“You want a beer? You wanna hit the bong?” Marshal asks. “Both maybe?”
Actually, what I really want to do is run over to a club I know on West Twenty-Eighth Street, a lezzie hangout where I pass for a dyke.
“Let’s have a hit on the bong.”
“A hit or ten.” Marshal’s thirty years old, still young, but his scraggly beard is already turning gray. “Why limit your future before it happens?”
*
I lean back in the couch as Marshal prepares the bong. I don’t have to guess about the quality of his weed because it’s always the same, good but not great. Marshal’s been selling ganja for more than a decade and he’s got enough loyal customers to keep a roof over his head, food in the refrigerator, clothes on his back. So what if there’s nothing left at the end of the month? Marshal once told me that he doesn’t let himself want anything he doesn’t already have.
Marshal loads the bong and passes it to me, along with a little torch. Five minutes later, I’m blissed out.
“Hey, Marshal, you once told me about your business.” I gesture to the bong. “Where you buy, remember? Somethin’ about the dark web?”
“Yeah, so what—”
“Well, I’m not prying, bro. I got a reason for asking, so if you’d refresh my memory . . .”
Marshal pauses long enough to hit the bong. He holds the smoke in his lungs for a minute, then blows it toward the ceiling.
“Hey, man, this bit about the dark web, which is actually the deep web? That shit is way over the top. Like, it’s just a lot of websites that haven’t been indexed, so they can’t be found by a search engine. Mostly, the sites belong to private clubs or managers in a large company. Just for example, VPs at Exxon don’t use the public website, the one you can find with a Google search, to communicate. They have a web address that’s not indexed. So, what I’m saying is that most of the deep web is legit. Only a small percentage of sites operate illegally.” I smile. “And that’s where you come in?”
“What could I say, Kirk? I send an email that can’t be traced back to me because it’s encrypted at least three times by a virtual private network. I send it to a computer that might be anywhere on the planet and two days later I get a delivery, usually from a man or woman I’ve never seen before. No guns, no threats, no fucking paranoia. It’s the new way.”
Marshal’s nodding happily because he’s found the sweet spot. If his suppliers get busted and turn snitch, they have to rat up the ladder, not down to him. As for his own customers, he sells them half ounces in a city where a half ounce isn’t even a misdemeanor. No, the only thing Marshal really fears is legalization. Which is on the way.
“So, Kirk, what’s up? I know you’re here for somethin’ specific, so spit it out. If I can help . . .”
I describe what I need as best I can. On my own, when it comes to computers, I can barely get online. Victoria’s pretty good, but my siblings and I don’t necessarily share memories. For example, Martha is a great cook, but Eleni has trouble boiling water. We don’t know why this is true, but there it is, another stacked card in a stacked deck.
“Acquirin’ what you want, my man, is not gonna be your biggest problem,” Marshal finally says. “The problem’s gonna be installing the malware into another computer.”
“I’ll worry about that later. You say you can get me what I want?”
“Yeah, definitely, on a thumb drive.” He spreads his hands. “There’s tons of malware for sale if you know where to look.”
“Great, Marshal. So, give me a ballpark figure. How much will it cost?”
I’m bracing myself for bad news—I have very little access to money—when Marshal, his expression quizzical, reaches out to squeeze my breast.
CHAPTER SIX
TINA
When you’re a little kid, grownups can do anything they want to you. Anything. My daddy told me that’s the law. Grownups can do anything they want to you, no matter how much it hurts.
CHAPTER SEVEN
KIRK
I watch myself react, watch my right-hand curl into a fist, watch the fist slam into Marshal’s left eye, watch Marshal jerk backward as I reach into the pocket of my sweats to grasp the handle of a paring knife. The knife has an ultrasharp ceramic blade shielded by a plastic sheath. Because I’ve practiced the move, I know that if I press the sheath against my thigh, the blade will slide free.
It doesn’t come to that. Marshal covers his eye with his hand, then sinks into his chair. “Fuck, dude, you couldn’t maybe say, ‘Keep your hands to yourself?’”
That’s exactly what the others would demand, all of them. But Victoria and the bunch? They’re women. I’m not. “Keep your hands to yourself,” I finally say. “Please.” Marshal looks at me for a moment, then shakes his head. Lesson learned, he’s not gonna fight. I offer my fist and say, “No hard feelin’s, man. It’s just . . . well, you caught me by surprise and I reacted.”
He taps my fist with his, relieved, I think, to find the dramatics over and done with. “So, what’s this guy. . . .”
“Halberstam.”
“Yeah, what’s Halberstam up to that you wanna take this risk?”
I have to think about it for a moment, to organize my thoughts. “Look, if you reviewed a transcript of one of Halberstam’s sessions, you wouldn’t find anything to complain about. It’d all seem normal. But the jerk reminds us at every session, and usually more than once, that he holds. . . .” I’m about to say our, but catch myself at the last minute. “That he holds Carolyn Grand’s future in his hands. If he snaps his fingers, she’ll find herself confined to a crazy house for an indefinite period of time. So, maybe I’m completely wrong. Maybe Halberstam’s on the up and up. Maybe he sincerely wants to help me. But I’ve dealt with malignant therapists before and I’m not willing to take the chance.”
“I hear that, Kirk, and I can’t criticize you.” Marshal nods agreement. “But I can’t give you a price off the top of my head. Like what you want’s not somethin’ I do, so I gotta look around. Give me a day.”
*
Back in our dark apartment, I strip off my sweats and slide into bed, still nobody else awake. The bed feels empty tonight, empty and enormous, with me a tiny speck barely afloat in an empty ocean.
I’m still keyed up and I draw my legs toward my chest. For all the macho bullshit with Marshal, at heart I’m scared shitless. I’m scared and I’m tired of living under threat and I’m thinking maybe we weren’t meant to survive. I mean, not every baby lives to be an adult. Thousands and thousands of little kids die every year. And not just from disease or accident. Maybe we were meant to be one of them.
All in a rush, Hank Grand—I won’t call him our father— leaps into my consciousness. He’s been lingering, a shadow just out of sight, and now he’s come to say hello. Unlike the rest, I watched the movies, as much as I could stand. Hank appeared in many, his blurred face no more than a dancing gray balloon. I was also shown a mug shot taken when Hank was first arrested. His regular features were composed, his mud-brown eyes slick and shiny, his posture relaxed. Like he didn’t give a shit.