Niles righted himself and wiped the gunk from his eyes. He had
still not entirely recovered from the party the night before, having
thrown back a few of Colin’s special teas and forgetting they were
liberally spiked with Valium.
“You don’t have to scream, mon.”
Partment huffed. “I didn’t know if you could hear me through
that mop.”
Niles rolled his eyes. “Listen. I got a connection for you. For the
seeds. Some blind former rock star who specialized in seedless and
shakeless weed, the finest stuff for the rich Hollywood folk. He kept
them piled in his basement. Practically a ton of them, from twenty
years of dealing. He was thinking of starting a mail-order seed
company, but it’d be too much trouble. He said he’ll unload them for
only a few grand.”
“Nice. When can he deliver them?”
“Deliver? He ain’t gonna deliver them, Paul. You gotta pick em
up.”
“A ton of marijuana seeds? From the house of a known drug
dealer? No way.”
“You know that seeds are not illegal. What’s the problem?”
“Listen, Niles. Has it not occurred to you that I’m running a
quasi-military/revolutionary underground subversive operation
here?”
Niles shook his long locks. “Shit. That’s what it’s called?”
“That’s what it is,” he said haughtily. “Look, Niles. Pal. Getting
caught with a ton of pot seeds might blow my whole operation wide!”
“Your whole operation? All you do is dole out parking tickets.”
Partment shook his head. “Niles, Niles, Niles.”
“Paul, Paul, Paul.”
Partment placed a withered hand on Niles’ shoulder and lowered
his voice, “There are things in the mix you couldn’t possibly know
about,” he said.
“What, like your plan to overthrow the power structure?”
“Christ! How did you know?” he yelled.
“Shit. That’s all you ever talk about.”
Partment tried to compose himself, “Well, sure, privately.”
Niles pulled the clipping from the Timesout of his wallet that
featured his photo. He pointed to the part where Partment explained
that he wanted to destroy civilization and bring us back to our
hunter-gatherer origins. When asked how he planned to do that, he
ABYSSINIA
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