The Haight

Nick is trying to cop acid on the side. He's from Daly City and he's in town waiting around for a pot shipment to take back there, where he sells lids at high prices to the high school kids. They talk for a while, but the only deal is that Sarah buys a blue dot to split with a friend. 'It's not the best stuff in the world," Nick concedes as he takes the money. The two girls split the pill and drop it, but it's a burn job. There isn't enough acid in it to get a cockroach off.

Then Nick's gone. You don't see him on the streets for a few weeks. After a while he's back in front of the Drugstore on the corner of Masonic and Haight, mewling and carrying on like a frightened dervish. He's burnt somebody else and they're out to beat the hell out of him, but he can't leave town because he's waiting to cop again. He is begging Papa Al to protect him. "Go back to Daly City. Do your thing there. What is your thing, Nick? Oh, yeah, selling high school kids joints in the malt shop. Well, whatever's right."

>>3
der·vish  (dûrvsh)
n.
1. A member of any of various Muslim ascetic orders, some of which perform whirling dances and vigorous chanting as acts of ecstatic devotion.
2. One that possesses abundant, often frenzied energy: "[She] is a dervish of unfocused energy, an accident about to happen" (Jane Gross).