the kitchen pharmaceutical lab
his gift for transforming the kitchen of any vacationing parents' house into a rudimentary pharmaceutical laboratory, using like BBQ-sauce bottles as Erlenmeyer Flasks and microwave ovens to cyclize OH and carbon into three-ring compounds
Context
The supply side at the middle-school level, run by the crew's chemistry wienie: a borrowed kitchen turned clandestine lab, Sominex cooked one molecule short of a Quaalude into the house-brand "QuoVadis." The procurement economy doesn't wait for street dealers — it manufactures, and the social rank the manufacture buys ("place of honor in the drug-set") is the first economy Gately learns to live inside.