Different Circles

“Hell yeah!” agreed Corban. “I’ve been looking forward to that. You down with some government approved prostitution, Matt?”

“Fuck that shit,” Matt scoffed. “I don’t pay for it, even if it is legal. I’ll score me some Dutch gash back at the hotel—Dutch gash that’s fuckin’ free, and where the bitch is slurping my schlong because she wants to slurp my schlong, not because I opened my wallet.”

“You don’t even want to try it?” asked Austin. “Just to say you’ve done it?”

“I don’t pay for it,” Matt repeated. “It’s a matter of principle.”

“I guess a man has to make a stand about some things,” Austin said with a smile.

“Goddamn right,” Matt said, standing up.

“Think we should buy some of this weed to keep us supplied while we’re in Holland?” Steve asked. “We’re each allowed to buy five grams to take with us.”

“Yeah, I guess we might as well,” Matt said. “I don’t think that grinning Mormon freak has any connections in Rotterdam so he would probably just get our smoke from here anyway.”

“Probably,” Steve agreed.

They walked up to the female behind the counter. Her name, she told them, was Anna and she was a big Intemperance fan. She was quite awed to be serving them. She put four five-gram bags of Sativa on the table and Matt paid for it with a wad full of guilders he had scored back in Belgium.

“Will there be anything else?” she asked saucily after putting the purchases in a plain brown paper bag.

Matt looked her up and down again, noting that she had a pretty good set of titties on her and a body that had curves in all the right places. Her accent was pretty cool too. “What would you suggest?” he asked her.

“Have you ever tried edibles?” she asked.

“You mean like eating pussy?” Matt asked. “Yeah, I do that shit all the time, but never with groupies.”

“Uh ... no, that’s not what I’m talking about,” Anna said. “I’m talking about hash edibles.”

“Oh, you mean like pot brownies?” Matt said. “Yeah, I’ve tried that shit before. Didn’t do much for me.”

“You probably had improperly prepared product,” Anna suggested. “You can’t just dump some marijuana into a brownie mix and expect results. THC is fat soluble. If you are going to ingest it instead of smoking it, you have to bind the psychoactive ingredient into an oil.”

“No shit?” Matt said, finding this very interesting. The one time he had tried pot brownies, way back in high school, they had been homemade, and they had home made them by simply grinding up some pot and mixing it into the batter. This had made the end product gritty, with an odd taste, and completely ineffective at getting he and his friends high.

“No shit,” she confirmed. “Our edibles are made by extracting the THC from the leaves and stems of the plant by boiling them in butter. That binds the ingredient with the fat and allows it to be utilized for the psychoactive effect when ingested. We use the THC butter to make brownies and cakes.”

“And they get you high?” Steve asked.

“They do,” she confirmed. “And the high lasts a lot longer when you ingest the THC instead of smoking it. Takes a little longer to kick in, of course, but it’ll last you all night.”

“All right,” Matt said, pulling out his wad of guilders again. “I’ve got to check this shit out. Bust out some of those brownies.”

She sold him ten pot brownies for the American equivalent of five dollars apiece, packaging them neatly up in a little cardboard box with a lid. “Now, you’ve got to be careful with these,” she warned. “They can pack quite a punch. Eat half of one and then wait for at least two hours to see what kind of effect you get. If you’re not quite high enough, eat the other half, and so on and so forth.”

This seemed like an overly lengthy process to Matt. “How much do you eat when you munch on these things?” he asked.

“Well, the potency varies from batch to batch,” she said, “but I’ve found that one brownie will generally provide a therapeutic dose for me.”

“All right then,” Matt said. “Thanks for the suggestion.” He gave her a lascivious look. “What time you off work?”

“I’m off at five o’clock,” she said.

“Maybe you’d like to come down to the Hilton and indulge a little with me?” he asked. “I can leave your name at the front desk.”

She gave him a smile. “I’m flattered, Matt, I really am,” she said, “but I don’t think my boyfriend would be very happy if I were to do that.”

Matt simply shrugged. “I’m not gonna tell him.”

“Sorry,” she said, apologetically but firmly. “I’m going to have to take a pass.”

Matt shrugged again. “Your loss,” he said, unoffended. He would just have to find his Dutch gash somewhere else.

They left the shop. Austin, Steve, and Corban hailed one of the cruising taxies and climbed in. “Red light district!” Austin told the driver. “The classy part of it!” The driver simply nodded and drove away.