the secret-using economy, fan and one-hitter
pretty soon after a while I’m in my room with the fan pointed out the window all night, doing one-hitters and exhaling at the fan, to kill the smell, and I make her say I’m not there if anybody calls, and I lie about what I’m doing in there all night even if she doesn’t ask, sometimes she asks and sometimes she doesn’t.
Context
The identical apparatus of concealment that structures Hal's pump-room, here in a Newton bedroom: the fan aimed out the window, the one-hitters, exhaling to kill the smell, the mother conscripted into the cover story. The secrecy is not a detail of the using but the shape of the life the using builds — a life spent managing whether anyone can tell.