natural and kind of free, under the red balls — "her ingestion then was recreational, and…"
her ingestion then was recreational, and he not only didn’t mind but never made a show of not minding, nor she that he abstained; the whole substance issue was natural and kind of free.
Context
The first sight of Joelle ingesting, under the little Kentucky Xmas tree's red balls, framed at the recreational stage before it becomes the freebase love-affair — "natural and kind of free," the phrase that reads as innocent here and as terrible foreshadow against 058/062. The seed of the arc is planted in a scene where nobody minds anything, which is exactly how the cage opens.