{ l o s t }


Ted rushed back into the room holding the bindle up in triumph.

"It was in my goddamn shoe!"

I breathed a massive sigh of relief, as did Sully who smiled and closed the door behind Ted. As Ted plopped on the floor, I glanced at his shoes: leather Sperry topsiders, no socks.

No socks.

"Hey, Ted, you're not wearing socks," I mumbled, knowing what was to come.

"Yeah, too hot for socks." Ted handed the bindle to Sully who would get things ready.

As the bindle hit Sully's hand, he stopped cold. "It's fucking soaked through, Ted!"

Ted looked down at his shoes. "Just a little, man, no big deal."

"Sweat," I said, "It's been soaking in his sweat for the past hour and a half."

"Ted, what the fuck were you thinking?" Sully yelled, looking in disgust at the coke in his palm, "This is shot to hell now!"

Sully opened the bindle with the graceful precision that all fiends value – like handling a fragile antique or disarming a bomb, you get that tactile instinct from experience – and we all peeked inside. The white powder was formed into a solid, beveled rectangle, the precise shape of the bindle. This is often the case as these high-dollar packages are usually secreted in wallets and pockets, compressing the contents into a miniature brick of coke.

But when Sully tried to chunk off a bit, it just gummed up to the razor like Silly Putty.

"Sick!" Sully yelled, "This is saturated with your goddamn foot sweat!"

Ted looked at the gummy blow and then at us. We were fiending hard, the sun was rising and we were starting to burn in a wicked way. There was no way to get more and we had to snort. Somehow, we had to make this sweaty cocaine go up or nose.

{ continued }