by Mia Archer
“I don’t have any cash,” I said. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Robin murmured into my ear.
I kept my arm around her as we made our way up to the table. Terry looked at Robin and grinned. Raised his hand for a high five which meant she had to extricate herself from me long enough to free her hand.
“Robin! So did you bring the party?”
She grinned, though it was a sickly sort of grin. She glanced at me before returning her attention to Terry. “You know it!”
Terry turned his attention to me and blinked. Leaned forward and peered at me. His face broke into a huge grin.
“Is that Mari Reynolds?” he asked. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“She’s with me,” Robin said, again with that almost too casual tone.
Terry pulled back and looked at Robin. Then back to me. “Like she’s with you with you?” he asked.
I trembled at his tone. I got the feeling that if he found out we were together then it was going to be all over this party by the end of the night. I already had the feeling that everyone in here was staring at us as though they couldn’t quite believe I was here.
It was like back at school. I always felt like all the guys’ eyes were on me there too. I could feel them staring at me. Thinking about what they’d like to do with me. It was the same here, only I could feel the question in those stares.
They were wondering if I was really here with Robin. If I was like her.
“Is there a problem with that?” Robin asked.
Was there a problem with that? It was a good question. The more I thought about it the more I thought no, there wasn’t a problem with that. I was having a good time with her. I enjoyed her company. She was so fucking hot too.
No, the only problem here was if other people had a problem. Fuck them.
“No problem at all,” Terry said. “Just a little surprised.”
He handed over a couple of drinks and gave us a thumbs up. “On the house as always.”
“C’mon Mari,” Robin said.
I followed her back into the crowd, glancing back at Terry every once in awhile as I did. He was already talking to the next person in line and pointing at us.
Oh yeah, the word was getting out, and surprisingly I didn’t have a problem with that.
11
Robin
“So what do we do now? Dance? Talk to people? Something else?”
Mari took a drink from her beer and I grinned. She’d only had a couple of sips and already she was acting like she was tipsy. Of course there wasn’t a chance she was actually tipsy, not even for a lightweight like her who’d never been into the booze before, but I’d seen this time and time again.
Someone who was out at a party for the first time and wanted everyone to know what a good time they were having. It reminded me of a party back in school where they’d given a sophomore some nonalcoholic beer and he’d been stumbling around like he was drunk off his ass by the end of the night.
Amusing for everyone around him, but he hadn’t been happy.
I took a swallow of my own drink. The stuff tasted like carbonated piss water, but it had alcohol in it and that’s all that really mattered.
I paused for a moment to admire Mari in this light. There was something about the dim lighting of the factory floor that really accentuated all of her curves. Curves that were meant for sin no matter what those assholes at her church might’ve told her.
Curves that had felt fucking good in my hand earlier. My pulse picked up just thinking about it and I glanced to the back of the factory. To the stairway to heaven that led to some old management offices where some enterprising people had tossed some old mattresses.
Not the most romantic of venues, but I was so turned on after what we did in the truck that I didn’t much care.
“I’d love nothing more than to have a little dance with you lovely,” I said.
Lovely? Where the hell did that come from? I’d never used a pet name like that with a girl before, but there was something about Mari that made me want to use that pet name with her.
“But?” she asked.
“Smart girl,” I said with a smile. She could sense there was something else going on here, and there was. That backpack weighed heavily on me. Normally it wouldn’t be a problem, but with John out there waiting for me, not to mention everyone else at the party, I had to take care of business before I took care of business.
Even if I was starting to think that the business I had with Mari was far more enticing than any business I had with John or the people here. I was starting to think that this rough crowd maybe wasn’t for me after all, even if I was bringing in some extra money here and there.
Still, John was the whole reason I came here tonight. Even if Mari had wanted to come along.
“I need to get this stuff to John or he’s going to go crazy,” I said.
“What’s in there anyway?” Mari asked, giving my backpack a suspicious eye.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” I said. “Nothing you need to get involved with.”
Only she was involved with it now. She’d transported the stuff with me, after all. I wasn’t a lawyer or a cop, I tried to avoid both of those out of principle, but I knew enough to know that she could be charged as an accessory or something.
At least I was pretty sure she could. Admittedly my understanding of this sort of thing mostly came from watching television.
“Right,” she said. “So let’s get that over to John so we can get back to what’s important.”
Back to what’s important. Yeah, I knew what was important. Her. Not this crap. Even if it was just a little pot here and there. It’s not like I was making the hard stuff like some of the assholes who came to this place.
“Yeah, let’s get back to what’s important,” I said.
I paused for one last look at the stairs leading up to the second floor. Shivered as I thought of a couple of things we could do up there, but not right now.
John would be near the back of the place. We always set up shop in the same location. To be honest I wasn’t a fan of coming to these parties if I didn’t have to, they seemed way too high profile and begging to be broken up by small town cops who didn’t have much else to do on a Saturday night, but John loved coming to these things.
If he was willing to come out here and do some business then I was willing to play along. I was pretty sure he was skimming off the top or giving some away to his friends, but I didn’t even care about that as long as we made a little profit.
It’s not like I was in this to be a big time dealer or anything. Just a little extra. Enough to keep us afloat. Enough to keep food in my little sister’s belly.
That’s all I asked. It didn’t seem like too much.
John grinned when we made our way through the crowd surrounding him. A crowd that was looking a little irritated, truth be told. A crowd that eyed Mari with some interest, but mostly they eyed my backpack with interest.
It suddenly occurred to me that coming in here with this backpack slung over my shoulder might not have been the smartest of moves. Sure I was pretty scrappy in a fight, but I had no illusions that these people couldn’t overpower me if they wanted to.
That could’ve gone bad for me. More importantly it could’ve gone bad for Mari, and that was the last thing I wanted.
“Robin! You made it!” John said.
He stepped forward and eyed the crowd that was eyeing me. Then he casually reached out and snapped his knuckles a couple of times. That was enough to make anyone who might be thinking of knocking us over think better of it.
There was a reason why John was the muscle in this operation and I was the brains.
He looked at Mari and blinked. “Who’s your friend?”
“You know who this is you big lug,” I said, dropping the backpack on the ground. “And here’s what you were looking for. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
“You’re no
t going to stick around for a little while?” John asked, arching an eyebrow and gesturing to the bag.
I looked to him and then to Mari. I really didn’t want her to see what was in there. It was just some pot, but in my experience these church types could react to a little bit of pot like I was dealing heroin or something.
One look at what was in that bag could ruin things between us even if it wasn’t that big of a deal.
“I think I’m going to go out and have a good time with my friend here,” I said. “You know I don’t mess with that stuff.”
“Right,” John said. “Remember that time Spock tried to get us to? No idea what his deal was.”
“Yeah, well in any case have fun back here man, and keep your eyes peeled,” I replied.
“Come on,” he said. “The cops haven’t bothered us here yet. What makes you think they’re going to bother us tonight?”
I cursed under my breath. I wasn’t a religious person, but I was a little superstitious. I didn’t need John bringing no bad luck down on us by saying things like that.
Not that he cared. He wasn’t particularly religious or superstitious. I didn’t think he had enough brain cells to rub together for higher thinking like that.
I grabbed Mari by the arm and tried to pull her back into the party proper, but she wasn’t having any of it. No, her attention was all behind us as I heard something zip. I could hear it echoing like a gunshot over the sound of the music pumping through the place.
Not that much of that music reached us back here. It was a small speaker system trying to fill a massive factory, after all.
“Robin,” Mari hissed.
“What?” I asked.
“Look at that,” she said, pointing behind us. “Is that what I think it is?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and said a couple more curses under my breath. Why couldn’t John wait for a couple of minutes to give me time to get away?
Because he’d already been waiting forever because the idiot forgot to stop by my place earlier. Because I forgot to call him and remind him because I’d been so busy thinking about my date with Mari and how nice it would be to do something normal like go to the movies another town over. Y’know, the sort of thing regular kids did.
“That’s pot!” she said.
She turned to me, looking scandalized, and I worried that this was it. She’d internalized all the bullshit they taught us in school and at her church about how smoking a joint was the end of the world.
I didn’t think it was the big deal some of those stoners made it out to be, but I also didn’t think it was the end of the world the cops made it out to be. Especially considering it was getting legalized all over the place these days.
“Maybe it is,” I said.
“Why were you carrying a backpack full of pot out here?” she asked, suddenly serious.
I looked back at the bag. Watched John taking money and putting it into his back pocket. Probably the safest place in the entire factory. No one was going to be stupid enough to try and take anything from him.
“John needed it for…”
“Are you a dealer or something?” she asked.
“Look, it’s not like that,” I said, trying to backpedal. Trying to think of something that would make this seem like a positive in the eyes of a girl who’d been brought up to think that sort of thing was terrible.
“Do you think I could try some?” she asked, a strange gleam in her eye.
That brought me up short. Sure she was doing this whole going wild thing, but seeing the innocent church girl standing in front of me asking if she could try a joint was a little weird. More than a little weird.
“Are you serious? I don’t know if you want anything to do with that crap,” I said.
“Oh come on,” she said. “I know my parents used to do that stuff back in the ’80s, and everyone says it’s perfectly safe these days. Why are you acting like this is a big deal?”
“Um, well I just figured because…”
She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. She didn’t look pleased, but even standing there not looking pleased she looked sexy as fuck. I wanted to jump her even when it looked like she was about to give me a piece of her mind.
“Come on Robin,” she said. “What did I tell you about judging people? You’re so worried about me judging you that you’re doing it to me before I even have a chance to tell you how I feel about something.”
I looked down. My cheeks colored and I knew in that moment that she was right. I’d done that for so long that it felt weird not to. I was so used to people judging me for maybe being a lesbian, or for my side business, that I just closed out the world before the world had a chance to fuck me over.
And now I was doing that to Mari here when she was the last person I should be pulling that shit on.
I sighed, then smiled. I wasn’t sure if I should be frustrated or annoyed with the way she was using her mind tricks on me, but if she wanted to try something like that then I’d give her that experience.
It wasn’t my favorite thing in the world and I was a firm believer that you shouldn’t get involved in your own product, but I figured one night wasn’t going to hurt too much.
“Fine,” I said. “You want to try it we can try it, but not around here.”
I looked at the crowd of people surrounding us. Most of them were already lighting up. The stuff we brought to this party was strictly of the premade variety. It’s not like people were likely to bring papers and all that sort of stuff to a party like this.
I went back over to John.
“Hey man, I need one of those if you don’t mind,” I said.
“Sure,” he replied with a grin. “That’ll be twenty bucks.”
“Like hell it will,” I replied. “And is that what you’re really charging at these things?”
“Hell yeah,” he said. “Supply and demand. I figure it’s the same as paying ten bucks for a soda at the movie theater or a theme park.”
“That’s highway robbery,” I said. “And we’re going to have a conversation about how much money you’re bringing home from these things later.”
He grinned and didn’t even bother to look embarrassed. “Was wondering how long it would take you to catch onto that. Here ya go.”
I boggled. He didn’t even have the decency to act ashamed for skimming off the top. If this was a real criminal organization then he’d be in serious trouble.
Lucky for him we were just a couple of kids fucking around for a few extra bucks here and there.
“I’ll talk to you later John,” I said.
“Have fun with your friend,” John replied. Then he fished in his pocket for something and brought out a key. “Here, take this. Last door down on the right upstairs. Says “General Manager” on the frosted glass on the door.”
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Our business gives us perks here at this party. Perks you’d know about if you ever came out here, now have fun,” he said.
I looked down at the key and wondered what the hell he was going on about, then shrugged and pocketed it.
I turned back to Mari and flashed the joint. She grinned uncertainly then took my arm as I led her back to the stairway to heaven.
We were getting way ahead of ourselves and this was happening sooner than I thought, but Mari wasn’t complaining and I sure as hell wasn’t going to complain.
This night just got a hell of a lot more interesting. That was for damn sure.
12
Mari
I wasn’t sure what to make of all this. The stairs were old metal things that were rusting out in several places. Up above were some wide windows that I’d seen from the outside several times. They were hard to miss since the factory was the biggest landmark in this town.
Some of them had been busted open over the years by kids throwing rocks and bricks. Some of those rocks and bricks crunched underfoot as I stepped on, over, or around them.
“What is this
place?” I asked.
“They call it the stairway to heaven,” Robin said.
“Why would they call it something silly like that?” I asked.
It seemed like a ridiculous name. As far as I knew that was a song my parents listened to. Not something people my age would say. And it’s not like this had been a party destination long enough that it was named the stairway to heaven by an older generation.
People were still working in this factory when that song was big. Hell, most of the people who graduated didn’t have time to party over the summer because they started their brand new factory job right out of high school.
Robin led me down a corridor that looked like it had been management offices of some kind once upon a time. Now they sat empty.
At least they’d be empty during the week. Right now they were all occupied, and I blushed when I realized what people were doing in some of those offices. Definitely not management type stuff.
It seemed like every room had a makeshift setup of some sort. People had dragged couches and mattresses in there over the years since the factory had closed. Or maybe some of that furniture had been left behind when people lost their jobs.
Either way the doors showed people drinking, smoking, and doing other things that they weren’t supposed to do until marriage according to my Sunday school teachers.
Well it looked like a lot of the people here had never been to Sunday school based on the things they were doing!
I looked ahead to Robin. Looked down to her ass which moved so hypnotically in her tight shorts. I thought about what everyone else was doing up here and wondered if I was about to get the same sort of introduction to a life of sin and fun.
I shivered thinking about it, but it wasn’t an unpleasant shiver.
“Looks like this is it,” Robin muttered when we came to a door at the end of the hall.
The hall ended in a window that looked out on the factory floor below. Robin fumbled with a key as I looked down at the party below. It looked like everyone down there was having a good time, everyone was here voluntarily, and they weren’t causing any trouble.
