Clearly, the kid was an entertainer. This part of his hustle was to amuse Jong and her muscular escort, Eric. Of course, they were already sold. Her big companion watched the boy strut with the disinterest of a bouncer at a posh night club. Jong supposed she and Eric made a striking couple: a petite Asian girl with a Norse god. The kid probably had seen all types before, she mused as he spouted his nonsense.

“It’s about sex and death and a chemical high, yo. It’s about all that shit, be.”

The boy spoke in a world-weary voice Jong thought was a little too practiced. She couldn’t follow the kid’s logic, either. It must not have a point, she supposed, just a drug- induced rant where the sound of the speech was more important than the content of it. It don’t matter what you say, yo. It’s about what you sound like, be.

The hustler understood the basic rule of seduction, that the body’s most erogenous zone was the brain. That was the real reason for this pre-sexual rap that meant nothing. Intellectual foreplay. Fluff with the veneer of substance.

“It’s all about the exchange of chemicals.”

He snatched the Ziploc of X from Eric as if that action was the exclamation point to his speech.

“It’s about the exchange of bodily fluids,” Eric corrected with a grin. He snatched the bag back, stuffed it down the front of his jeans.