Teenage girls tend to travel in packs, and black teenage girls even more so. So this one was something of a loner, to be out shopping in a mostly-white neighborhood on a warm Saturday afternoon. Or window-shopping at least, since she did not seem to have bought anything.
I was sitting in the 900 block of 36th, on the bench at the bus stop. Not that I was actually waiting for the bus; I just didn't feel like going home yet, a bus had just gone by, and I knew another wasn't due for 50 minutes. So I knew I wasn't keeping anyone from sitting there who really needed it -- besides, there was room for a couple more people.
That bench is right by the Galvaneyes, which has the junky retro-fashions that a lot of female teens go for, and a half-block from the Salvation Army store which has a lot more and cheaper, though fewer teens go there. Anyway this girl came out of the clothing store and asked me if I knew when the next bus was.
I told her and started to make conversation with her. She was plainly a little reluctant, maybe a bit because she didn't know me, maybe a little more because she wasn't sure how much older than her I was. (I guessed her for 18, so about 3 years.) Mostly I think she hesitated because I was white, but since there were no blacks around whom she knew the herd-defense, as I think of it, did not last long. I was not going to get comments from people I knew in the neighborhood; unless I was seen with a black girl a LOT, nobody would pay any attention. For all anyone knew, I was really waiting for the bus.
We talked about a bunch of things. I told her how old I was and compared notes with her on high-school now and a few years ago. Not much change, though she said drugs were back up locally after getting rare a while back. I could not think of a way to exactly ask whether she herself used them, but she talked around (we were in public) to indicated that she did. That tied in with an idea I was getting.
Anyway we talked until the next bus was almost due, and then I asked her: "When are you supposed to be home?"
The defenses visibly came back up as she asked me: "What do you want to know for?"
"Well, if you have the time, I've got a place near here with some good hash we could use," I replied.
This was both true and odd. Odd because I don't normally use the stuff. I had a fellow I knew years ago stay in my place the weekend before while he was in town, and he left me a bunch of it as payment. I had not expected any payment, and especially not that; either that fellow never knew or had forgotten that cannabis has no real effect on me.
So I hadn't been sure what to do with it. Now I knew -- I could use it to talk longer with this girl than we could otherwise without being conspicuous, and being indoors might allow other things to develop, one never knew.
She hesitated and thought. (Cynthia was her name, by the way.)
Cynthia finally told me that she was interested, that she was not expected home until six -- it was one-thirty then -- but "How far away are you from the bus to Cherry Hill? Where does it stop near you?"
I squinted and said about thirty feet. My apartment was near the second bus stop further along.
She got up, I got up, and if we hadn't swerved south to get to my place, the bus would have passed us. (Indeed, it did, but we couldn't see it.)
Cynthia looked around my apartment a little nervously while I got the drug and pipe out. (The pipe I had because I found it in an alley and I'm a packrat, though it does get used at parties.) She got hit hard by the first few puffs and was soon nudging the clouds aside. I used the pipe too, so she didn't get nervous, though as I say it does nothing for me, or nothing I really like. I have had people give me varying explanations for that, from body chemistry to personality type to my being unable to relax. That last only comes from people who don't know me; those who do know they have to check for breathing once in a while. It's not too uncommon a reaction if you ask as I have, and I sometimes wonder why all these drug studies never mention that.
I mean remembering that the first people to test heroin were all immune to being addicted to it...
The girl was drifting, mumbling about how good she felt, and I said: "I've got something I bet you would like, especially now."
"What is it?"
"A lava-lamp."
"Huh?"
I explained to her what it was. I had seen an old one when I was a kid, and then somebody started making them again five or six years back, and I bought one last year. That Galvaneyes store had them in the back, in fact, though I guess since they were in boxes there, she didn't know what they were.