Somewhere past Duncans Mills, he pulled to the side of the road, stopped the engine, and asked me to hand him a small white folded paper pouch from the glovebox. Delicately, he opened the pouch, bladed the contents into a thin line, poked one end of a rolled-up scrap of paper onto the line of white powder and the other end into a nostril, and drew the makeshift straw along the line, inhaling sharply. At the end of the line he straightened up, a look of anguished bliss passing over his face, then turned to me and smiled. Dimly I smiled back, not sure what to think or what to do. He folded up the pouch and handed it to me, I put it carefully back in the glovebox, he restarted the engine, and we pulled back out. As we resumed our journey coastward along the wild west county road, like an anthropologist observing the customs of an indigenous population, I was interested to note that he could still drive well under the influence of cocaine.
Riding at high speed in a powerful sports car along the narrow, winding coast road, a sheer cliff on one side dropping down to the waves crashing on the rocks below, while the driver was jacked on cocaine—I wondered if it was too large a price to pay to be in the dugout whenever I wanted.
I rode in the Spyder a few more times.