The oregano was chilling out in a little bowl on the coffee table when the doorbell rang. It was 9 pm on a Saturday night and my Brazilian roommate and I were enjoying Little Big Man after a full day of skiing at Keystone Mountain. “Ding, Dong”. Whoever was there had the patience of toddler. Matt, my roommate, finally peeled himself from the recliner and staggered to the front door. “Hey, man. It’s for you”, he said as he plopped back down into the recliner. “Ding, Dong. Ding, Dong”.

The front door chain was still hooked. I turned the door knob to expose a sliver of the outside world to a sliver of my face. “Open the door. I can smell it from here”. At first I thought the flashlight that had wedged itself into the opening the chained allowed, was speaking to me. Nope. It was the Herb Police. Thanks, Matt. “It’s for you”. Indeed.

The Herb Police had run up on me before. Once, when we were enjoying some basil outside a strip club, an HP officer had rolled up completely unnoticed by us. He was so stealthy that I almost passed it to him for a hit. That HP officer simply said, “You should take that inside”, before pedaling away. The irate HP officer on the nasty end of the flashlight was clearly cut from a different segment of blue cloth.

Of course I unchained the door and let him in because he demanded, “Unchain the door and let me in”. Evidently, an HP officer’s nose is so powerful it can snort an entire 4th amendment. “I could smell the oregano from the street”, and then mumbled something into his shoulder. Great. More HPs are on the way. “You two sit there and don’t move”. So, Matt and I sat on the couch as Dustin Hoffman acted his ass off behind us.

About ten minutes later, three HP squad cars pulled onto my front lawn. The living room curtains lit up in blue and red. Now that our cherry had been popped, six or seven HP officers strode into the house like they owned the joint. The flashlight cop, a buzz cut twerp in his early 40s, directed the

parade and before you could say, “Clown car”, HPs were scattered throughout the house, searching for any paraphernalia related to the illicit herb trade.

“Yes, this is all the oregano we have”, and I pointed at the coffee table. If these pasta haters are too inept to find the plants on the window sill, fuck’em. They dumped the contents of my underwear drawer on the floor, flipped the mattress over and stuffed their chubby claws between the sofa cushions. Disappointed, the HPs began trickling out of the house, one by one. All that and Matt and I wind up with a ticket for possession of a linguini altering spice. “Yes sir. We’ll make the court day”. I hesitated before locking and chaining the door behind him. What’s the point?

Only an hour of my life, but oregano can thicken time. I walked to the window and opened the curtains a crack. “You’re safe. They’re gone”, I said to my gals on the window sill. They were still trembling. Eventually I would have to sit them down and explain to them that evil exists in the world. How hiding from it sometimes isn’t cowardice. But it wasn’t time for that talk now. I let them sleep on the night stand next to my bed that night. Frank and Anne. Sweet dreams.