Daddy nodded happily. “I grow it myself.”
Ray looked at him. “So, what’s the story, man, are you some kind of burned-out hippie, or are you an ace?”
Daddy shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that I can grow things. They taste good, and they do good things for your body and your head.”
“Maybe,” Jerry suggested, “you should call yourself the Green Thumb.”
Ray frowned, and then started to laugh. Within moments they were all giggling like hopeless fools. It felt good, Jerry thought. Really good. Ray handed Daddy the joint. He took a toke and passed it on to Jerry.
They sat together, smoking, talking, and laughing for the next hour. Ray turned out to be a fount of surprisingly amusing stories about foreign and domestic diplomats. Every now and then Jerry would just say, “Green Thumb,” and they’d all laugh again, though Jerry had the feeling that Mushroom Daddy didn’t see anything particularly funny in the name and was maybe seriously considering it.
They finally polished off their fifth or sixth joint and Ray looked at them all, seriously.
“I’m hungry,” he said. “Room service, or buffet?”
They all thought about it for a moment, and then as one man said, “Buffet!”
Daddy gathered up his paraphernalia, but Ray made him leave it all in the suite. Together they descended in the elevator, to wreak havoc on the first buffet that they could find.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Peaceable Kingdom: Loaves and Fishes
Ray was ravenous. He wanted either food or women, vast quantities of either. It didn’t matter which, but he wanted them now. Everyone else seemed fixated on the idea of food, so that was all right with him.
They rode the elevator to the ground floor, passing the hotel restaurants in unspoken accord. They didn’t want to go sit down at a table, wait for a waiter to show up and take their drink order, come back and take their food order, go turn it into the kitchen, and then wait for the kitchen to cook it, wait for the waiter to go pick it up and bring it to their table, and after all that get only a miserly little plate of food and they were all pretty sure that a plate of rolls or a small loaf of wheat bread wouldn’t hold them in check while they waited.
They hit the street with hunger rumbling in their stomachs and anticipation roiling in their brains. Their eyes focused on the building before them. LOAVES AND FISHES!!! Steaks! Chops! Seafood! Salad! Deserts! All You Can Eat! They looked at each other and nodded, even Sascha. They had found their Mecca.
They descended on the restaurant like a swarm of locusts, and after paying their fourteen ninety five apiece at the door (Ray covered for Mushroom Daddy with his personal credit card, bitching that Angel still had Barnett’s.) they tore through the buffet line and salad bar, leaving devastation in their wake like a force five hurricane.
Ray got himself a steak, a couple of pork chops, and a roast chicken, whole. He decided to leave the carving station—turkey, ham, and lamb—for later. He piled on some mashed potatoes, french fries, buttered noodles, and corn on the cob. Dessert was tempting, but he had no more room on his tray. He took a large ice tea, unsweetened, at the drink station. He was pretty thirsty.
He joined Daddy, Sascha, and Creighton at the table where they were already plowing through their food. Sascha had taken the sweet route, going for all the desserts he could grab, including an entire Black Forest cake. Creighton had cleaned out the carving station, and had a couple of made to order omelets, while Mushroom Daddy, apparently a vegetarian, had about half the salad bar in front of him, as well as a selection of hot vegetables.
“This isn’t bad,” he said around a mouthful of potato salad, “but mine is better.”
“Green Thumb,” Sascha said.
No one laughed. Somehow it wasn’t as funny as before. Maybe they weren’t as stoned, or maybe they were all just concentrating on the food.
“Mmmm,” Creighton said, at least acknowledging Daddy’s remark.
Ray just kept on eating. The food was indescribably good. Ray wasn’t sure why. Sure, he was stoned and Daddy’s pot was potent. Powerful yet with a curious mellowing effect, it heightened Ray’s senses, intensifying his sense of smell, taste, and touch. He smiled as he popped a piece of steak in his mouth and chewed slowly and thoughtfully. Too bad Angel wasn’t here, he thought. He’d like to see her smoke a joint of Daddy’s weed. It would really loosen her up.
That was it. He felt really, totally, one hundred per cent relaxed for the first time in weeks. Probably months. He was back in Branson with few prospects, except a return bout with Butcher Dagon and an unknown number of henchmen with unguessable powers and abilities, but that was okay. That was in the future. He would handle it as it came, like he always did. Tonight he was just a guy enjoying a meal. If he wasn’t with friends, he was with comrades, and that was just about as good. He never had many friends in his life, but he’d had comrades plenty and he’d never let them down. He hadn’t won every fight he’d ever been in and over the years he’d lost some of the steadfast men who’d stood at his side. But that was life. At least he knew that he always did the best that he could and he never ran from a fight.
He tore off a chicken leg, and looked around as he bit a chunk out of it. Mushroom Daddy had just said something, he’d missed exactly what, that had set both Creighton and Sascha laughing. Daddy joined them and then he did, too. He laughed aloud at nothing, though apparently, if you believed Barnett, Armageddon was just around the corner and the fate of the world was hanging in the balance.
“Let it hang,” Ray said aloud. The others all looked at him.
“What?” Creighton asked.
Ray shook his head. “Nothing.” He looked around the table at the three, shaking his head. “You are three crazy sons of bitches.” He picked up his ice tea glass and tipped it in their directions. “I salute you all.”
They laughed, grabbed their glasses and returned the toast, and Ray laughed with them, the hardest of all.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Somewhere in Kentucky
It was the carburetor. Fortunately there was a small town at the bottom of the mountain with a service station. It didn’t have the right type of carburetor in stock, though the guy knew a guy with a junkyard that probably had a couple of old hippie vans laying around it somewhere. The Angel told them they were in a rush. She flashed the platinum card and the service station attendant managed to take his eyes off her (he barely seemed to notice that John Fortune was glowing) and he took off to find the part. The Angel checked themselves into the town’s single decrepit motel, figuring that some sleep on a real bed would do them some good. She’d told the mechanic where they’d be, and to come and get them as soon as he was finished.
“You know,” John Fortune said, after they’d checked in, “I’ve never shared a motel room with a girl before.”
The Angel forestalled a grimace. This, she didn’t need. She said the first thing that popped into her mind. “I have to take a shower.”
John Fortune nodded, his eyes wide as if he were considering the possibilities. “Sure,” he finally said. “I’ll just wait for you here.”
The Angel went into the bathroom and quietly locked the door. Maybe, she thought, if she drew this out as long as she could, John Fortune would get distracted by the TV or something. It didn’t seem likely.
The water came out of the showerhead at a trickle. She took as long as she could, but the mildew and fungus stains on the stall wall did not incline her to linger. The towels were paper-thin and didn’t really dry her body as much as blot it kind of fruitlessly. She wrapped a paper-thin towel around her form and stuck her head out of the bathroom, but John Fortune was lying on the room’s single bed, sound asleep, a bright aura shining all around him.