Oliver Benjamin
announced, snapping his fingers in emphasis and spraining the right
middle digit. The sound of his choked whimper rushed up at them
echoed and amplified from the sterile riverbank below.
2. Hard rocks
As if in agreement with Partment, the heavens opened up that night
and a flood of high water poured down upon the earth. The parched
soil rejoiced as if it were manna, but the people who lived upon it
were miserable. They blamed the technological giants for screwing
Mother Nature with their monstrous tools. She understandably
sought a revenge. Couldn’t they just lay down their arms?
For Roy and his coffeehouse, Nature reserved some mercy. On
the day of the party, the clouds parted and people flooded back to the
Promenade, jubilant as if celebrating a victory. The city felt refreshed
as if it had had a good cry. Roy, Leona and Bennie immediately set to
work cooking and decorating for the bash. With the huge number of
flyers pasted up all over town, they all expected a big demand for free
coffee and baked goods. The worst thing that could happen would be
that they run out of supplies.
No one noticed as Bennie took a hard black rock out of the
freezer and warmed it in the oven. Roy and Leona were in the
bathroom performing a similar alchemy. Colin was distilling hard
black rocks into Irish iced coffees and Niles was rolling joints stoned,
while Martin, the owner of the gym down the street performed a yoga
exercise resembling Muslim prayer, only ten times faster.
“Hey Marty, tell me if this tastes funny,” Colin called over to him.
Martin had finished and was taking his own pulse. He ambled over
and said, “Thirty beats per minute. Half the normal rate. That’s as
good as it gets.”
“Congratulations, you’re half dead.” Colin said, “Tell me how this
tastes,” he handed the toothy ironman a cup who took a sip and said
that it tasted okay but that it could use some more electrolytes.
“But can you taste the drugs?” Colin inquired.
“Drugs? Nope. You’re going to serve drugs tonight? That’s
illegal.”
“Only if you can taste it. Discretion is the better part of Valium,
as they say. Partment and I have decided that we need to add a
special something so people will let loose a bit. People don’t get
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