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[jholloway.livejournal.com]

The pipe is surprisingly light. It's old and the paint job, never terribly good, is chipped, or blurred by a thousand little cracks in the varnish. The clay bowl is slightly uneven. Venice hates it. It was a gift from my sifu; she understands that.

I try not to think that she called me sifu a few weeks ago and was only half-joking.

A ball of opium is about the size of a pea, costs more and does less than I would get from, say, oxycodone. I could get the scrips easily enough.

I light the lamp and hold the bowl over it. It's like what I imagine having a mother's arms around you must feel like. The dead step back to the corners of the room and their mournful faces almost seem to smile. I smile back. Bless them. Another draw. I can feel each bead on my wrist. Did you know 'bead' originally meant 'prayer'? 'Telling your beads' means 'saying your prayers', but the word got applied to the little things you use to keep track and stuck. I understand that now.

I'm not trying to be Chinese or anything. I realise it seems that way. You would do this too if you were me. The ritual is just extra. Everything looks better when you half-close your eyes. The veil of your eyelashes blurs everything and makes it soft and beautiful. My lovely daughters and brave sons are movie-hero gorgeous in the screen door mesh of my eyelashes. I have long eyelashes, a woman's eyelashes. Women don't really have longer eyelashes than men, do they? What the hell kind of sense would that make? Eyes half-closed, that's a classic. I think it makes me look like Robert Mitchum. Venice says I just look like I'm not paying attention. I say I'm usually not. Someone said 'bedroom' eyes. I said bedroom, bedroom ... how do I make on-the-floor-right-now eyes? That's good eyes. Anyone can do bedroom eyes.

I stop for a moment and rest the pipe on the little stand and lie back. I've got Kim tomorrow. Li too, probably. I'll have to call Zenica, maybe. This thing is going to go a lot easier if I have a pretty girl kneeling beside my chair. In fact, technically I think a nubile slavegirl kneeling by a chair automatically upgrades it to a throne. The girl, they'll find it comforting. Familiar. It'll make sense to them. Plus she'll love it. I'll try to remember tomorrow. Have to remember to get her collar out. They come up as quickly as I think of them and fade like wisps of smoke, like the shadow that swirls sluggishly around me, wrapping me up to keep me safe. Li fades slower; I wonder what that means.

In about an hour Venice is going to come home. She'll probably be sober, or at least only on coke. That's a new thing for her. She may even want sex, but I'm sorry to say with me like this she's shit out of luck. It's bad for us for her to find me like this. She'll try not to act worried. She's good like that. She'll lean in like she does, slightly at an angle so she can look at you sideways, and tilt her head like so, and I'll just smile because the light like this is so warm and yellow and in it her plumage looks like, looks like something I don't even have a word for, like some gem/flower/fire that I want to stroke my cheek against even though I know it will hurt, and she'll pull me to my feet and take me to bed and if I'm lucky it will be in the garden where the light is so green and the air is so still, and a dozen lanterns hang among the branches, and the dead and the future are smiles and soft lips on mine, and I can watch the warm light until sleep takes me.

And tomorrow there's things to do.