Harrison inhales, a thumbed, halting Morse code of a breath, his thumb rolling the aperture of the glass pipe like a telegraph or a nipple. "But do you see it, buddy?" he forces out in budgeted bursts of the delicious vapors percolating in his lungs.
John is lying on a pile of old laundry. He is flipping through Harrison's collection of vintage vinyl albums, selected for their images since Harrison has no and has no interest in acquiring a record player. John lifts one: Sour Cream & Other Delights, by The Frivolous Five. There are five women, covered with billowing, swirling, Van Goghian clouds of what white confection you might expect. John can't imagine being covered in that much sour cream. But each woman enjoys it--he can tell that they like the tactile sensation, they aren't ashamed, but they know there's something maybe to be ashamed of--their enjoyment is self-satisfied but defiant. The woman in the center holds a rose; John wonders who it's for, if maybe it's for him. He takes the pipe from Harrison.
"I don't know what you're talking about," John says, at last.
Harrison has the pipe again, somewhere between now and his last thought about roses the molded glass has been taken from John, has been refilled with model train tree fluff, primo buddy, is being now scolded by a gas station lighter. "If you look hard you can see things in the smoke. I don't mean they're there, like, hallucinating.
"Although I know a guy." Morse code again, inhalations. The box is hot, they're in a closet, and since there does seem to be a coalescing, inveigling opacity, John peers bleary into the distributed carcinogens. Nothing.
"I mean that you can see where there might be something in the gas, you know, imagination, set yourself a scene. Where do you want to go? If you try hard enough, maybe you have to squint, you could see it."
The Frivolous Five have been painted with such thick brushstrokes of sour cream, turbulent patterns, laid thickly with manic and sensual energy. Harrison thinks of Arles, and peers into the mists of vapor that did seem to strangle him; he can almost make out, if he squints, and thinks of passionate defiance, the tower from which he imagines an unstable Vincent laying thick on canvas. Arles: a smoky night.