Stay Vertical (The Bare Bones MC #2)(17)

Lytton snorted skeptically. “I’d have to join their dumbass club, I guess.”

“Oh, don’t worry. You’d have to prospect for them first, like my brother did. Ford wouldn’t just let you in because you’re his brother. You seem well-educated.”

“For a Pretendian, right?”

“What’s a—oh, a Pretendian.” It was an accurate stereotype—which I guess is how stereotypes come to be—that most Native Americans were under-educated. I could understand why Lytton had come to have such a giant chip on his shoulder. “Ford got his GED under his own steam when he was a teenager. He reads a lot. Is that what you did?”

Lytton regarded me now with a new attitude. He looked at me slyly with glittering eyes. “How’d you know I’m educated? I just acted like a lowbrow goon in there with your brother-in-law. I’ve got a doctorate in chemistry from MIT.”

You can imagine how fast my nerdy heart beat then! The initials MIT stood for Master of the world In Training, to my geeky mind. If I wasn’t already enough in love with Lytton Driving Hawk before, I certainly was now. His forlorn, downtrodden background perfectly tugged at my sappy heartstrings. The way he’d picked himself up and dusted himself off literally made my bosom swell with pride. He wasn’t a guy who would sit around feeling sorry for himself. He may have been raised in squalor but he’d elevated himself from that shit.

“I graduated Berkeley,” I bragged. Before he felt obligated to praise me, I quickly added, “And you probably don’t know, but our mother is dying of pancreatic cancer. That’s why I’m here talking to Madison. I was in Africa trying to finish out an irrigation contract, but I came back to take care of our mother. I think she’d really appreciate some of your Young Man Blue or whatever you’ve got on hand.”

A sort of shadow glazed his eyes then, as though the sun had gone behind a cloud. Maybe he was disappointed I was just talking business. Setting his jaw, he started up his engine, so he had to talk louder. “We only distribute to dispensaries in Phoenix and Tucson. Why don’t you go down to A Joint Effort and talk to that assmuncher?”

I had actually been planning on heading down there when I finished talking with Madison, but suddenly it seemed imperative that I get my hands on some of this Young Man Blue. I knew that flattery would get me everywhere. “I could tell by the way you talked that you know your stuff.”

Lytton cradled his brain bucket, one of those shallow matte black jobs that make the wearer look like a World War One infantryman. “My stuff’s organic, too. The Bare Bones’ stuff isn’t.”

That clinched it. Just say the word “organic” to any Peace Corps volunteer and we’re all in. “Okay. You’re up near Mormon Lake?”

The clouds had evaporated from Lytton’s eyes, and he held the helmet out to me. “I’m not exactly on Google maps. Get on.”

So I did.

I know—after four years of tramping over borders and being detained by scary men with Uzis accusing me of being a Russian, four years of being chased by Sudanese tribesmen until I hid under a table, four years of riding on top of broken-down trains or leaky boats—six years of nonstop adventure, and the most dangerous thing I ever did was climb onto Lytton Driving Hawk’s * pad and slap on his brain bucket.

I was just bursting with pride, a sense of danger and—I realized later—a rising temperature, in more ways than one. I had meant to say I’d follow him in my rental car, but the moment he said “get on,” it was all over for me. Every last cell in my 140 IQ was sucked right out of my brain and into my *.

Lytton’s bike smoothly cleaved through rise after rise of ponderosa pine. I had had my own little rice rocket when I lived in Benin, but a motorcycle was way too impractical for the thorn-riddled sand of northern Kenya. We drove Land Rovers with four spare tires. As we hummed along with my tits plastered to his broad, muscular back, I inhaled his warm, musky scent. In retrospect, it was probably one of his many strains of pot that imbued his hair.

I had smoked bhangi many a time in Africa. I could only drink one big Tusker beer before feeling bloated and full, and there wasn’t anything much else to get you high other than the occasional bottle of third world palm wine or wazungu—white man—whisky, which was hugely expensive. Randy and I used to knock off work every day at six, drink our warm Tusker, and enjoy a bowl of bhangi. The penalties for being caught with bhangi were Turkish prison bad, although it was weak as hell stuff. I had never seen a whole plantation of pot plants. I was actually hugely interested in Lytton’s irrigation scheme. Things like that excited me, thrilled me to the core.

But not as much as squirming my tits against that back like a slab of marble.

I pretended I was trying to get comfortable as I squiggled my labia against the * pad. I was wearing one of the loose hippie skirts I’d become accustomed to in Africa, paired with a racer-back tank that had a built-in bra. I loved the manufacturer’s idea of “built-in bra.” It was more like just a second layer of fabric hemmed in by elastic, and my nipples always wound up poking out like hobnails on boots. A few times Lytton reached around and slapped my hip, presumably to stop me from squirming.

It was forbidden and exciting to be shooting down Lake Mary Road like a luge sledder down a chute. A turn took us off the main drag and up the mountain about two miles. At an iron gate, Lytton paused for the first time since leaving Mescal Mountain to punch some numbers into the touchpad. Once the gate swung open, we were on our way again.