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"Yeah. That kind of family. The established organizations in Navesink Bank have respect for one another even if we don't do much business together."
"Who else is in an established organization in town?" I asked, having been too young and too into my own little life when I was last in town to know anything about them except for The Henchmen who always openly flaunted their illegal activities by wearing their cuts and one-percent badges.
"Mallicks. Hailstorm on the hill. And then there is Abruzzo. Though he stays clear of us now."
I wanted to ask, but also figured that asking questions was not what an outsider did in this kind of situation. "That's it? It sounded like so much more."
"There are a lot of, ah, independent contractors. Then there is Third Street."
"The gang?" I asked.
"Yeah, them," Virgin agreed with a grimace.
"I'm confused," I admitted.
"About?"
"Why you are grimacing about Third Street when you aren't about all the other organizations. What makes them worse?"
"Reign doesn't like 'em because they deal all sorts of shit. Heroin when they can find it, meth. I have nothing against drug dealers, obviously, from where I came from. What I have a problem with is the way they treat their working girls."
"Working girls. Like... prostitutes?"
"Are you surprised?" he asked, smiling.
"No, well, maybe a little." I shouldn't have been. There were more than a few women in prison with me who had worked the streets or in makeshift brothels. I knew all about the business. I knew more than I wanted to know, in fact. "Just that it is happening here and I never noticed, I guess. But, I'm guessing they are rough with them?"
"Rough is an understatement. I don't think I ever see one of those women without bruises or dried blood. And if they are doing that to their own women, you can only imagine what they let the Johns do. That shit doesn't fly with me. And now we are hearing that they are selling Easy Lay."
"What is Easy Lay?" I asked, feeling like I used to in high school when people would talk about weird sex acts then make fun of me for not knowing what they were.
"Date rape drugs," he told me with a dark look in his eye.
"Oh." The sound came out of me, weighted, heavy, knowing what that meant for the women in the area. All women in the area. Anyone who went on a date with a new man. Anyone who went to a bar where the bartender was paid off to slip something into the drink. Any girl who went to a high school party and woke up to find herself sore and bruised.
Yeah, no, there was no respecting an organization who sold those kinds of drugs. For me, while I had never used - and would never use - drugs, I understood the sale. Supply and demand. It was no different in my mind than selling illegal guns or whatever the Grassi and Mallick families did. But there was a line to be drawn in the sand. On one side, you could sell as much product as you wanted to someone who was okay with messing their own lives up. On the other, you catered to the lowest of the low and became slime yourself when you sold things that enabled someone to screw someone else's life up.
"This probably wasn't appropriate first date talk, huh?" Virgin asked, picking up on my dark thoughts.
"Well, we did agree there would be some tripping involved," I told him, shrugging it off as the waiter came back to take our order. "Besides, neither of us really know what appropriate first date talk is anyway."
"I think it is all about getting to know each other."
"That sounds about right." And also somewhat terrifying, to be perfectly honest.
"So, Freddie. Why don't you tell me your story?"
We both knew what he meant. He already knew what I did for a living, where I lived, what my family situation was like.
He was asking for the other stuff.
The stuff I didn't like talking about.
The stuff that lead to me losing ten years of my life.
And I wasn't sure I was ready for that yet.
Would he even believe me if I did tell him?
No one else did, save for Thad and Colson.
Reaching for my wine, I took a tentative sip, trying to find the courage to launch into it.
But what came out of my lips wasn't my story.
"You first," I demanded, watching as his shoulders went a little tight, as he struggled with the possible ramifications of telling me his story.
But, in the end, he leaned back, kept almost unnerving eye-contact, and went into it.SEVENVirginMy earliest memories were of a brown carpet in a mostly empty room where the walls had concave spots from angry fists. Whether they were from people who lived here before us or my mom and her endless string of boyfriends, I had no idea. I just remembered staring at those spiderweb-like holes, my heart skittering around in my chest, sure something was going to pop out of them if I looked away.
