Fast Lane - Kristen Ashley Page 0,7

guy again, and I thank God for that.

You were there.

Fuck yeah, I was. Guy knocked up my fifteen-year-old sister.

He’s in my band, and he’s sneakin’ my little sister out of her bedroom window at night, takin’ her somewhere and bangin’ her?

[Shakes head]

Penny told me before she told Mom and Dad.

I sat there, holding her hand when she told Mom and Dad.

But Penny told me something she didn’t tell Mom and Dad, and that was that she told Nick she wanted him to use a rubber and he said he wouldn’t, and if she didn’t, he’d find someone else who would, without a prophylactic.

And she was into him. She really liked him. Convinced herself she was in love with him.

But he told her a guy couldn’t get off if he had to wear a rubber. Told her he needed it wet.

I’m serious about this shit.

She was fifteen, she believed his ass. Part, I figure, because she’d do anything to keep him. Part, I figure, because she was fifteen and hormones fuck you right up.

Nick told her, he pulled out, it’d all be good.

No problems.

Told her that’s the way everyone did it.

Yeah.

Nick.

A real peach.

He didn’t share that shit wide either.

[Shakes head]

And you got folks who don’t want sex education in schools.

[Scoffs]

[Quietly] Fuckin’ lunacy.

She told me, we told our folks, then I took off and told Preacher.

And we found Nick.

I knew what Preacher would do, that’s why I found him.

[Smiles]

Preach, he grew up down South, you know? He can be a gentleman.

He let me get my licks in before he took over.

Pileggi contends Preacher McCade broke all the fingers on both of his hands and this is why he can no longer play guitar.

Got no comment on that.

But you don’t deny you and McCade sought him out to assault him.

He knocked up my little sister.

Pileggi’s later lawsuits were dropped. He says he dropped them because Tommy Mancosa and Preacher McCade himself found him, threatened him, and he was forced to back down.

Got no comment on that either.

Pileggi—

[Leans forward]

Listen, I was there. I’m not even sure you were born yet. But I was there.

I know, when we hit it, Pileggi did everything he could to take his piece of flesh. I know it ’cause it was my flesh he was stripping.

They made her have him, or Mom did. Penny wanted to get an abortion. Mom made her have it and give it up. She wasn’t raisin’ another kid.

Big fight, no surprise. Dad was for an abortion, and if not, helpin’ Penny raise it. He wanted what Penny wanted, however that was.

Mom said no. Adoption.

And what Mom said went.

So, Penny had him, and gave him up.

Nick didn’t care about any of that shit.

No.

He wasn’t involved in that. He had nothing to say about that. After Preacher and me got done with him and shit got real, couldn’t get the fucker on the phone. Went to his house, he was with “cousins” in Texas.

He was a ghost.

His old band starts making massive cake, suddenly, he’s there.

Got lots to say.

I’ll tell you this, and that’s the last we’ll talk about Ricky and Nicky fuckin’ Pileggi.

A week ago, just a week ago, I’m sittin’ next to my sister at dinner, and she’s off her head, yeah?

It started back then, you know?

She hid it and then she came of age and didn’t hide it so much and lived her life, and she can set it aside to go to work. Set it aside to get shit done. But the witching hour starts, the wine comes out and all bets are off.

And that part’s on me. Yeah? On me and Mom and Preach and Tim and my baby sister Lana.

Preacher though, he saw it, called it and said it more than once, “We gotta get Penny in hand, brother.”

He said it but even he didn’t do dick about it.

We all danced around it like…

[Trails off]

So, she’s drunk and chatty and gettin’ loud like she’s been doin’ for, oh, I don’t know…thirty some-odd years.

Then she gets quiet and I know it’s gonna happen, man. I know it.

I know it because it’s happened so many damned times, there’s no way to count.

Each time, sister, hear this.

It’s a knife in the gut.

For me.

So, if I feel that, you gotta get what she feels and how she’s been drownin’ that in booze for decades.

But I gotta give it to her because she’s my sister, yeah?

So, I do. I sit next to her and it happens.

She says, “He’s in his thirties now. He could be