“Not enough,” Dr. Srinivasan counters. “You need to witness firsthand how cannabis helps people in their daily lives. I want you to shadow Nomi Wyeth and learn everything she’s willing to teach you. She’s an expert of great knowledge.”
The hope blooming in my chest gets chopped down like a weed. “Uh, sir. That’s impossible.”
“Make it possible.”
“You see, Nomi…” I pause, searching for the right words, but my brain supplies exactly none of them.
Is so pretty, it makes my chest hurt.
Kissed me and blew my world apart.
Makes me feel like I’m… I’m more and less, all at once.
“Hates you, I know,” Dr. Srinivasan supplies succinctly, and I wince, my heart spiraling in my chest.
Yes. Those are the right words.
“She’ll never let me shadow her, sir. Not after I filed that zoning complaint.”
“Interesting predicament.” Dr. Srinivasan’s eyebrows rise as he dryly regards me. “Whateverwill you do.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NOMI
Uncle Dimitri stops by later in the week with either a homemade bomb or an espresso machine, hard to say. For all the shuddering, thunking, and weird gasping shrieks it makes, maybe it’s both.
“Barely used, excellent condition, makes a beautiful cup of espresso.” Eve’s uncle slaps the machine as it spits out a tiny cup of dark, murky liquid. “Some sad Italian guy brought it in the pawn shop, got it for a song.”
“Why does it matter if he was sad?” I frown at the belching machine.
“The sadder the person, the better the item they’re pawning,” Eve explains.
“Here, try it.” Uncle Dimitri hands me a cup to taste.
I stare into it. “Whatisespresso?”
Uncle Dimitri’s eyebrows bush together, like sentient shrubbery. “What’s espresso?” He lifts his palms up to Eve. “What’sespresso?!”
“Calm down, Nomi doesn’t drink coffee. It uh, doesn’t agree with her.”
I give her a small smile, relieved that Eve and I are okay. I don’t have many close friends, and the day I got sick this week is basically why. Not everyone can handle my sudden need to withdraw, or how, when I’m gripped in the kind of pain that makes you moan, I become someone different for a while. Someone they don’t know and can’t understand. Maybe even someone they don’t like. But Eve gives me the grace to get throughthe pain however I need to, and I know she’ll always be there, waiting for me on the other side.
“I better not.” I push the tiny cup back.
“How are you gonna run a coffee shop if you don’t know what it tastes like?” He huffs.
After two days of tinkering with espresso and brewing Costco brand ground coffee out of a substandard machine, the answer isbadlyandto great critical condemnation.
“Sorry!” I call out as the customer, a woman in her thirties pushing a double baby strollerfilledwith infants, chokes and splutters on her first sip of latte. She eyes the paper cup in her hand warily, grimaces, then glugs down another swallow before struggling out the door.
That’s the first person I’ve seen go back for more. I must be getting better!
Stranger Drugs, now renamed Stranger Coffee thanks to Eve taping a piece of printer paper over our painted glass door, is in a great spot to serve coffee downtown. Literally five minutes after she taped up the sign, a big guy named Carl popped his head inside to ask if we were open. Like Carl, many city employees pass by on their way to work. Yesterday, the first day we claimed to sell coffee, we had a line for a solid two hours.
It washorrible. We only have the one coffeepot, and the little fucker takes ten minutes to brew a potevery time. I couldn’t believe it! The espresso machine isn’t much faster, though that’s in large part due to user error. Uncle Dimitri must’ve shown me a dozen times how to brew the tiny cup of motor oil, but I still can’t get it right. Half the time it doesn’t work at all and spews out a thin, gruesome water flecked with black grounds. The other half of the time I have to use a spoon to dig it out. While I’m new to this world, I’m pretty sure espresso shouldn’t have the consistency of facial scrub.
This morning’s been much slower since the city employees that came in yesterday are now walking briskly past and avoiding my gaze. Only new, uninformed souls have come in today, like the woman saddled with babies. I check the receipts for the morning—a whopping eighteen dollars—and sigh before pulling out my laptop to work on the mobile dispensary license paperwork. What else can I do? Without the farm stand, we have nowhere to publicly sell our product and have resorted to quietly fulfilling orders via home visits for my longstanding customers. The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m basically dealing drugs the old-school illegal way, but I’m sorry—I’m not going to let Mr. Gutierrez or Edna D’Angelo go without and suffer.
