main hall. A
moment later she reappeared triumphantly holding a corkscrew. She
took his arm and said cheerily "Shall we?"
"Where am I walking you to?" Johnny asked once they were outside.
"Your place," she said, "we're married."
Tinka uncorked one of the bottles on the way and they had finished it
by the time they reached Johnny's residence, Tinka drinking more than
her share. As Johnny unlocked the door to his room, Tinka said
suddenly: "I cast a spell on you this morning."
Caught off guard, Johnny could only ask: "What kind of spell?" as they
stepped inside.
"To make you good in bed," she said, kicking the door closed, "It may
not have been necessary, but you can never be too careful."
-=five=-
Johnny woke up to the sound of typing. His first thought was the same
as his first thought every morning: "Where am I?" In my room, good.
Now who's typing on my computer? The events of the previous night
replayed quickly in his mind. Tinka. He opened his eyes: "Whatcha
doing?"
She was sitting naked at his desk, the second bottle of wine half-empty
between her knees: "Reading your Internet history files."
Like a shot, Johnny was bolt upright in his bed: "What?!"
"Don't get your panties in a bunch," Tinka laughed, "Best way in the
world to get to know someone, saves us a lot of trouble. You shouldn't
talk about drugs on MSN though, and you certainly shouldn't track your
drug-dealing profits in a spreadsheet."
Defensive now, Johnny said: "It's not like I labeled the columns
Cocaine and Marijuana."
"Yeah, but what else could it possibly be. Four hundred units at two
dollars fifty purchased. Thirty-one units overhead. Three hundred and
sixty nine units at five dollars sold. Eight hundred and forty-five dollars
gross profits. Good luck convincing a judge you're talking about
magazine subscriptions."
"Listen," Johnny said, "I know what I'm doing."
He picked up his pants from the floor and retrieved his cell phone from
the pocket, "If I call the phone number for this room..." He did so as he
was talking and the phone on the desk started ringing. Tinka reached
for it automatically but Johnny stopped her: "Don't answer it"
The phone rang three times and then an answering machine picked up.
"I'm not here. You know what to do." said Johnny's voice.
"You hear that?" Johnny said, "That's the computer. The computer
answers the land-line and takes messages like an ordinary answering
machine, but if I enter an access code," he punched fifteen digits into
the keypad of his cell-phone and the computer emitted a single DING,
"I get remote access to a special command mode. From this point I can
wipe out every file on my hard disk by pressing three buttons." He
pressed three buttons and Tinka's eyebrows shot up.
"Those weren't them," Johnny said with a laugh, "that was the exit
code."
"Very clever," Tinka congratulated him, "unless the enemy fucks you
and then reads your files while you're sleeping"
"It's Canada," Johnny shrugged, "no-one goes to that much effort to put
someone like me in jail."
Tinka suddenly started rummaging around on Johnny's floor until she
found her handbag. "Here" she said "I'll cast a spell for you. What do
you want most in the world?"
"Right now?"
"Yes, right now."
To have a fucking clue what's going on for once, Johnny had to bite his
tongue to keep himself from saying. Giving the question a bit more
thought he realized he didn't have a clue what he wanted. If he had
been answering the question honestly the day before, he might have
said sex. That morning though he felt that there was very little he was
actually wanting for. Excepting, of course, money. He had known from
the day he enrolled that his savings wouldn't carry him through more
than a few months. He had been trying out a few leads on some easy
money and though promising, they weren't delivering at the rate he had
hoped. Right then, Johnny had a lot more than he cared to admit riding
on the possibility that he could get back into the acid game. If that fell
through, he would find himself in the position before Christmas of
having to, for the first time in his life, get a real job.
"It's crass," he admitted to Tinka at last, "but probably money."
Tinka was in the process of pulling things out of her handbag and
placing them on Johnny's desk, She stopped and narrowed her eyes at
him: "I thought you were a drug dealer."
"You assumed," Johnny said, happy to have some evidence that he
wasn't the only person in the world who could be caught off guard.
"Whatever. How much money?"
"Not much. Not like
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