The Virgin

Chapter Seven - Hit and Run

It's official. I have been dressed up like a Kim Kardashian doll and have ventured out into public. Thank goodness it's dark. Lacy and I enter another club. This time I'm positive the building we are in was once a morgue, because the plaque outside reads: The Morgue. And it is dated 1911. Don't get drunk and pass out in this joint. You might wake up to something far worse than a hangover. That being said, the clientele isn't scary. The women are actually on the classy side and the men are on the "damn, you hot" side. I say that in my head using my best Iggy Azaela voice, "gurrrl."

The music is pumping. The crowd is dancing. I'm reading the last page of an article in Neuroscience Today and leaning against the wall so I don't fall down in these stilettos that Lacy insisted I wear tonight.

"Would you put that away already!" Lacy yells.

"I just want to finish this so I can enjoy myself," I say, trying to defend an indefensible act at one of New York City's hottest clubs. I'm pretty confident that I am the only person out of a couple of thousand in here who is reading a scientific journal on her phone.

Lacy grabs the phone from my hand and tosses it into her tiny purse. It almost fits.

"I have a purse," I say, holding up my recently purchased pocketbook thing.

"It's called a clutch, and I will be in charge of your phone for the rest of tonight," Lacy says, as she tries shoving the remainder of my only lifeline to the outside world into what must be called a teeny, tiny clutch.

"Let's get a drink at the bar." Lacy grabs my hand and pulls me through the writhing bodies.

Did I mention I was wearing stilettos and leaning to stay up? Now, I'm walking a ridiculous distance toward the bar, which feels very far away, while using the people dancing around me to hold me up. Luckily for me, these people aren't fazed by a stranger grabbing their shoulder, elbow, boob, or, in one case, head.

We make it to the very long stainless steel bar. This is when Lacy shows me a side of her that I have never seen before. Lacy very casually knocks the drink of one of two unsuspecting young ladies onto them both. They instantly jump up from their bar stools, grab napkins and look around desperately for the ladies room. As I watch on, Lacy, without even a hint of an apology, points them to the restroom and steals their vacated seats. My instincts about my little sister are confirmed. She can be calculating and relentless when she knows what she wants.

Lacy signals to the bartender, who is dressed in a white lab coat giving the impression that, when he isn't serving drinks to the beautiful people like us, he is in a secret room performing autopsies.

"How do you feel?" she asks me, while ordering drinks in some kind of code I don't understand.

"Unstable," I answer, as I try to sit down on the very cold steel stool.

Our coroner-slash-bartender places two shots in front of us called Hit and Runs. We each throw back our shot and slide the glasses back toward him. Lacy gives the signal that we would like two more. I signal him that I'm good. He ignores me and makes two more.

"You do remember that I'm not going to have sex with any of these guys," I say loudly enough for the circling sharks to hear me.

"I remember. I just want you to get comfortable talking to men outside of work. Talking can lead to flirting, and flirting can lead to making out. Making out can lead to other things."

"So, all I have to do tonight is talk to a man or two and then you'll let me go home and go to bed?"

"If that's what talking leads to then, yes, you can go home and go to bed all alone."