Baked Page 5

  Miro was startled to hear a loud American voice break through the low murmur of the restaurant. He turned and saw four men sitting at a table on the other side of the room.

  Guus stopped spooning soup into his mouth long enough to ask him a question.

  “Someone you know?”

  Miro nodded.

  “Someone I’ve met before. He owns the Compassion Center chain.”

  “What?”

  “Medical marijuana stores. He has, like, eight or nine around LA. They all look the same. Same menu, same furniture. The employees even wear uniforms. His name’s Vincent something.”

  Guus laughed and a half-chewed prawn jumped out of his mouth. He popped it back in and continued chewing.

  “Vincent Starbucks.”

  Miro laughed. “I’m always suspicious of logos on clothes.”

  Miro didn’t like the Compassion Centers. For starters he didn’t think they were particularly compassionate; they were more corporate than anything, they bought in bulk and sought exclusives from growers, paying below-market prices whenever they could. It was like trying to make a deal with Wal-Mart. You either played by their rules and took their prices, or they’d try to put you out of business. Miro preferred the cannabis clubs and herbal co-ops he dealt with. They were nice people, little mom-and-pop shops and cannabis boutiques, that served a wide range of clientele, some of whom had actual medical problems like cancer and AIDS and glaucoma and needed cannabis. The Compassion Centers, on the other hand, cultivated an upscale clientele from Brentwood, Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills— the kind of people who had botox treatments more often than they smoked marijuana.

  Miro took a sip of wine.

  “I wonder who he’s with.”

  Guus smirked. “That’s easy. Across from him is Arjan, the owner of the Greenhouse and Greenhouse Seeds. I don’t know the other two.”

  Miro couldn’t help himself, he stared. Greenhouse Seeds was the New York Yankees of the Cannabis Cup, dominating the competition every year and winning over thirty Cups for their various strains of Sativas, Indicas, and hashish. Arjan was the self-proclaimed King of Cannabis.

  “I wonder what they’ve entered. It’ll be good, you can count on that.”

  Guus leaned forward. “We’ll beat them.”

  “You think?”

  Guus nodded.

  “If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have entered.”

  A black rice pudding studded with jackfruit and coconut shavings arrived at the table. Guus drained his glass of wine and then began shoveling the pudding into his mouth. He looked up at Miro, who was watching Vincent and the King of Cannabis.

  “This pudding is fantastic.”

  …

  Miro and Guus waddled out of the restaurant and into the street. It was cold; a damp foggy chill that seemed to cling to everything had descended. Miro flipped his collar up for the hundredth time since he’d arrived in Amsterdam and reminded himself that he really needed to buy a scarf and a hat. The raw air didn’t seem to bother Guus, he let his scarf dangle nonchalantly in front of his unbuttoned leather jacket.

  Guus turned to Miro. “I need to walk. If I sit down, I fear I will rupture.”

  Miro nodded. “I could use a stroll.”

  …

  They walked for a while, two stoned and satiated men, one deep in a kind of gormandized, pigged-out coma, the other freezing his nuts off.

  After a few blocks they turned a corner and entered the De Wallen section of Amsterdam. The streets were narrow and dark, the few streetlights that bounced off the wet cobblestones provided a kind of upside-down illumination that made the faces of the people passing by look vaguely ghoulish. In some spots men stood huddled together, talking in hushed voices, buying and selling narcotics. Other men walked alone, their faces clenched tight against the night air, moving quickly down the street.

  Miro noticed that the block was lined with small shops, although there wasn’t any signage, just scantily clad women standing behind large windows affecting seductive poses, one after the other after the other under red lights. They looked like plants lined up in a nursery. He turned to Guus.

  “We’re in the red-light district?”

  Guus nodded and smiled.

  “If you want to partake in carnal pleasures, please, it is permitted.”

  Miro shook his head.

  “Not my thing.”

  Guus laughed.

  “It’s not why I came this way. There is a church here that I want to see.”

  “A church?”

  “It has a very famous organ.”

  …

  The lights were still on inside the old church, illuminating the massive arched windows and sending a diffuse glow out into the fog. Guus stopped and tilted his head. Miro was about to say something when the first wisps of organ music floated out of the building. They stood there for a few minutes as the organ pumped and rattled and chirped and sang like it was squeezing the life out of a flock of angels. Guus smiled and said, “Messiaen.” He sat down on a bench and listened.

  It was classical music, that was all Miro knew. Although it didn’t sound like any classical music he’d ever heard before. The music was dense and strange, like a jungled-up fever dream.

  Miro didn’t feel like sitting down; the last thing he wanted was damp pants. He was already shivering. He saw a sculpture and walked over for a closer look. It was a bronze of a woman standing in a rectangle meant to resemble a door frame. She was posing provocatively, wearing large Weimar Republic dominatrix boots, her hands on her hips. The inscription on the plaque said, “Respect sex workers all over the world.”

  Miro walked back to where Guus was sitting. He looked out at the canal where a few houseboats were moored, smoke rising from their fireplaces as they rocked gently on the water.

  The music stopped and Guus let out a sigh.

  “Beautiful. It almost makes you believe in God.”

  Miro turned toward him.

  “You believe in God?”

  Guus stood, suppressed a burp, and shook his head.

  “I don’t know anything. But do you really think you created Elephant Crush by yourself?”

  11

  MIRO COULD HEAR the clap of a snare drum; he could feel the thud of the bass in his chest even though he was standing on the street outside the building. He let a cold Dutch drizzle fall on him. He didn’t care. He was too nervous to go in. The cannabis had been smoked, the jury had deliberated, the votes had been counted, and they would be announcing the winner of the Cup after the band’s set. It was too much for Miro. So he paced the sidewalk.

  Guus gave him a pat on the shoulder.

  “Relax. You have to trust.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, my American friend, that the judgment is out of your control. You did the best that you could, now the judges will do the best that they can. We will see what happens.”

  It was true. But that didn’t make Miro feel any less nervous.

  There was a buzz going around the convention floor about some amazing weed. Because it was a blind tasting—every strain was given a code name—Miro didn’t know if they were talking about the Elephant Crush or if there was another, even better cannabis entered. What if Greenhouse Seeds had come up with another remarkable strain like Super Lemon Haze? Maybe Barney’s, the other big coffeeshop, had developed another G13 Haze, or someone else had discovered some rare gem, a once-in-a-lifetime cannabis. Miro had spent over two years, putting his life on hold as he sunk all his money and time into developing Elephant Crush. What if he lost? What if he was wrong?

  Guus laughed at him. “I’m going inside. If you have a heart attack call one-one-two and they’ll send an ambulance.”

  Miro watched as Guus shouldered his way through the crowd, back into the hall. He thought about following, thought about joining the throng and grooving to the reggae beat inside, but realized that would only make him more nervous; he was in no mood to groove so instead he d
ecided to take a walk around the block.

  He hadn’t gotten far when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

  “If you are looking for the breeze of the afternoon, you’re too late.”

  He turned and saw Marianna, the beautiful Portuguese scientist, standing in front of a wine bar holding her umbrella.

  Miro smiled. “Hi.”

  She offered her hand and he took it, giving her a warm handshake, trying not to grin too much.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at the conference?” She raised her umbrella so that he could stand under it with her.

  “Yeah. I guess. I’m too nervous.”

  “You’re nervous? Or stoned?”

  “Nervous. I have a strain entered in the competition.”

  He watched her face shift, like she was reassessing him.

  “You are one of the geneticists?”

  Miro nodded.

  “Kind of. I’m a botanist. I even have a degree to prove it.”

  She smiled.

  “Well, come have a glass of wine with me. It is also made from plants.”

  Miro wasn’t going to be as dumb as he had been last time. He followed her into the wine bar.

  It wasn’t like he had never had a girlfriend before. He’d had a few. One of them had even lasted a couple of years: they’d met in college and, after graduation, they’d moved to LA together. She was the one who initially got him interested in marijuana. He’d always been a weekend smoker but she was a real connoisseur and introduced him to the wide world of distinct strains and styles of cannabis. He sometimes wondered if he would have ever put the pluot and the idea of perfect cannabis together in his mind without her influence. With his skill as a grower and her love of quality reefer, you’d think they would’ve been a perfect match, but Miro had always felt like he was an accessory in the relationship. He occupied a kind of support position between her bong and her vibrator. Just another pleasure gadget.

  After that he dated. Had a few flings. A couple of times he fell into starter relationships but those only lasted a few months before the woman would begin to realize that he was more committed to his plants, to his scientific endeavors, than to “them,” and they’d invariably complain about the dirt under his fingernails and the smell of organic fertilizer in the kitchen.

  He thought maybe he needed to date someone who worked at a nursery, maybe a garden designer or landscape architect; someone who shared his passion for plants.

  He wasn’t sure how the Portuguese scientist fit into the scheme of things but as he sipped a glass of ruby-plum Cortes de Cima Incognito, looked into her shining green eyes, and watched as her delicate hand swept a loose curl back behind her ear, he forgot about plants and strains and competitions. He let the wine glow in his stomach and her accent fill his ears.

  He learned that she was an information scientist, a kind of super-high-tech librarian, and that she was living in Amsterdam for two years working on a special project funded by the European Union. She had two older sisters; one was a doctor and the other was a graphic designer. He asked about her accent and learned that if he spoke Portuguese, her accent would tell him that she was obviously an alfacinha, a native of Lisbon. She’d graduated with honors from the Universi-dade de Lisboa and done her graduate work at the University of Chicago. She didn’t like rock music but she adored Tropicalismo from Brazil.

  Miro had never met anyone like her before. He could’ve sat in the wine bar listening to her for hours, but then it occurred to him that he’d been there too long already.

  “Fuck.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve got to go.”

  Inside the hall the air was thick with ganja smoke and the crowd was pulsing to some old-school drum and bass mixed by a DJ on the stage. The DJ somehow mashed up a mambo marimba riff with the guitar break from the Gang of Four’s “At Home He’s a Tourist” and a chewing-gum jingle. Miro felt his nerves return. His mouth went dry and his heart pounded in his throat as he and Marianna burst into the room.

  As his eyes adjusted he saw Guus standing with a group of people in the far corner. They appeared to be having an animated discussion and were passing around a huge spliff.

  Guus saw Miro and waved. Miro realized he was holding Marianna’s hand—although he couldn’t say when that had happened—and juked his way through the crowd toward Guus. He had almost made it to the other side of the crowd when suddenly the King of Cannabis himself threw his arms around him.

  “Your weed is out of sight, man. Congratulations.”

  Miro nodded. It was hard to hear in the din of the mash up so Miro communicated by bobbing his head up and down.

  “Come by the Greenhouse later and we talk.”

  Miro nodded some more.

  The King patted his shoulder, turned to go, and was swallowed by the crowd. Miro looked at Marianna. She was smiling, enjoying the scene. That made him extra happy.

  Miro turned back toward Guus and that’s when he saw it. Guus was holding it up above his head with two hands. A bronze trophy that looked a lot like the mythical holy grail. It was the Cannabis Cup.

  12

  IF, AS MANY great religions believe, there is an afterlife, an eternity of blissful reward filled with goblets of ambrosia, rivers of wine, angelic singing, and seventy-two virgins, then the after party for the Cannabis Cup was its own kind of Heaven.

  By the time they got there, Miro was so stoned that he was having an out-of-body experience. It might have looked like he was slumped across the corner of a couch like an old coat, cradling his trophy in the crook of his arm like a newborn, but his mind was somewhere else, zooming along the ceiling of the nightclub in a part of Amsterdam called the Old South, hovering over the Franco-Algerian reggae band from Marseille—the singer rapping in Arabic—zipping over the clusters of stoners huddled around various bongs and water pipes. His consciousness or essence or spirit or whatever you want to call it flitted among the dancers, zoomed over the bar, and boomeranged outside and back. Miro felt slightly queasy; he wasn’t really accustomed to these kinds of transitory corporeal experiences, but then he’d never been this baked before.

  As he held the Cup in his hands, it dawned on Miro that he’d never won anything in his life. Not even a spelling bee or a kickball game. Miro understood what it must have felt like when Floyd Zaiger bit into the very first pluot. How sweet it must’ve tasted! Now he could understand how those Olympic athletes and Oscar Award winners felt when they accepted their trophies. With one simple announcement, he was launched into the stratosphere, acclaimed one of the best, the top dog, a gold medalist like Usain Bolt or an Oscar winner like Meryl Streep. He had spent thousands of hours reading and researching, tending plants with care, tasting and refining, always hoping that his ideas would somehow manifest in greatness. And now he was vindicated, validated, victorious.

  It didn’t hurt that winning also meant his plants and their seeds were now worth millions of dollars.

  …

  At one point he saw Guus dancing his way through the throng, trying desperately not to spill the three beers he was carrying as various people—their arms flailing in some kind of spastic kung-fu flower-petal dance—pinballed around him. Miro saw himself half-gassed on the couch and realized that Guus was headed toward him. It was then that he noticed Marianna sitting on the couch next to him.

  Guus set the beers down and Miro re-entered his body. Miro blinked and saw Guus wagging a finger at him.

  “Too much Elephant Crush.”

  Miro grinned. It was an uncontrollable, stupidly-wasted grin.

  “Cannabis Cup–winning Elephant Crush.”

  It sounded like a voice coming from somewhere else, as if a ventriloquist was sitting on the other side of the room pulling a little string in Miro’s back, making his mouth move. Guus smiled and raised his glass in a toast.

  “To the Elephant Crush!”

  Marianna joined them in the toast and the three clinked their glasses. She smiled at Miro.

&n
bsp; “I now see why you won.”

  Miro grinned and sipped the beer. It was cold and foamy, slightly bitter and slightly sweet. It was, he realized, an ingenious beer. The beer was like a masseuse who knew just where to push; it excited all the various areas of his tongue, from the filiform papillae at the tip that sensed sweetness to the ones at the back that were sensitive to bitter and salty flavors—his tongue was being turned on by this beer. It felt like his tongue was having sex with the beer.

  Miro was interrupted by a familiar face. It was Vincent, the owner of the Compassion Centers. He was signaling something with his hands, miming what looked like talking on the phone.

  “Let’s have lunch. In LA.”

  Miro smiled and flashed Vincent a thumbs-up. Vincent returned the gesture and walked off into the crowd. Guus leaned forward.

  “We will be hearing from all the coffeeshops now. Everyone wants the winner.”

  Miro smiled. “But you have the exclusive.”

  Guus let out a discreet belch.

  “I do. But you can, of course, sell it to whomever you want in your country. I think it could be good for America. Maybe they will stop making wars.”

  Miro started to laugh but caught himself when he realized that Guus was totally serious. Besides, he was too stoned, too happy, to get into the political intricacies of a vast and populous country like the United States. And who knew? Maybe the Crush could change the world. Maybe he would win a Nobel Peace Prize. Why not?

  They were interrupted by several other growers, fans, and well-wishers.

  As Guus fielded the congratulations, Miro reached for Marianna. She looked at him, her eyes completely glazed over from the herb. When their hands touched Miro felt a jolt of sensation. Like the beer on his tongue, her skin was communicating with his skin, sending deeply encoded animal bursts that coursed through his nervous system and triggered some kind of glandular secretions, some primeval brain chemistry reactions that started his body whirring like an amorous supercollider. The power of it startled him. He couldn’t tell if it was the pot or her, but he’d never felt this way before.