“Fine. Eight PM?”
“See you tonight.”
I slipped the cell phone back in my pocket and looked at Marco standing across from me in the back of the strip club. It was only one o'clock in the afternoon, but of course, it was dark in here, no windows. I couldn't make out his face. But I could tell by his boulder-like body that it was him. My father had sent him up to listen in on me, I was sure of it.
“I guess you're coming with me then.”
He emerged out of the shadows, his arms crossed over his thick chest. “Damn straight I am. What's this all about, anyway?”
I shook my head. “Gotta do a job for the family. Shouldn't you be over at the casino?”
He laughed at me. “I only have to go to the casino when I'm told to go. Your father hasn’t loaned out any money recently, so I don't have any clients.”
That was Marco's single job, being the muscle for gambling debts at the casinos. “So what have you been doing?”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Looking out for your ass, what else?”
“For me? I haven't seen you in four years except these past couple days. Nobody's been looking out for me, except maybe my parents. You know they said they paid off some guards? Just to make sure that I was left alone in there.”
He shook his head and sat down in one of the chairs, watching a new girl I didn’t recognize on the pole. Before I went upstate, I knew all of the girls at the club. Now, it seemed like we had a whole set of new meat. I sat down next to Marco and the waitress brought over whiskey in a glass. I thanked her and raised my glass to Marco. “Salud.”
He raised his glass and did the same. I swallowed the golden liquid in one gulp. It burned my insides. I closed my eyes and put my hand over them to shield them from the bright lights of the floor while Marco enjoyed a private show.
Fuck prison. I tried not to think about it since I’d been given my freedom. But these past four years had been absolute hell. If my parents really were paying off some guards, I didn't know it. They sure as hell didn’t act like it.
I could remember my first week there. Getting in line for food, keeping my eyes on the linoleum floor. I didn't want to be noticed. I was the only one from the family in that facility. And when you don't have friends in a place like that, you only have enemies. I was next in line when some jackass pushed his way in front of me. It wasn’t in my nature to let anybody disrespect me like that, but I didn't want to fight. I'd already seen the guards manhandle some guy as they dragged his screaming ass to solitary. I wasn't ready for that shit.
So I just let it go. I took my ugly yellow tray right after he took his and I watched them slop some sort of disgusting food onto my plate. It was brown and it smelled like dog food. But as the guy got to the dessert bar, which had melted ice cream, he took two. He looked right at me and told me that I didn't need any.
“Virgins don't get none.”
I licked my lips. It took everything in me not to choke the life out of that awful son of a bitch. Instead, I spent the next several weeks plotting my revenge against him. Every day at lunch was the same thing. He pushed in front of me and took my dessert. Like some school kid being bullied by an upperclassman. But I was that kid that you had watch out for. The quiet one that you would never suspect.
I'd been there an entire month before I finally unleashed on him. The guards had known that he was picking on me at lunch, but they never did anything about it, so I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands. It was visiting day. I remembered because I had overheard the bastard talking loudly about how he got to have a conjugal visit with his woman. I made sure that he wasn’t able to make that visit.
He was in the shower when I shanked him. I opened up his neck so badly that there was blood on three of the four walls. I had made the shiv out of my toothbrush. The three weeks that that I spent in solitary as a result were worth it. Not to mention I gained some friends. Two other guys took the fall with me, said that it was a joint endeavor. Even though it wasn't. It was only me. Everyone wanted that asshole dead, but I was finally the one with enough balls to take care of him. In prison, you have to be the bully. Command respect from the other inmates. I earned theirs that day.
Nobody ever cut in front of me for food again. I never sat alone. I was the one that could bounce between the Blacks and Whites and Latinos and nobody cared. But that was because of respect and fear. That was what the mob had taught me. The respect I earned was worth three weeks in solitary, and it made my sentence a lot more bearable.
As the song ended and the girl bent over and collected her cash, I pulled out my phone and texted Vienna. A part of me wanted to call her, or go to her, find out the truth about what she was really up to. But I didn’t have time for that shit right now, I had to keep everyone else happy. I couldn’t afford for them to go snooping around. If Pops got to her before I got the truth, it wouldn’t be pretty.