Ryan was planning on a quick handoff, not a full-on party, but when he met Keller at the agreed-upon location up the beach, that’s what he found. A whole wonderful mess of people in their twenties and thirties on the patio of a ginormous beach house, a twenty-five-minute walk from where Ryan was staying. Handsome, rich people, athletic people, beautiful and charming people, drunk people, some of them in swimsuits and hatching a plan to go skinny-dipping. It was hot, even at this midnight hour, and the air on the patio was sticky and breathless. The sky vibrated with the alien greenish glow of heat lightning.

Ryan quickly identified Keller, who bore a strong resemblance to his brother. They did the handoff right there in the middle of the party, like it was nothing. He invited Ryan to stay and party with them. Ryan obliged, rolling up a few joints, which got lit and passed around, so that soon the air was a dense fog, and the green world slowed.

Keller introduced Ryan to others at the party, calling him “Bryan”—Ryan didn’t care. He met the golf pro that Keller was caddying for, and other golf pros, and their hot girlfriends. Everyone sparkled. The group eventually went for a late-night swim. They drank more, smoked more, shivered in the ocean, laughed, sang, and returned to the house, where someone loaned Ryan a towel. He was loose and dizzy with pot and beautiful people. He shared a kiss with a gorgeous dark-haired girl whom he would pass the next day on the beach while walking with Rae. Ryan had shared kisses with several girls from his high school, nothing more. Ryan would have loved for it to go further with this dark-haired girl, but when she was on his lap, he suddenly felt too silly to kiss. Aware of the size of his tongue. He giggled and she pulled away. Ten minutes later, she was kissing another girl at the party—a much longer and more passionate kiss than she had offered Ryan. Ryan laughed. He felt a great sweetness for the world.

Somehow, the night edged toward the blue of morning, and Ryan was stunned to realize it was five o’clock. Someone at the party gave him a partially smoked joint on his way out. Ryan trucked it back to his beach house with twelve hundred in cash and a damp stubby joint in the pocket of his backpack.

Ham had called the house this morning—Ryan had given him the number in case of an emergency change of plans—having not yet been able to reach his brother, just to make sure everything went smoothly. Stupidly unprepared for anyone other than Ryan to answer, Ham was stunned to an awkward silence when Poppy picked up the phone. That single phone call, which hadn’t amounted to anything, had been the most stressful part of the entire ordeal.

Ryan sat on his bed, scribbling numbers on the magazine in his lap. He thought that he and Ham could increase their price thirty percent without losing any business. He could probably reduce the time from seed to sale by a week or two. The main question was whether it was worth looking into more space at a location other than his house, and that was what he planned to propose to Ham when he got back home.