Bill and Mikey dropped off Max at his house on the north side of Sarasota. The single-family bungalow was shaded by live oaks scattered across the half-acre lot and a tall Florida pine on the bravo side. Shells crunched under his paint-splattered, cheap-o nubuck work boots. He carried a backpack on one shoulder and had gas station Wayfarer sunglasses resting on top of his head. When he got five feet from the front door, a finger pulled the blinds down into an inverted triangle. Max made a crazy face in its direction and walked in.
Max’s younger brother, Jerm, was sitting on the couch backed against the front windows with the blinds down, wearing a bootleg Gucci bathrobe he’d bought off AliExpress. His large belly stuck out, showing a green salsa verde stain on his wifebeater. He was watching man-on-the-street interviews at a streetwear convention on the 65-inch TV that sat three feet in front of him on a thrifted, worn, dark wood coffee table.
“What up, nigga,” Max said as he took an immediate left to his bedroom.
“Just fucking off.”
“I see you DoorDashed some tacos. Did you buy groceries?”
“I… Not yet.”
Max pulled off his boots, smelling the second one and grimacing before aligning them next to his motorcycle boots. On the TV, someone was saying, “We in here. We outside. Yah feel me? They need to respect where this shit came from.”
Max lay back on his bed—a box spring and mattress on the floor, properly made before he’d left for work that morning—and spoke to his cracked bedroom door. “These niggas are retarded. These dudes all talk exactly the same.”
Jerm spoke over the TV voice, “This dude is popping right now. He might buy a beat off me.”
“Always in good company, Jerm.”
Max stretched out in a spastic desperation, then kicked his legs up and out to launch himself off the bed. Blood rushed to his head, and he stumbled out of his room and walked to the kitchen. A ubiquitous drill beat played from the TV. He opened the fridge—barren, except for a few wilted grapes and one tall can of Busch beer with the plastic ring still attached. He made a squinting, annoyed face and grabbed the beer. When he walked toward the couch, he lifted the beer with a finger hooked in the ring.
Jerm caught the offense and said to Max in shame, “Shit, my bad, dude.”
Max stepped over Jerm’s legs and moved the plastic bag and container from Jerm’s meal to the floor beside the couch.
“I only drank two.”
“It’s a four-pack. I had one yesterday. Can we watch police cams?”
“Oh, I got a good one in my watch-later. One sec.”
Max cracked the beer and took a sip with the ring still attached.
“I got a surprise too.”
“I could use a surprise.”
Jerm clicked play on a video with his Xbox controller: Get Out the River! Meth Head Swims in Florida River, GETS ARRESTED. Body-cam footage appeared on the screen, looking hi-def and low-res simultaneously. A man wearing a tool belt was pointing and telling two police officers how a friend of his went crazy and was now swimming in the river. The scene was middle-of-nowhere inland Florida—tall, slim Florida pines surrounded them, scattered clouds floated across a crisp blue sky. It looked to be about noon.
Jerm leaned forward, opened the coffee table drawer, and pulled out a small wooden box and an ounce of weed.
“You bought an ounce. I’m not surprised.”
Jerm slid open the top of the box and pulled out a sheet of brown wax, clear enough to replace your Ray-Bans.
“You bought wax too?”
“Julio came by and gave me a discount with the ounce.”
Max’s face showed judgment and annoyance.
“What?”
“Come on, dude, we gotta pay the rent this week.”
“Crypto’s been up like all week, dude. It’ll be fine.”
“You’re a degenerate.”
“But you still love me. Let’s smoke this shit, nigga.”
On the TV, the police officers had walked to a small creek next to the construction site. A white man in his late thirties was doing backstrokes in the creek, seeming to enjoy himself while the police demanded, then nearly pleaded, for him to get out of the water, saying, “This is a wellness check; we’re just making sure you’re okay.” The man responded, “Look, man, I just smoked a joint. That shit makes me kind of paranoid. I just need to cool off.” Then the man did an underwater front flip in the murky brown water.
Max drank his beer and laughed hysterically at the TV.
The Black officer wearing the body cam said, “GET - OUT - THE - RIVER.”
Max continued to laugh and said, “Ha! He said it!”
The tweaker responded, “Look, man, I don’t appreciate that tone. You, like, don’t even know me. You don’t know I have problems. I get depressed.”
Jerm set his beaker-style dab rig in his lap, pulled strands of wax from the paper, and set it in the removable bowl. He then pulled out a hand torch, lit its aggressive flame, and began heating the nail.
“You want to hit it first?” Jerm nodded at the beaker clenched between his knees.
“Fuck, dude, I’m gonna be like this dude in the river.”
“He’s having a great time. That’s what we strive for.”
Max looked at the glowing nail. His heart began to race. An angel appeared on his shoulder and told him not to; Jerm appeared on his opposite shoulder, wearing ill-fitting red spandex and devil’s horns, and called the angel a pussy, and said the angel’s sandals were whack.
“Okay, I’m sold. Lemme get it.”
Max took the rig and waited for the nail to reach its climax. The tweaker was doing laps like Michael Phelps.
The younger white officer spoke to the tweaker: “Did you take anything besides that joint you smoked?”
Jerm handed off the glowing nail to Max as if it were an instrument of great importance during a desperate situation. Max pressed the nail into the bowl and sucked up the milky white smoke as it filled the chamber, continuing to inhale until all the wax dissipated. Then he pulled the bowl from the chamber and cleared the beaker. He held it in for two beats and started coughing on the third: instant fishbowl. Max passed the equipment back to Jerm in a fluid motion, like a nurse handing a surgeon a bone hammer, as he continued to cough at the floor.
Max felt his heart flutter, then catch a fast pace. The world felt different than before.
“All good, bro?” Jerm looked concerned.
Max stood up slow and robotic and said, “Yeaaaaah…” and walked the narrow path between the TV and the wall to his right.
Jerm watched Max turn right and close the bathroom door behind him. He shrugged and began packing his hit.
In the bathroom, Max stared into the vanity mirror above the sink, which reflected off the pillbox mirror behind him, creating a snaking reflection into infinity. It wasn’t novel to him—he’d looked at his thousand selves many times—but when stoned, like stoned-stoned, it took on a philosophical bent. It made him nauseous. He turned on the shower, waited for it to heat up, and went back to his reflections. He smiled, hoping one of his thousand selves would look sincere—no luck. He made an angry, bug-eyed, crazy-man face; that felt more real. His attention shifted quickly, being so high, and he began to study the mole on his left chest, which looked abnormal. It wasn’t. He had a flash of hypochondria—this is what happens when he smokes dabs: a rush of awareness of every neuron and cell. After a moment, he flexed and checked out his biceps, which needed more work.
He stepped into the shower, doused himself, washed down, and once done, sat on the floor and contemplated his day.
When Max walked back to his room, Jerm was lying on the couch, soaked in blue light from the TV’s glow. His eyes were flushed red and involuntarily squinted as he watched the program, like he was seeing something beyond what was being presented. Max drew the blinds. Jerm looked over, then turned his head back to the TV, unfazed. With the shades up, the room was hardly less dark from the shade of the oak trees.
“Need some light in here. It’s only five.”
Jerm grunted and continued watching the TV.
“What’s this?”
“Some dude got merked. An MIT scientist working on AI.”
On the TV, police stood around the crime scene as EMTs and paramedics guided a stretcher carrying a body bag out of a high-rise apartment building near Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA. A ticker ran across the bottom of the screen that stated: MIT Professor and Artificial Intelligence Researcher Found Dead - Suicide Suspected.
“It says suicide.”
“He was assassinated.”
“How?”
Max dropped to the floor and did push-ups: ten half-reps followed by ten full reps at a slower, controlled pace.
“It’s a group called the New World Order. I heard about it on 4chan a while ago. It’ll hit the mainstream as a ‘conspiracy theory’ in about two weeks. Watch, dude.”
Max was doing a second set. He grunted, “Then it’s an urban legend.”
He stood up, clapped the dust off his hands, and added, “Why are they called the New World Order?”
Jerm scratched his nuts and continued watching the TV.
“I guess to fuck with the real NWO or bring awareness. I don’t know.”
“Bring awareness to Hollywood Hogan?”
Jerm chuckled, sniffed his fingers, and winced.
“Yeah, maybe these terrorists are retarded.”
Max put on a snarky, nasally voice: “You call them terrorists. I call them freedom fighters.”
Max stepped outside and did ten minutes with his jump rope, alternating sets of declined push-ups off the front step. In the east, storm clusters rumbled. It hadn’t rained yet, and he was hoping it wouldn’t—he wanted to take a ride on his motorcycle before meeting Rudy at RG’s, Rogues Gallery, their preferred bar. After three sets, he lay on his bed and flipped through an old Maxim magazine he’d bought at an antique store. His phone buzzed. Rudy texted: Some friends from RISD meeting up at RG around 8.