a neat square carton. In the middle was a tiny mound of chalky powder. Guy tapped the crystals onto a small rectangular mirror. Then he reached under his shirt and came out with a gold razor blade on the end of a necklace. He used it to cut the cocaine into inch-long lines.
“Is that real gold?” Meadows asked.
“Twenty-four carat,” Guy replied. “Hold this.” He handed Meadows the mirror. “You got a C-note?”
Meadows shook his head. Guy fished in his pocket until he came out with a twenty-dollar bill, which he deftly rolled into a stiff green straw. “It’s all yours,” he announced.
“No, you go first,” Meadows said nervously.
Guy was hungry for the stuff. He touched the straw to the mirror, leaned over, placed one end up his right nostril and inhaled evenly, sliding the twenty-dollar bill down the mirror until one line of the powder vanished. Then he pressed a finger against the side of his nose, tossed his head back and sucked in deeply. Afterward he bent down and snorted another line the same way.
“Your turn,” he said to Meadows.
Meadows was burning up, and his shirt stuck like tape to his chest. Wordlessly he took the mirror and tried to imitate Guy. On his first snort Meadows faltered and sniffed only half the