In the car he reflected you invariably couldn’t get as weird as a woman, once she really got cranked up. Once in New York he had bedded a ballerina who snorted great quantities of cocaine, a hard drug he wouldn’t touch at gunpoint. The upshot of the night had been her insistence that he put a whole hand “in,” as it were. Naturally he refused, on grounds that were listed, sententiously, under headings—impossible, scary, probable injuries, too weird. The ballerina then dropped three Quaaludes and went to sleep. Warlock had always felt that the drug of the young masses, marijuana, stole incentive, which anyway seemed in short supply. There were exceptions to its use though; in May he and Diana made a short trip to the Upper Peninsula to clear the marital air. The weather had been cold and rainy, forcing them out of their tent and into a shabby tourist cabin with the single beguiling feature of a Franklin stove. She had brought along a small stash of dope given her by one of those young doctors who look like they’ve just jumped out of a TV set. This particular batch proved hideously strong and made him horny as a billy goat so they made love repeatedly, listened without irony to the rain, built fires, made huge sandwiches out of the limited contents of their foam cooler. They drank lots of beer and bourbon, smoked huge bombers, endured the lukewarm waters and cold floor of the shower, and played absurdly adolescent sexual games. These wonderful renewals, he thought, these returns to a biologically drying spring. The tinge of the drag-ass entered again, and he dismissed it with vigor, stepping hard on the gas.