3.12 WY

Once the door to our suite was locked and chained and the curtains shut, I cut open the plastic containing the pink pills and unloaded them onto the glass coffee table. Examining them, I found "WY" imprinted on one side of each tablet.

I happened to have a copy of The Economist with me at the time which featured a short article about recent seizures of amphetamines in Thailand. According to the weekly paper, anti-drug operations had netted some six million pills that very week; another seven million pills were nabbed the week before.

“I guess this is why the shit was so hard to find,” I said, tossing Jean the magazine.

A good month for the narcs, yes, but evidence, too, of the booming trade in amphetamines in Southeast Asia. The article also stated that the pills, imprinted with a “wy” logo, were mainly produced by the United Wa State Army, the largest drug trafficking organization in Myanmar. Thailand was yaba’s primarily market.

“Check this out,” I told Jean, holding one of the pills up. “’WY’. Wonder what that means. Wa’s Yaba?”

Jean grunted. He couldn’t be bothered to look up, focused as he was on separating the paper lining from the foil of the Nestlé Crunch wrapper. Never underestimate the creative resourcefulness of a junkie. Brushing the flame of his lighter quickly under the wrapper, Jean picked at the paper with some tweezers and pulled it neatly away.

“Ha hah!” he said proudly and handed me the foil.

Borrowing Jean’s Swiss Army pocketknife--the guy never travelled without it--I cut the foil in half, and, crushing one of the tablets, placed a fair amount of the pink powder on one of the tin squares. With a straw clenched between my teeth, I flicked the lighter and, passing a weak flame below the foil, waited for the smoke to rise.

Nothing.

I tried again and waited, but the shit would not burn. Instead of giving of smoke, the pink powder melted, forming a dirty liquid.

"What the hell is this?" I said, putting the foil down on the coffee table.

Jean grumbled that I wasn’t doing it right and gave it a try himself. Still no luck.

"Maybe the bastard sold us 'X’," he said.

I popped half a pill into my mouth, chewed on it a bit, and then washed it down with gin. Jean did the same, and returned to the task of trying to make the pink powder to burn.

"It's awfully sweet for ecstasy. Almost chocolaty," I said, chewing on another half.

"It's probably been cut with something," Jean replied, the irritation in his voice, crystal clear.

Jean had been simmering since we left Khao Sarn when our first attempts to score yabawere frustrated. And now that we had got it only to be disappointed, Jean was about ready to boil over.

After several tries, we gave up trying to coax a plume of smoke from the pink powder, and popped one more pill each.

Slouching back into my chair, I turned on the TV. MTV was playing the same irritating video by a band I’d never heard of before called Crazy Town. Since arriving in Bangkok two days earlier, I had seen it more than a dozen times. The song was also being blasted from speakers at street side vendors all over town.

“Come my lady . . . Come, come my lady . . . you're my butterfly, Sugar baby . . . “

“Ugh. At least the chick in the video’s hot,” I said, pressing the “mute” button.

When another thirty minutes had passed, and still nothing, Jean banged his fist on the table and jumped to his feet. "Fucking bastard sold us children's aspirin!"

He paced the room like a caged tiger, fuming. I might have been able to comprehend my friend’s anger if it had been his three thousand bahts that had been flushed down the toilet rather than mine. I was more philosophical about it: there were worse ways to learn a lesson, I thought, than being made a fool of by a drug dealer in Patpong. At least it was only three thousand bahts. Could have been more.

When I was about to concede to Jean that we had been admirably duped, I began to feel a mellow yet distinct tingling throughout my body. Not long after that, Jean was feeling it, as well.

"I don't know what this is,” I said, “but I’m starting to feel pretty damn good."

"Me, too,” Jean said. A broad smile spread across his face, the furrow in his brow softened.

Twenty minutes later, high as kites, we left the suite and hit the clubs.

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The complete version of No. 6 is now available for a variety of devices at Amazon's Kindle store.