I was awfully sick. Penelope explained to me when I was still groggy right after waking up, that it had been four days since I had failed to show up for the temporary job, instead of three. But it was all water that had washed the bridge away, now. I had swallowed lots of orange juice during the illness, whatever the number of days it had actually been. Penelope watched over me, though often doing so as she was doing today, while hovering above her Stratocaster, not plugged in of course, but strumming it, today strumming along with Nick Cave’s version of Stag-O-Lee, from the Murder Ballads album, as it punched its way out of the CD box.
Today too, she had made majoun, and we were just done nibbling away on it until both of us were satisfied. Each of us had read about majoun in the novels, and travel writing of Paul Bowles, and decided we ought to try a batch. The cakes of majoun are along the lines of Moroccan Fig Newtons for the Tangiers stoner set, apparently a significant chunk of the population. They’re a concoction made from dates or figs, walnuts, honey, and cannabis of course. She had baked them up at a friend’s apartment.
For days, my chest had been drowned in liquid, my nose had been swollen up to the size of a fat piñata, and I’d felt from head to toe as if the LAPD had bopped me around with a bag of oranges. But I was feeling better today. After sitting up in bed for a while, finishing off my juice, and pastry, I slid back down in the bed to luxuriate. Penelope joined me, removing her boots, but leaving on her shirt and jeans. She had been nestled against me for a minute or so, when she said, “It’s hot,” and unbuttoned her shirt, and took it off. She put an arm across my chest and a hand behind my neck and then she started to kiss me. Juice, figs. Tea, and yes, sympathy.