“Nomi, sweetie! How are you?” Gisella leans in to kiss my cheek. “Feeling well?”
Gisella gets all the dirt on me thanks to her weekly coffee-and-antiquing dates with my mom. She’s abundantly kind, though, and while I do not share my health with most people, Gisella’s love and attention feels genuine and understanding in a way that never rankles.
“Yes, feeling great, thank you for coming. Great to see you, too, Dr. Appa.”
“What you’re doing for this community is laudable, Nomi.” Dr. Appa gives me a warm, fatherly smile as he slips a hundred-dollar bill into my piñata. “Cannabis has many wonderful medicinal and recreational uses, and it has been unfairly vilified for decades just for being pleasurable.”
“Hear, hear!” Gisella says.
I smile. “Someone should tell Julian that.”
“Who can tell that boy anything?” Gisella rolls her eyes. “Where’s Jenny, honey? I want to say hello.”
“Mom’s in the dining room with the baked goods,” I grin. “Where else?”
Gisella and Dr. Appa stroll inside, greeting everyone as they go as the beloved town celebrities they are, and Veronica swoops back to my side, adjusting a lock of my long curtain bangs until she’s satisfied. She may be intimidating, but she’s the kind of dependable that’ll never let you walk around with something in your teeth. Her eyes flicker beyond my shoulder, and she leans in to whisper, “Council Members Min and Shar coming in hot. Look alive, babe, and goget that license.”
I spin on my boot heels. “Council-friends!” I use their preferred title, hold out my hand, and shake each of theirs as they walk up the front steps, commanding myself not to tremble. “Welcome, and thank you for coming.”
“Look at this turnout.” Shar, pronounced likeCher, nods appreciatively as her sharp eyes scan the crowds. The most pragmatic of the Council-friends, Shar owns a successful accounting practice and is primarily driven by increasing tax profits for the town. “Half of Sparrow Nook is here to support you.”
“People use cannabis for many reasons—to have fun, relax, address chronic health conditions and pain—but the nearest dispensary is over half an hour away. If we had our own small, bespoke dispensary conveniently located on Main Street? As you can see,” I gesture to the boisterous party, “people would bethrilled.Here, let me preview what Stranger Drugs will offer.” I usher the Council-friends inside toward the sample display menu.
Min Lee whistles as she reads along. She owns the local Asian supermarket whose customer base expanded hundred-fold overnight thanks to the bestselling memoirCrying in H Martby Michelle Zauner. As such, Min is extremely sensitive to aging hipster millennial needs, from translated explanations on the soy sauce aisle to their comfort cannabis. As she told me last week, “stoned people are hungry people.” Her vote is in the proverbial cotton tote bag, and I have her to thank for getting Shar here tonight.
“What a spread!” Min glances up and winks. “Good pricing, too. Are you planning on a rewards program for frequent buyers?”
“Absolutely. Clients will start earning gifts immediately. We want to develop a devoted customer base and encourage repeat business, which will help expand our offerings while providing a meaningful tax revenue stream to Sparrow Nook.” I wink back, grateful for the alley-oop. “Our model is based on local, fresh product with a diversified menu designed to meet every cannabis user at their comfort level and need. I also have an extremely talented baker lined up whose edibles are so delicious, they’re going to draw their own visitors to Sparrow Nook.”
I wave my hand at the truly epic table spread Eve’s created. We raided thrift stores yesterday for every vintage cake stand, platter, and bespokeceramic surface in township lines, and the resulting effect is somewhere between my grandmother’s china cabinet and the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Each dish features some gorgeous dessert that will make you groan in pleasure then send you to space. From inspired classics like fudge-topped brownies marbled with cream cheese to Eve’s trippier creations, like Fruity Pebbles treats melted together with green weed mallows, there’s something for every palate. She even made a stack of her legendary high-protein, high-THC sativa granola bars that I eat whenever I need to clean my entire house in pure euphoria.
I grin at the Council-friends’ starstruck expressions. “Care to sample anything?”
Min expertly retrieves a raspberry glazed donut from a dwindling platter with a pair of bakers’ tongs she’ll be too stoned to use in about half an hour.
Shar, with her arms folded, is still regarding me, though. “How will your model differ from the competition?”
I almost don’t hear her. The music, a chill blend of unobtrusive but exceedingly hip songs curated by Graham for the party, changes abruptly to something with a seething, pulsing beat. Ihateit. With effort, I wrench my eyes back to Shar’s.
“Stranger Drugs will be a one-of-a-kind boutique experience that curates its offerings to meet our customers’ needs while providing a pleasant, convivial atmosphere to socialize in.” I have to struggle to be heard now. What was Graham thinking? “The closest dispensaries are all Xscape Your Brain locations. While XYB is a small chain, it’s also heavily corporatized, preferring to source big-batch strains from mega growers and manufacturers instead of buying high-quality cannabis grown here in the Garden State. The product they carry is cheaper, sure, but it’s lower quality, too—more variable in its stated percentages of THC to CBD, and often stale and less effective.”
“You know a lot about the competition,” Shar yells back. “Though it doesn’t sound like much competition, does it?”
Smugness fills my petty, business-loving heart.
“I’ve worked at the South Harbor XYB location for the last five years as the chief cannabis counselor and manager.” I smile conspiratorially, then lean over to shout, “and I can’twaitto quit!”
“Too bad.” A snide, nasal male voice rises above my head like a malodorous cloud of bad energy, and I whip around. Damon, in black vinyl pants and hisgoing-outplatforms, towers over me. His rubbery lips are gathered into a sneer. “Because you’refired!”
My breath catches, and I step back, bumping into Shar.
I spin around to face them, smiling and clapping my hands once. “I’m so sorry, Council-friends, please excuse me—I need to confer with this… uh, client. Enjoy the party!”
I grab Damon by his faded Moby T-shirt and drag him to the side. “What’reyoudoing here?” It’s a dumb question, but the sight of my horrible boss looming like a venomous centipede on two of its hundred legs is so jarring, sonightmare-come-to-life, my brain can’t process the information.
“Reconnaissance, what else?” Damon crumples one of our green party flyers in his fist and takes a step forward. His vinyl pants squeal in protest. “You really thought you could open a dispensary inmystate without me finding out?”
“I… yes?” I swallow. “It’s a pretty big state.”
