Page 144 of Power of the Mind

It had become a habit that we didn’t speak about our sexual escapades once they were over. They happened. They ended. We moved on. Diem remained perpetually uncomfortable until he knew I wasn’t going to ask what it all meant or put undue pressure on him to decide about the future.

I wasn’t that guy. Besides, I knew the answer without asking. He’d said it enough times. I didn’t need to be reminded.

Fully dressed, with a pack of saltine crackers, a jar of peanut butter, and a spoon, we snacked and stared at the two bags of full pill bottles on my coffee table.

I smeared a thick layer of peanut butter on a fresh cracker and handed it to Diem. “So what do you think?”

He studied the cracker before popping it into his mouth. “I prefer chunky.”

Laughing, I smacked his arm with the spoon. “Not the peanut butter. This.” I waved the spoon at the table before digging into the jar and shoveling a heaping spoonful directly into my mouth, no cracker required. Peanut butter was life. It was a food group on its own. I could live off it and mostly did since my cupboards were otherwise bare.

“It’s a fuck of a lot of echinacea bottles.” Diem grabbed one and opened it, pouring clear capsules filled with green powder into a cupped hand. “Theylooklike echinacea. I think. Maybe Janek got rid of them because the bottles came without seals, so the product was unsellable.”

“Maybe.” I loaded another cracker with a thick layer of spread and added a lid to make a peanut butter sandwich. When I held it to Diem’s mouth, he surprised me by taking it and crunching it down without thought. “How can we be sure?”

“We can’t unless we ask her, but then we’d have to explain ourselves. The woman’s not too fond of me.”

“You acted homicidal.”

“I did not.”

“You acted suicidal.”

“I did not.”

“She gave you a card.”

“It was…” I growled. “She was pissing me off.”

I chuckled and ate another scoop of peanut butter.

Diem helped himself to a cracker and dunked it in the jar before eating it.

“What if it’s not echinacea?” I asked. “What if these bottles were used as a front for some green drug, and Sally or her kid was distributing them for Rowena.”

Diem held up a single capsule, and we squinted at its contents. Carefully, he opened it and dumped a powdery mound onto the coffee table, mashing it with a finger. “It’s fine like dust.”

“Desiccated, way overprocessed marijuana leaves?” I suggested.

“You mean keif?”

“What’s keif?”

“Basically that. Marijuana dust. Highly concentrated. I don’t think that’s what this is. Plus, why put it in capsules? People looking for keif want to smoke it, and you can buy it legally at any cannabis shop.”

“And how do you know this?”

Diem gave me a look, wet the tip of his pinky, and dipped it into the powder.

“Diem, don’t.”

He touched the finger to his tongue, tasted it, and made a face. “Fuck, that’s gross. It’s not keif.”

“Is it echinacea?”

“How the fuck would I know? Never had it. Wouldn’t it be more… leafy? Like that stupid bullshit tea? Ground herbs or whatever.”

I had no clue. I handed Diem the peanut butter and spoon and grabbed one of the bottles, examining the label to see if it said anything about its contents and how it should look. That was when I realized the quality of the label itself. It was not as it should have been. On a quick glance, it appeared as any random herbal drug bottle might, but on closer inspection, it was missing the fine print. The company information, the medicinal properties, and the method of use were all absent. Apart from the bold product name, the rest was gibberish, a collection of letters and symbols that weren’t words at all.

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