That evening Blum went to a party. A girl with her hair dyed green, and a freckled nose on the end of which he saw a trace of cocaine, had given him the address in a cafe in Leopoldstrasse, where he was sitting thinking about his next move. The girl was in the company of two unisex figures with safety pins in their ears, and seemed to be inviting anyone who looked a likely prospect to this party. Perhaps she saw Blum as a classic example of the bourgeois type. That was okay by him - good camouflage was extremely important now. And he had long considered himself a classic .... The old guard of pot-heads were assembled in a darkened room. Candles, musky scents, Afro hairstyles, lilac dungarees, loads of Indian jewellery, a nargileh in the middle of the room and the inevitable fidgeting with bongo drums by the wall. Blum took the little tube of snow out of his pocket. They were interested.
'A gram costs -'
'Oh, come on, man, cool it!'
The fact that Blum insisted on cash payment defused suspicion but made him appear rapacious. He put the tube away again.
'Sorry, friends all you get on credit is the Vienna Woods'