Nine Perfect Strangers

‘It’s called spiking our smoothies with a hallucinogenic drug,’ snapped Heather.

Heather. Before today, Lars would never have picked Heather as her name. It was far too soft a name for this skinny, tanned woman with quadriceps that looked like machine parts and a permanent pained squint as if she were peering straight into the sun. Every time Lars had looked at her during the silence, he’d imagined pressing his thumbs to the point between her eyebrows and saying, ‘Chill.’ Now he felt bad about feeling aggravated, because she’d lost her son. The woman was allowed to frown.

‘It’s called outrageous,’ continued Heather. She wasn’t squinting now. Her eyes were ablaze with fury.

‘I don

’t quite understand,’ said her adorably addled husband, a long celery stick of a man, so dorky he was cool. His name was Napoleon, which just added to his marvellousness.

Lars didn’t think he was high. He’d been feeling great, but he generally did feel good on any sort of cleanse. Perhaps the doses were too small to affect him, or he’d built up a tolerance. He surreptitiously ran a finger around the edge of his smoothie glass and licked it. He thought about how, on the first day, he’d drunk his smoothie and said to Delilah, ‘This is so good. What’s in this stuff?’ and Delilah had said, ‘We’ll give you the recipes when you leave.’ Lars had been imagining the recipes would specify the number of teaspoons of chia, not how many milligrams of LSD.

‘But . . . but . . . we’re here to detoxify!’ said Frances to Masha. ‘You’re saying we’ve cut out caffeine and replaced it with acid?’

Tony, aka Smiley Hogburn, said, ‘I can’t believe you confiscated my beer and now you’ve given me drugs. I’ve never taken drugs!’

‘You don’t think alcohol is a drug?’ said Masha. ‘LSD has been ranked one-tenth as harmful as alcohol! What do you think of that?’

‘I guess LSD has no calories,’ said Carmel. It was easy to remember her name because Lars had a friend called Carmel who was also boringly convinced she was fat. Carmel’s glasses sat crookedly on her face but she didn’t seem aware of it. She had been mooching about for the last five days with that recently-kicked-in-the-face look Lars knew so well from his clients. The one that ignited a deep burn of rage in his belly; the rage that had fuelled his entire career. He’d put a million bucks on her husband having left her for a trophy wife.

‘Does LSD also speed up the metabolism?’ Carmel asked hopefully. ‘I really feel like my metabolism might be speeding up. I’ve never had drugs either, but I’m completely fine with this. I have total respect for you and your methods, Masha.’

Getting thin won’t help you feel better, honey. Take the fuckwit to the cleaners. Lars would talk to her later. See who represented her.

‘I can’t believe you’ve been giving my underage daughter LSD,’ said Heather.

‘I’m not underage, Mum,’ said Zoe. ‘I’m feeling pretty good right now; better than I’ve felt in a while. They’re only micro-doses. It’s all good.’

‘It’s not all good!’ her mother sighed. ‘For Christ’s sake.’

Napoleon spoke earnestly. ‘Masha, listen, I had a terrible experience with drugs when I was a teenager. It was a “bad trip”, as they say. One of the worst experiences of my life and I always told my kids that’s when I swore off drugs forever. So I appreciate what you’re saying, but I’m not taking anything.’

‘My God, Napoleon, you’ve already taken it!’ said Heather through gritted teeth. ‘Are you not listening?’

‘This is bullshit,’ said the lottery-winner kid. What was his name again? A good, wholesome, straight-boy name. What was it? The kid trembled with so much suppressed rage it looked like he was having a seizure and he spoke through clenched teeth. ‘I did not choose this.’

His young wife spoke up. ‘Ben is, like, full-on anti-drugs.’

Ben, thought Lars. That was it. Ben and his cosmetically enhanced wife was . . . Jessica. Ben and Jessica. No chance those two had a pre-nup, and now there was significant money at stake if the marriage fell apart. They’d be the type to lose it all to their lawyers.

‘He doesn’t even like taking aspirin,’ said Jessica. ‘His sister is an addict. A proper addict. This is not good.’ She put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. ‘I don’t see how this is going to help our marriage. I’m not feeling very happy about this either. Not happy at all.’

Her poor little Barbie doll face did look very unhappy. Lars felt something unfurl in his chest: a deep, rich welling of sympathy for poor Jessica. Poor, poor little plastic Jessica. Confused little rich girl. All that money and no idea how to spend it, except on cosmetic procedures that were doing her no favours.

‘I understand your fear,’ said Masha. ‘You’ve been brainwashed because of the misinformation spread by governments.’

‘I have not been brainwashed,’ said Ben. ‘I have seen it for myself.’

‘Yes, but those are street drugs, Ben,’ said Masha. ‘The problem with street drugs is you can’t control the content or dosage.’

‘I cannot believe this.’ Ben got to his feet.

‘LSD has actually been used very successfully to treat drug addiction,’ said Masha. ‘Your sister could benefit from it. In the right setting.’

Ben smacked his hands to his face. ‘Unbelievable.’

Masha said, ‘Do you know, there was a great man. His name was Steve Jobs.’

Lars, who had been expecting her to say the Dalai Lama, snickered.