"So uh…look, I dunno what Luschek told you-"
"Shut up." Kubra followed Nicky through the dusty tunnels below the funeral home, flashlight in hand. "Where's the supply?"
"I don't know what you mean by supply, man." Nicky shrugged. "All that's down here is old caskets and some embalming fluid."
"Nicky." Kubra stopped. "Don't play stupid with me. You might lie to Alex, and your little girlfriend, but I know a hustler when I see one." He took a step forward. He and Nicky stood face to face. "You may act like I'm this big, bad wolf and you're just an innocent little piggy caught up in all this risky business. But, you, Nicky, are a baby wolf." He smirked. "And you can't pull the wool over the alpha's eyes."
Nicky made a gagging action and rolled her eyes.
"That's how you see yourself? The alpha? Jesus, talk about getting zero pussy my man." She laughed. Kubra frowned and shoved her back.
"Keep walking." He demanded. Nicky continued walking until she reached the end of the tunnel, entering a large room with a cremation oven in the center. Sprawled across the room were old, dusty caskets, half full boxes of ancient embalming tools, and seemingly used body bags.
"This is it man." Nicky spread her arms gesturing over the dusty old crematory.
"So tell me how this works." Kubra said, crossing his arms.
"Well, people die, you bring them down here, you shove their body into the-"
"Enough of the bullshit!" Kubra yelled. His deep voice echoed off the concrete walls. "Tell me!"
Nicky swallowed hard and ran a hand through her hair. She led him to the far corner of the room and removed a white sheet from a large lump sitting against the wall. Under the sheet was a small writing desk. On the left side lay half a dozen cartons of cigarettes. On the right sat multiple bottles of embalming fluid. In the center lay hundreds of tiny plastic bags.
"So this is your setup, huh?" Kubra smiled and closed the space between him and the table.
"Just…Just tell me what you want." Nicky sighed.
"Tell me what you do down here." He said quietly, not taking his eyes off the table.
"I take the cigarettes." Nicky took a deep breath in. "I dip them in the embalming fluid, and I take them to the club and sell them."
"Wet." Kubra chuckled. "You're selling Wet. Haven't heard of anybody selling that shit since the 80's."
"Well," Nicky shrugged. "A fiend's a fiend."
"So what, you've been skimming embalming fluid off your friend Alex and buying smokes on the side? Is that how this works?" Kubra picked up a cigarette and rolled it between his two fingers.
"Yeah. Something like that." Nicky nodded.
"Luschek, before I put a bullet through his fat head, told me you and him have been selling about three dozen a week for the past four months or so. Twenty bucks a pop, 36 a week for four months, that's about 2,880 since you two started this little business. Split between you and Luschek that's 1440 a piece. That brings me to ask you, Nicky, where's my share?"
Kubra took a step towards Nicky, placing the cigarette between his lips.
"Kubra, c'mon, fourteen hundred bucks? That's nothing to a guy like you." Nicky begged.
"Yeah, in the long run, fourteen hundred is a blip on the radar to a guy like me. But, imagine if I hadn't caught on and you and Luschek decided to run this little business of yours for a couple more years. Amp up the production, go national with it, then how much would you two be making?" Kubra took his lighter from his pocket and lit the cigarette in his mouth. "To think, you two thought you could run this operation under my nose in a funeral home that trafficks my product." He chuckled. "That's what pisses me off, Nicky."
"Kubra, I'm sorry. I'll stop this shit. Luschek's gone and he's the one who wanted to start it in the first place. I hate hiding this shit from Alex and-"
"Alex." Kubra took a long drag off his cigarette. "That's another factor in all this. Alex, she's a good dealer. I send her my shit, she sews it up in the bodies, she sends it out, I get my cash, not a word from anybody. How much is she losing in all this? I imagine you go through a large amount of fluid doing this, no?"
"I order an extra two boxes of fluid every month. That's it." Nicky admitted.
"Well, you better find a way to order a lot more than two boxes a month." Kubra ashed his cigarette onto the dust covered cement floor. "Because with Luschek gone, that means you're now receiving 100% of the earnings. Now that I know about your little scheme, I'll be taking 90% of your earnings. I'll upgrade the production to about four cartons a week, six boxes of embalming fluid every month, and I'll start giving Alex the instruction to include a dozen in every dead body she sends off. Your role, Nicky, will be to cover the expenses, since you're miss business woman now, huh?" Kubra smiled and flicked his cigarette to the ground. "Besides, with all the extra income you've had the past few months, I'm sure you can handle it." Kubra walked past Nicky down the tunnel. "This is a new beginning, Nicky. A fun new beginning." He laughed, disappearing into the darkness.
Alex stood in the prep room looking over Joel Lushcek's blood stained corpse. His bushy ginger beard was speckled with red. His brown eyes bulged out of his skull as his lifeless eyes stared up at the ceiling. She took a gloved hand and ran it over the right side of his head. She could feel the deep pit where the bullet had entered. She pictured him crying and blubbering, begging Kubra not to pull the trigger. She pictured him shaking and scared the way she and her friends had been that night. Alex knew that once you died with your eyes open there was no shutting them but yet, she tried. She slid his eyelids down praying they'd stay. She managed to shut them but slowly, painfully, they rose back up, meeting her gaze.
"Fuck!" Alex threw her scalpel across the prep room. It clanged against a cabinet before bouncing to the ground. She fell to her knees and stared into the drain on the floor where Luschek's blood pooled from the embalming table. Tears were brimming in her eyes.
"Alex?" Piper knocked on the prep room doorway.
"Yeah?" Alex sighed and rose to her feet.
"I just…I wanted to see if you were okay with me leaving early? I'm not feeling too great."
Piper stood with her hands behind her back, looking over her boss.
"Leave? So I can do removals with Taystee? Sounds great Pipes." Alex scoffed.
"I'm sorry." Piper walked into the room. "I don't really know what's going on."
"No, I'm sorry. Really. I shouldn't act like that." Alex shook her head. Piper walked closer to her, eventually closing the space between them and standing mere inches in front of Alex.
"Alex, please, tell me you're okay."
"I…" Alex began before her lip began to tremble. Piper took her into her arms and let the taller woman sob into her shoulder. Piper wrapped her arms around her. Alex sank into her grasp and let herself go. She cried to the point she was gasping for air and Piper simply held her. They stood for a moment in the silence of the funeral home while Alex cried. It felt like forever before Alex finally pulled herself together. Once the tears stopped, she continued holding onto Piper, burying her face into her neck. Piper set her hand in Alex's hair and breathed her in, smelling the Chanel perfume and honey scented shampoo.
"Al, you can talk to me." Piper reassured her, sweeping her black mane back from her face.
"No." Alex sniffled. "I can't. It's bigger than you, me, Nicky, this place, everything." She shook her head. "Piper, if I were you, I would leave this place and never look back."
"I can't." Piper placed her hands on the sides of Alex's face. "Not after meeting you."
Alex pressed her lips to Piper's. Piper hesitated before kissing her back.
"I'm sorry, I know it's not allowed." Alex apologized.
"It's okay." Piper whispered.
The women kissed again, Piper tangling her hands in Alex's hair and breathing in deep. Alex tightened her grip on the blonde Once their lips parted they stood with their foreheads pressed together. The rims of Alex's glasses were pressing into the bridge of Piper's freshly healed nose but she didn't care. She didn't know what Alex was going through. Or where Nicky and Lorna had gone. Or what happened to make Tasha so angry. But she knew whatever it was, it had to be far more exciting than the man waiting for her back at home. She knew that this woman standing in front of her brought a new feeling she had never felt before. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. It made her stomach twist and her breath hitch in her chest. It sparked a fire that began in the frontal lobe of her brain and traveled down through her core to that sweet, vulnerable place between her thighs. Somehow all of these things circled back to the left side of her chest where it lay, curled into a nest of desire, yearning, and curiosity.
"It's okay." She repeated.
A knock on the front door shook Piper out of a deep sleep. She'd stayed with Alex in the prep room, holding her and listening to her cries for a few hours before it was time to close for the night. She'd even done the chivalrous thing and walked her to her taxi where they shared a deep, passionate kiss.
"Thank you." Alex said as she sat in the back seat. "Thank you for caring."
"Of course." Piper held her hand tightly.
"I'll see you tomorrow?" Alex didn't seem to want to let go.
"Yeah, tomorrow." Piper nodded, giving her a peck on the cheek. It was damp from freshly wiped tears.
"Bye, Pipes." Alex smiled sadly before shutting the door.
Piper had decided to walk home. She stopped periodically to look into shop windows and gawk at neon lights illuminating from bars. She convinced herself that she was doing this because she never truly took time to admire her surroundings in such a beautiful city. In truth, she was hoping to be home late enough that Larry would already be asleep. She wanted to fantasize about Alex without interruption.
She'd come home to Larry asleep on the couch, mouth agape and the TV set to an old UFC match. Rather than disturb him Piper ran herself a hot bath and prayed he'd stay asleep long enough for her to enjoy time to herself. After her bath she half-attempted to read a book and drink a glass of wine, only to fall asleep very similarly to Larry in the recliner.
The knock at the door scared her enough to make her flinch out of her slumber. Larry must have crawled into bed some time after Piper had fallen asleep. She could see his outline lying next to her under the quilt, his chest lifting and falling rhythmically. The knocking continued, getting louder and seemingly more aggressive.
"Larry!" She whispered, shaking his shoulder. He grunted and rolled to his side. "Larry! There's someone at the door!" Piper kept trying to wake him but the knocking was persisting to a point she could no longer ignore it.
She crept to the door. Piper hurriedly searched for a weapon of some sort. She settled on an umbrella and held it in her hands like a baseball bat.
"I am armed!" She shouted, struggling to be heard over the knocking. "I am on the phone with the police at this very moment!" She lied. She very quickly regretted leaving her phone on the nightstand.
Piper unlocked the door and set her hand on the knob, slowly turning it. She braced herself to swing her makeshift weapon, lifting it above her head as she quickly swung the door open.
She was surprised to find Poussey standing on her doorstep. A very drunk Poussey.
"Poussey? Wha-What are you doing here?" She lowered the umbrella. "How did you get my address?"
"I actually liked you, Piper." Poussey spat. She swayed back and forth but didn't break eye contact. "I liked you until you let those fucked up mother fuckers up there get into your head." She pointed a small finger down the hall.
"What are you talking about?" Piper asked.
"Alex. Nicky. Those two fuckin'...fuckin' junkies!" Poussey shouted. "They're doing shit up there. Shit that could fuck them all up. Fuck Tasha up!" The small woman stumbled backwards before regaining her footing. "You might think they're these laid back, cool mother fuckers," She hiccuped. "They're liars. I didn't steal shit!"
"I…" Piper looked back towards the bedroom before stepping into the hall and closing the front door behind her. "I can't help you."
"Nicky and Alex…" Poussey whispered. "They're putting drugs in the bodies. I saw it!"
Piper shook her head.
"What?"
"Horse…H…Heroin, white girl." Poussey scoffed. "How do you think they afford all those fancy ass lunches? Huh?"
"I'm sorry but, I don't believe you. You're drunk and quite frankly, you're on the verge of causing a public disturbance."
"Fuck you!" Poussey hissed. "Fuck you and them!"
"Okay, so why haven't you gone to the cops then, huh? Does Tasha know?" Piper crossed her arms across her chest.
"I did." Poussey said it as if Piper were a 5 year old child. "Do you know how many pigs got their family members buried by the Vause's? Do you know how many of them Diane fucked to keep Alex's ass outta jail?"
"Okay." Piper shrugged. "So what about Tasha then? You guys are best friends right? I'm sure you told her all this?"
"Of course she knows." Poussey scoffed. "She told me about it. I didn't believe her either until she cut open one of Alex's bodies and we saw that shit." She stumbled back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. "Tasha spent her daddy's life savings on that fuckin' place. When Diane died she had this fuckin'...I dunno…need to save the funeral home. Diane was like a mom to her too and…she bought it thinking Alex was past all her druggie bullshit."
"So what are you saying?"
"I'm sayin' Tasha's too fuckin' nice to sell her share of the home and watch Alex sink with the ship. Nobody wants to buy her share of that piece of shit anyways. These mother fuckers that come every year offer her a fuckin' third of what she bought it for. Her daddy's rollin' in his grave watchin' this shit man."
"I…" Piper sighed. "I don't know what exactly you expect me to do, Poussey."
"I don't expect shit from you, Piper." She stumbled forward, coming nose to nose with the taller woman. "I'm here to tell you," She put her finger in her face. "To cut your losses and get the fuck away from Vause Funeral Home." She clenched her teeth before shaking her head. "Because even after that sneaky shit you and them pulled…" Poussey stepped back. "For some reason I still fuckin' like you."
Poussey tripped her way down the hallway, into the elevator, and disappeared into the night.
Piper returned to her bed where she shut her eyes but received not a single wink of sleep.