Paradise - Part Two (The Erotic Adventures of Sophia Durant) by O.L. Casper Page B

during our conversation to focus my thoughts.
    “I was nearly asleep too, but then I couldn’t sleep. I’m becoming a nervous wreck. I wondered if you had any…”
    “—Medicine.” She finished my sentence.
    “Yes. Particularly of the AK-47 variety.”
    “I do. But if you’re already excited, what you need is something more along the lines of the Hindu Kush variety. It’s more calming. AK-47 is more of a stimulant.”
    Anna removed a wooden box from a drawer near her bed. I wanted to say, “So you used the AK-47 to get me excited?” But I didn’t have the heart. I was feeling shy and tired, and was just trying to feel somewhat at ease in her room. But it wasn’t working. I found her to be a somewhat stimulating presence. There was sexual tension, but there was also the tension of new friends who are smitten with one another and each trying in vain not to walk on the other’s toes. We sat side by side on her bed.
    I noticed a design on the box and asked to look at it more closely. Anna took out a few crystal-covered buds, mostly green with purple specs, and handed me the box. I studied the design that was obviously hand-painted on the top. It was the wispy outline of a blue dragon that emerged like a puff of smoke from a small lamp at the bottom right corner. It resembled the Welsh dragon. The painting was striking, very well done.
    “You like the picture?”
    “Yes. It’d make great body art.”
    “Thank you. I painted it,” she said, not looking up from what she was doing.
    With meticulous care she broke up the buds and placed them in the rolling papers.
    “Do you have tats?” she asked.
    “I have a few,” I said, a bit shy.
    I don’t tell many people about them. I knew Stafford had seen them and would eventually ask about them. I dreaded explaining.
    “I have a British leopard here.” I pulled down my shirt to show her the blue outline of the British leopard on the back of my left shoulder.
    “Wow, that’s beautiful. You have good taste.”
    “Then I have this one on the other shoulder.”
    I pulled down the back of my shirt on the other side to reveal the initials VR in cursive with spiraling ends on either side (the left arm of the V extends into a spiral, as does the right leg of the R). It’s also blue.
    “What does it stand for?”
    “Victoria Regina.”
    “The English queen.”
    “Yes.”
    “Very nice. What else do you have?”
    I bent over and rolled down my stockings on either side. I showed her the 33 on the outer side of the left ankle, followed by the outline of an owl on the outer right. It’s the same owl I used as an icon for my Minerva app.
    “Did you draw that?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re an artist too.”
    “Only a little.”
    “What are you talking about? It’s very good.”
    She pointed to the connecting bathroom.
    “Get a towel and jam it under the door. It keeps the smell out of the corridor.”
    She lights up the joint. After some healthy puffs she hands it to me. I blaze it and thoroughly enjoy, in what feels like slow motion, the smoke entering like an intelligent beast, crawling across the tongue, extending her fingers under the tongue and between the teeth. Like a snake she moves down the throat, drying everything in her path and causing a slight tingle. Her head bifurcates into two faces that enter the alveoli and dissolve into the blood, like ghosts. The mellow high goes straight to my head and I’m floating. The only way I can tell the difference between the effect of this and that of opium (which I tried once) is that even though both produce a light, floating sensation, with this I definitely am aware that my feet are still on the ground. There’s a slight heaviness to the high that there’s not with opium. Otherwise the effects are identical. I wonder if it’s not laced.
    What had happened was Julie procured some opium out of a large shipment imported from Cuba and transmitted to Tampa by a friend of hers, which she bought wholesale, before it was