Free The Resort by Sol Stein Page B

grittier.”
    “Maybe it’s the way they prepare it,” Henry said.
    “It’s what they put in it.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “If it were a chemical—there are dozens of things they could use—it wouldn’t change the texture. It’s probably THC.”
    Henry looked blank.
    “The upper leaves and flowers of marijuana, where the resin is.”
    “You mean we’ve been eating marijuana?” Henry laughed. “I don’t believe it.”
    “Just a touch in the food will do it,” said Margaret.
    “Do what?”
    “It takes longer than smoking to have an effect. An hour is just about right for the high to start. And it lasts a lot longer when eaten. Four, five, six, sometimes ten hours.”
    Henry, who now with certainty was feeling something he had always related to alcohol, couldn’t keep from laughing. “You mean after an adult lifetime of abstaining from the pleasure of the young, I’ve now had it in a three-star restaurant? Terrific. What would they do that for? Make you think the meal was great?”
    “I doubt it,” Margaret said. “If everyone feels euphoric most of the time, I suspect it’s easier to keep them in line.”
    Henry let his right eyelid droop, in an attempt to lend a stern expression to his face. “How do you know so much about it?”
    “I run into it all the time in my practice,” Margaret said.
    “Ever tried it?”
    She remembered him saying that even alcohol was not usual for Jews in the generation that had preceded his. Perhaps a shot of whisky neat at bar mitzvahs and weddings, but as a predinner habit, never. It was contact with the Gentile world that had corrupted the original puritans.
    “Once,” she said. “An eighteen-year-old, daughter of someone who’s been my patient forever, came to see me, nervous as hell, thinking she was pregnant. I told her she wasn’t. I said I’d send her urine out for a test, just to be sure. She was so relieved, she took a handmade cigarette—at least that’s what I thought it was for a moment—out of her bag and lit it. It was only when the twisted paper at the end burned off and I could smell the smoke that I knew it wasn’t tobacco. She thanked me effusively, as if she had been pregnant and I, by merely talking, had undone the harm. She offered me the thing, called it a joint. How could I refuse? I took a puff and coughed. When she realized I had never smoked, she showed me how, letting the smoke sort of roll down your esophagus, then breathing in deeply, and holding the smoke way down as long as you can.”
    Henry reached out to take Margaret’s hands.
    “You are a wicked lady.”
    “You, my dear, are the naïve one, just an old-fashioned prude.”
    Perhaps it was whatever they had ingested in the dining room, a middle-aged couple bound by half a lifetime shared, experiencing something new. As they stood, Henry put his arms around her, and suddenly the familiarity was an asset, and feeling ran high. Just then the lights went out, leaving them in the dark for a split second, then came back on.
    “It must be a warning,” Henry said, not wanting reality to intrude on his euphoric state.
    He started undressing.
    “When we were coming back from our little stroll,” Margaret said, “I was thinking that it must be diffi cult to keep a place like this secret in the middle of things. But the cults and sects do. Remember when we met the mother of a Moonie—Rose something—and we didn’t believe her when she said her son was being held captive? We thought she was exaggerating.”
    “Some of the kids seem to enjoy their captivity,” Henry said. “Did you think we’re in the hands of one of those sects this part of the country seems full of?”
    “Something like that,” Margaret said.
    “Remember the Joads?” Henry said.
    “The Grapes of Wrath.”
    “That’s it. Remember that camp they came to, it was like a prison. It had gates and barbed wire and guards, and the only way they could get out was to escape. Do you remember where that