Freedom felt good, invigorating even, but I had no faith about what destiny held for me.
Desolation, New York, a city that has been my home for the last ten years but a city I’d never really seen, except when we passed through on our way out of South Vale. As I drove through the quiet streets, I found it disheartening that it was a hub for so much criminality. I wasn’t a stranger to crime. It was all I knew my entire life, but it still felt uncomfortable to be in the middle of something I detested so much.
When I got to Butcher and Sons, I felt like I’d stepped inside hell itself. It stood tall, an abandoned slaughter house with busted windows, exposed pipes, the metallic scent of blood and the putrid stench of rotted flesh.
The place had been abandoned for what looked like decades, but the smell of death had permeated the porous walls and collapsing ceilings. I didn’t want to die here, I would've preferred the side of the highway. I couldn’t believe that people came here for meetings. Why not build a clubhouse, or meet at McDonalds? Any shithole would be better than this. The screams of animals meeting their maker seemed to linger in the silence, and I found myself wondering if the bleached bones on the floor were of human or animal origin.
“Mr. Montgomery,” a man with a strong Russian accent said. He appeared out of nowhere, coming up stairs from what must have been a lower level. Possibly the pit to where all the runoff blood drained. He handed me an envelope as if we were conducting civil business.
“This is what we need you to deliver to The Emporium, do you know where to find it, yes?”
“You’ve got to be fuckin kidding me. Why the hell can’t you do it? That’s a ten minute drive away, you telling me you’re too busy? What the fuck do you need me to drop this off for?” I knew I should have kept my trap shut, that what they did or didn’t do wasn’t any of my business, but the last place I wanted to go after ten years in the pen was a fucking strip club. Hire a fucking bike messenger.
“We don't like anything coming back on us. You do as you are told or you’ll be dead, ya?”
“Jesus Christ.” On my dad’s fucking bike, too.
I grabbed the package and acquiesced. It was one last drop and I was done with it all, it wouldn’t kill me. I’d be out of Desolation and back home before I knew it.
“Yes sure, I’ll drop it at the goddamned sex dungeon for you.”
“It’s a strip club,” the Russian corrected me.
“Calling it something different doesn’t change what it is.”
“Pretending to hold moral superiority doesn’t make you better than us. You’re a convicted criminal, a murderer in fact. If you don’t want to end back up in jail, this time without our protection, I suggest you shut the fuck up and be on your way.”
That shut me up. I had no choice but to pay my dues and be their little fuck boy.
.
I made it to The Emporium in fifteen minutes. I knew my dad used to frequent the place and that Fox had spent time there, too. I’d never had any desire to watch women debase themselves for men who cared nothing about them. Half of those women came from Desolation and were just trying to pay their bills. Some of it was even worse, they had little kids at home and it was the only job where they could make enough money to actually support them. That shit twisted my heart. Monty used to say they were all whores and drug addicts, but that was just because he didn’t want to believe he was the only one taking advantage of them.
The Emporium was fancy, velvet ropes and dark wood paneling—the highest-class joint in Desolation. Neighboring South Vale had a law that forbade the establishment of gentlemen’s clubs within a fifty-mile radius of a public school. In other words, South Vale effectively outlawed strip clubs.
Two intimidating bear-like bouncers guarded the door, but they stepped aside almost expectantly as I neared the front of the line, despite the conspicuously placed plaque that stated the dress code included jackets and ties. I was still wearing the clothes my mother sent in the care package, and still enjoying them immensely.
I was shown to a table by the stage and I averted my eyes to the half-naked girl spinning on the pole in nothing but a G-string and pasties and heels that were inhumanely high. Trying to take in my surroundings consciously, noting the exits and the stairways, I was overwhelmed by more sensory input than I’d had in what felt like a whole lifetime. Blasting music, naked women, cigar smoke, and recessed violet-colored light. My feet sank in thick carpet while I sunk into a velvet couch ten times softer than my stainless-steel prison cot I’d grown accustomed to.