I opened the first file. They had given me copies of everything, of course. All the discovery materials. All the pleadings and the depositions and the witnesses. I was familiar with the facts, naturally. And objectively, they didn’t look good. Any blow-dried TV analyst would sit there and say, Things don’t look good here for the accused. But there were possibilities. Somewhere. There had to be. How many things go exactly to plan?

The unburned crumbs were fat and round. There was a lighter in the drawer. I knew that. A yellow plastic thing from a gas station. I couldn’t concentrate. Not properly. Not in the way I needed to. I needed that special elevated state I knew so well. And it was within easy reach.

Irresponsible, to be high at my first drug trial.

Irresponsible, to prepare while I was feeling less than my best.

Right?

I held the crumbs in with my pinkie fingernail and knocked some ash out around it. I thumbed the lighter. The smoke tasted dry and stale. I held it in, and waited, and waited, and then the buzz was there. Just microscopically. I felt the tiny thrills, in my chest first, near my lungs. I felt each cell in my body flutter and swell. I felt the light brighten and I felt my head clear.

Unburned crumbs. Nothing should be wasted. That would be criminal.

The blow-dried analysts would say the weakness in the prosecution’s case was the lab report on the substances seized. But weakness was a relative word. They would be expecting a conviction.

They would say the weakness in the defense’s case was all of it.

No point in reading more.

It was a railroad, straight and true.

Nothing to do for the balance of the morning hour.

I put the pipe back on the desk. There were paperclips in a drawer. Behind me on a shelf was a china jar marked Stash. My brother had bought it for me. Irony, I suppose. In it was a baggie full of Long Island grass. Grown from seeds out of Amsterdam, in an abandoned potato field close enough to a bunch of Hamptons mansions to deter police helicopters. Rich guys don’t like noise, unless they’re making it.

I took a paperclip from the drawer and unbent it and used it to clean the bowl. Just housekeeping at that point. Like loading the dishwasher. You have to keep on top of the small tasks. I made a tiny conical heap of ash and carbon on a tissue, and then I balled up the tissue and dropped it in the trash basket. I blew through the pipe, hard, like a pygmy warrior in the jungle. Final powdered fragments came out, and floated, and settled.

Clean.

Ready to go.

For later, of course. Because right then those old unburned crumbs were doing their job. I was an inch off the ground, feeling pretty good. For the moment. In an hour I would be sliding back to earth. Good timing. I would be clear of eye and straight of back, ready for whatever the day threw at me.

But it was going to be a long day. No doubt about that. A long, hard, pressured, unaided, uncompensated day. And there was nothing I could do about it. Not even I was dumb enough to show up at a possession trial with a baggie in my pocket. Not that there was anywhere to smoke anymore. Not in a public facility. All part of the collapse of society. No goodwill, no convenience. No joy.

I swiveled my chair and scooted toward the shelf with the jar. Just for a look. Like a promise to myself that the Ritz would be waiting for me after the day in the Holiday Inn. I took off the lid and pulled out the baggie and shook it uncrumpled. Dull green, shading brown, dry and slightly crisp. Ready for instantaneous combustion. A harsher taste that way, in my experience, but faster delivery. And time was going to count.

I decided to load the pipe there and then. So it would be ready for later. No delay. In the door, spark the lighter, relief. Timing was everything. I crumbled the bud and packed the bowl and tamped it down. I put it on the desk and licked my fingers.

Timing was everything. Granted, I shouldn’t be high in court. Understood. Although how would people tell? I wasn’t going to have much of a role. Not on the first day, anyway. They would all look at me from time to time, but that was all. But it was better to play it safe, agreed. But it was the gap I was worried about. The unburned crumbs were going to give it up long before I arrived downtown. Which was inefficient. Who wants twenty more minutes of misery than strictly necessary?

I picked up the lighter. No one in the world knows more than I do about how a good bud burns. The flame licks over the top layer, and it browns and blackens, and you breathe right in and hold, hold, hold, and the bud goes out again, and you hold some more, and you breathe out, and the hit is there. And you’ve still got ninety percent left in the bowl, untouched, just lightly seasoned. Maybe ninety-five percent. Hardly like smoking at all. Just one pass with the lighter. Merely a gesture.

And without that gesture, twenty more minutes of misery than strictly necessary.

What’s a man supposed to do?

I sparked the lighter. I made the pass. I held the smoke deep inside, harsh and hot and comforting.

My wife came in.

“Jesus,” she said. “Today of all days?”

So it was her fault, really. I breathed out too soon. I didn’t get full value. I said, “No big deal.”

“You’re an addict.”

“It’s not addictive.”

“Emotionally,” she said. “Psychologically.”

Which was a woman thing, I supposed. A man has a stone in his shoe, he takes it out, right? Who walks around all day with a stone in his shoe? I said, “Nothing’s going to happen for an hour or so.”

She said, “You can’t afford to fall asleep. You can’t afford to look all spacey. You understand that, right? Please tell me you understand that.”

“It was nothing,” I said.

“There will be consequences,” she said. “We’re doing well right now. We can’t afford to lose it all.”

“I agree, we’re doing well. We’ve always done well. So don’t worry.”

“Today of all days,” she said again.

“It was nothing,” I said again. I held out the pipe. “Take a look.”

She took a look. Exactly as predicted. The top layer a little burned, the rest untouched but lightly seasoned. Ninety-five percent still there. A breath of fresh air. Hardly like smoking at all.

She said, “No more, okay?”

Which I absolutely would have adhered to, except she had made me waste the first precious moment. And I wanted to time it right. That was all. No more and no less. I wanted to be ready when the fat guy in the uniform called out, All rise! But not before. No point in being ready before. No point at all.

My wife spent a hard minute looking at me, and then she left the room again. The car service was due in about twenty minutes. The ride downtown would take another twenty. Plus another twenty milling around before we all got down to business. Total of an hour. The aborted breath would have seen me through. I was sure of that. So one more would replace it. Maybe a slightly smaller version, to account for the brief passage of time. Or maybe a slightly larger version, to compensate for the brief upset. I had been knocked off my stride. Ritual is important, and interference can be disproportionately destructive.

I sparked up again. The yellow lighter. A yellow flame, hot and pure and steady. Problem is, the second pass burns better. As if those lower seasoned layers are ready and waiting. They know their fate, and they’re instantly ready to cooperate. Smoke came up in a cloud, and I had to breathe in hard to capture all of it. And second time around the bud doesn’t extinguish quite so fast. It keeps on smoldering, so a second breath is necessary. Waste not, want not.

Then a third breath.

By which time I knew I was right. I was getting through the morning just fine. I had saved the day. No danger of getting sleepy. I wasn’t going to look spacey. I was bright, alert, buzzing, seeing things for what they were, open to everything, magical.