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bring the girls with me. What do you say?”
    Kyle stared at the monitor for a while longer—did Max see drool? The kid had probably never met a girl outside of church.
    Finally Kyle got a hold of himself, said, “Okay, sir. Sounds cool.”
    Max shook Kyle’s hand firmly, sealing the deal. Then Max felt his stomach rumble—the mini-mart on the other side of the office, with the Cheez Whiz and the Pringles and the cans of Bud—especially the cans of Bud—was looking mighty good.
    “I’ll tell you what, Kyle,” Max said. “How about we add a little rider to our deal? Cindy has a twin sister, Lolita, looks exactly like her except her garbanzos are a cup size larger. Lolita loves Southern guys. How about I toss Lolita into the mix and you let me raid the mini-mart this weekend?”
    The prospect of three girls at once was too much for Kyle. He looked like he was going to have a stroke, or an orgasm, or something massive and, yep, that was drool all right.
    He went, “G-g-go on. You can take all the food you want, Mr. Maximilian, sir.”
    Max went up to his room with a few six-packs of Bud and munchies to last the weekend. He had never been a beer man—the low alcohol content didn’t work for him—but as he began to guzzle the brews he found after nine or ten he had a pretty good buzz going. Then he kept up a “maintenance level” of one or two an hour, like he was on alcohol cruise control.
    In New York, he’d been eating healthy—well, trying anyway. He had a bad heart; even with Lipitor, his cholesterol was a mess and when was the last time he’d taken Lipitor? The Pop-Tarts alone were probably clogging the shit out of his arteries, but, Eh, the beer was cleaning ’em out. Checks and balances, right? You take some shit, then you wash it down with good vibes. Max was so blasted he had no idea what the fuck any of this meant but, hell, he’d drink to that.
    Sometime Friday night, Max passed out. When he woke up on Saturday—unless he’d missed a day, not exactly beyond the realm of possibility—he started drinking again. The routine was getting was old fast, but unless he went sober, he had to keep the brews flowing.
    On Sunday night, Max ran out of munchies. He went down to the office, saw the kid at the desk with some black guy. He looked like a gangbanger, with the dreadlocks or whatever, wearing a Denver Nuggets jersey with SPREWELL 8 on the back, and a black stocking on his head. What was up with that anyway? Next thing, they’d be walking around with garters around their necks.
    Kyle and the black guy were having a hushed conversation but stopped talking when Max came in. The black guy glared at Max, looking like he wanted to pull out his piece and blow him away. Kyle looked like he was shitting bricks.
    “I’ll check you later,” Kyle said to the black guy, and the guy said, “Yeah, whatever,” and walked by Max, bumping into him hard with his shoulder, going, “ ’Scuse me,” but not like he meant it.
    When the black guy was gone, Kyle said to Max, “If you want more Budweiser you can go ’head and take it.”
    Max, toasted but still plenty with it, went, “What’re you doing, making drug deals down here?” He asked it as a joke, but going by the kid’s reaction he realized he’d hit the nail on the head. Fuck, Kyle the slow-talking church boy was a dealer. Who would’ve thought?
    “N-n-no, sir,” he said, shitting some more bricks. “He’s just an, um, old friend’a mine from, uh, high school.”
    “Don’t worry,” Max said, “I’m not a fucking narc. C’mon, gimme a break, kid—wise up. If I was a fuckin’ cop would I really be hanging out here, OD’ing on Bud and Cheez Whiz? I mean, going undercover is one thing, but would I torture myself to make a bust? So what kind of shit you dealing? Weed, sense, bud, blow?”
    Yeah, that was the way—use all the hip lingo to show the kid he was streetwise, a player .
    Kyle smiled, said, “Naw, it’s not like that, Mr.