For a few minutes the shapely redhead slumped on the one chair in the tiny room, tears of self-pity brimming in her green eyes. Then a determined expression hardened her lovely face and she jumped to her feet. How could she possibly have heard from Erik when there was no telephone in the flat? And what did it matter anyway? She had so many things to do that she wouldn't have had time to be with him even if he did come by. Quickly, she began unwrapping her purchases, putting things away and making herself a cheese omelet and a fresh salad. After she had eaten, it was still only seven o'clock, so she washed the dishes and scrubbed all the cupboards in the kitchen. Then, as the church bells rang out eight o'clock, she began to cut out the bright red patterned material she'd bought to make curtains.
There was no traffic on the side street beneath Jill's apartment, and only the occasional sounds of pedestrians and the church bells broke the silence. The stillness seemed unnatural. Tomorrow I'll buy a secondhand radio, Jill promised herself as she began to sew the hem of the first curtain. Then a sudden loud banging on the door of the flat so startled the nervous young girl that she spilled pins and needles all over the floor as she leapt to her feet.
It must be Erik! she thought, surprising herself by the intensity of her joyful relief. She knew she shouldn't want to see him after the terrible thing he'd done in giving her that obscene battery-powered vibrator, but he probably hadn't thought anything of it. In a country where people could lie around half-naked in public, it was impossible to know what was going on in anyone's mind. And he'd had been so very kind to her, finding her this flat and all…
Jill pulled open the front door, a welcoming smile on her pretty face. But it wasn't Erik after all – it was a total stranger, a long-haired, very thin young man dressed in purple velvet pants and an exotically embroidered Moroccan shirt. His face was handsome enough, but there was a strange look in his brown eyes.
"Hi," he said in English, but with a slight accent. "I heard noises in here and thought Pout and Helle had come back from the country. Who are you?" His dark eyes ran insolently over her body, and Jill found herself wishing that she'd changed into something other than these tight jeans and shrunken T-shirt.
"I-I'm Jill Duncan," she stammered. "I just moved in yesterday. I think the people who lived here before are staying in the country."
"Oh yeah?" he said, his gaze never leaving the straining mounds of her breasts. "Yeah, they said they might do that. Well, I'm Dizzy, I live down the hall. Ya wanna come over and meet us?"
Jill hesitated, not quite knowing how to reply. There was something about him that made her feel uneasy, and, even though she had had absolutely no experience with drugs, she immediately suspected that he was high on something.
"We just got hold of some out-of-sight shit," he added persuasively.
So, her guess had been right! "Shit" was obviously some sort of illegal narcotic. The innocent law student's first impulse was to slam the door in his face, but then she thought better of it. Here, after all, was the perfect opportunity to personally investigate the attitudes of an alternative lifestyle. What was it that Professor Jorgensen had said this morning? Something about the fact that drug crimes are preventable only when the mass of humanity understands the underlying causes for their use – well, what better way to understand their use than through personal observation?
Jill forced a smile. "Sure, Dizzy, I'd like to meet your friends."
Dizzy's flat was the same shape and size as the redhead's own apartment, but the similarity ended there. There was a great clutter of brightly colored objects covering every inch of the small room. Posters lined the walls and ceiling, some of the same ones that Jill had seen in the sex shop. Numerous record albums were scattered on the uncarpeted floor, and the stereo was blaring out rock music at full volume. A strange mixture of odors filled the stuffy air, smoke, incense, and a smell that the young law student couldn't quite identify. Although it was still light out on the street below, the windows were covered with exotic Indian cloth so that it was completely dark inside, except for two homemade candles burning on a low table. Around the table, slumped on foam rubber mattresses, lay three bodies.
"Sit down, if you want," Dizzy said, gesturing vaguely toward one of the mats and then turning to address one of the reclining bodies. "Did ya bring the stuff, Amed?"
Jill gingerly lowered herself onto the low mattress, feeling more uneasy than ever. She knew that she must not let her own emotional reactions interfere with her objective observation, but it was impossible to ignore the odd aura of sinister enchantment that this room exuded. The bewildered young redhead had a sudden instinctive feeling that, if she were to fall asleep in this place, she'd awake in some other world, where the atmosphere imposed a kind of bizarre stupefication.
"Do I not always bring the hashish when I say I do?" Amed replied to Dizzy's question in a heavily accented voice. Jill thought that he was probably not Danish, for his accent was different, and his swarthy, dark-haired appearance was not at all Scandinavian.
"Yeah, man, but you don't always bring it for the price you said you would," Dizzy countered. "It's still seven a gram?"
Amed answered in some language Jill didn't understand, something similar to Danish that she supposed must be German. They haggled about the price for several moments, and then Dizzy brought out a little postage scale and weighed a large slab of dark brown colored stuff. At last money changed hands, and Dizzy began to grind up a little piece of the "shit", blend it with crushed tobacco from a mangled cigarette and stuff the mixture into a little clay pipe.
Jill squirmed nervously on the foam rubber mat, trying to think of a graceful way to leave immediately. She'd never smoked dope before, and she didn't want to start smoking it now. Yet she knew that no one in the room would understand her conservative point of view.
The two bodies on the other side of the low table slowly rose to a sitting position as Dizzy lit the small pipe. In the dim light the uneasy American girl couldn't quite make out whether or not they were male or female, as both had hair as long as her own. Then one of the figures stood up and started to move somewhat unsteadily in the direction of the kitchen. A sheer Indian cotton robe immediately marked her as a girl with a very thin body but well-rounded breasts.
Dizzy handed the little clay pipe to Amed, who sucked the heavy smoke deep into his lungs while Jill watched curiously. She half-expected him to immediately start babbling like an insane person, or perhaps keel over in a dead faint, but all he actually did was stare at her in a way that made her hastily shift her glance away.
Amed passed the pipe to the man seated on the opposite mat, who inhaled deeply and then stood up to hand the ceramic object to Jill.
"No thanks, I don't smoke," she said somewhat defensively.
"Why not?" the tall handsome youth asked, sounding just as amazed as if she'd told him that she didn't breathe.
"Because it's against the law, for one thing…" Jill began.
"Oh, you don't have to be paranoid here," he laughed. "Smoking isn't illegal – only selling."
"Sure, Tommy's right, he oughta know, he did time in England," Dizzy said, moving over to sit uncomfortably close to her on the mattress. "Here, do it like this."