Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [65]
“You mean you wouldn’t like to be a rich bastard?” I said.
“No,” said James, unrolling the Baggie along his right thigh; the left thigh was still occupied by the uneaten doughnut. “Rich people are never happy.”
“Aren’t they?”
“No,” said James, gravely. “I mean, people with no money haven’t got much of a shot at happiness in life, either, of course. But rich people, I think, have, like, none.”
“Unless they buy it,” I said, but I marveled, once again, at James’s youngness, appalled and envious, in the manner of a dead-armed old pitcher watching a balky phenom throw wild, terrible smoke, mistake pitches and foolish pitches and pitches that went all over the place. “That’s a pretty original theory you have, I must say. ‘Rich people are never happy.’ I think Citizen Kane would’ve been a lot more interesting, you know, if they could have worked that theme in somehow.”
“Okay,” he said. “I get your point.”
“Hey, don’t look now, but I think one of your rich Sewickley Heights bastards likes you.”
“What?” He stuffed the bag of dope under his thigh. A woman in a green Miata had pulled alongside my car. She was a good-looking blonde, no older than James, in a pair of black skier’s sunglasses. She had her own top down and the wind was doing wild things to the ends of her sporty yellow hair. As she scooted past us she gave James a big smile, raised a hand, and nodded. James looked away.
“Friend of yours?” I said, watching as the girl, passing us, noticed the outline of Vernon Hardapple’s butt in my hood.
“I don’t know her,” James said. “I swear.”
“I believe you,” I said.
We drove on for a time without speaking. After a little while James fished the Baggie out from under his thigh and snapped it open. He lowered his face down into the mouth of the bag, and inhaled.
“Smells like good stuff,” he said, in a tone of expertise.
“And how would you know that?” I said. “I thought you didn’t do pot. Didn’t like to lose control of your emotions.”
He blushed again, I supposed because he was aware that last night, if he’d lost any further control of his emotions, he would have been careering down the middle of Centre Avenue emitting blue nuclear fire from his nostrils and trying to kick over parked cars.
“It’s ’cause of my father,” he said, after a moment. “He smokes it. He gets it from his doctor.”
I said, “From his doctor? Is he sick?”
He nodded. “He has—my father has cancer. Of the colon.”
“Jesus, James,” I said. “Shit, buddy, that’s too bad.”
“Yeah, well. So I guess the chemotherapy makes him feel really sick. Too sick to do anything. Too sick to even go out for a walk. His business started failing. The trout pens, you know. Started getting all scummy and stuff.” He shook his head, looking sad and faintly disgusted, as if recollecting the iridescent shimmer of decay on the surface of his father’s fishponds. “So anyway, his doctor prescribed, you know.” He gave the bag a little shake. “Want me to roll you a reefer? I do it for my dad.”
“You have to roll them? Really? I thought that U.S. government dope was all machined and perfect. Like real cigarettes. That’s what I’ve heard.”
“Not my dad’s,” said James, furrowing his brow. “No. It always comes loose, in a Baggie like this.”
I shrugged. We drove past the remnants of a collapsed barn, on whose roof there still faded an advertisement for Red Man, and then, immediately afterward, the sign that said we were seventy-five miles from the exit you took for Kinship, PA. I felt my heart squeeze, and something tightened up within me, as though an innermost cinch had been yanked.
“Well, sure, then,” I said. “Go ahead and roll me one. If you want.” I reached into my vest and fished out the little pack of Zig-Zags. “Here you go. Try not to let it all blow away, though.”
He lowered the glove compartment lid again, spread a rolling paper flat across it, pinched off a small bud from the bag, dropped it into the pleat. He zipped shut the Baggie and set it under his thigh. An