Orange Is the New Black Read Online Free PDF Page B

island was placid and deserted. We swam and then sat on a rock looking back at the cove. Larry was fumbling with his swimming trunks, and I eyed him sideways, wondering why he was being so weird. He withdrew a plastic Baggie from his swim trunks and from it a metal box. “P, I got you these rings, because I love you, and I want you to have them because you mean so much to me. There’s seven of them, for every year we’ve been together. We don’t have to get married if you don’t want to. But I want you to have them…”
    Of course I can’t remember another word he said, because I was so surprised and astonished and touched and thrilled that I couldn’t hear anything anymore. I just shouted, “Yes!” The box held seven hammered-gold rings, each as thin as manila paper, to be worn stacked. And he had gotten himself a ring too, a thin silver band that he worried nervously on his finger.
    My family was ecstatic. Larry’s parents were too, but despite thelength of my relationship with their son, there was a lot they didn’t know about their future daughter-in-law. They had always been kind and welcoming to me, but I was terrified of what their reaction would be to my nasty secret. Carol and Lou were different from my former-hippie parents: they were 1950s high school sweethearts who predated the counterculture. They still lived in the bucolic county where they grew up, and they went to football games and bar association dinners. I didn’t think they were going to understand my adolescent fascination with the underbelly of society, my involvement in international drug trafficking, or my impending incarceration.
    By now more than five years had passed since I had been indicted. Larry thought it was important to tell his parents what was happening. We decided to practice on some other people, a tactic Larry described as “tell the truth and run.” Reactions were pretty consistent—our friends would laugh uproariously, then have to be persuaded of the truth, then be horrified and worried for me. Despite our friends’ responses, I was deeply frightened that my luck would run out with my future in-laws.
    Larry called his parents and told them there was something important we needed to discuss with them in person. We drove down on an August evening, arrived late, and ate a classic summer dinner—steak, corn on the cob, big juicy Jersey tomatoes, delicious peach cobbler. Larry and I sat opposite each other at their kitchen table. Carol and Lou looked far more than nervous but not quite terrified. I think they assumed it was about me and not about Larry. Finally Larry said, “Bad news, but it’s not cancer.”
    The story spilled out of me, with interruptions from Larry, not entirely coherent, but at least it was out, like a splinter.
    Carol was sitting next to me and she took my hand, squeezed it hard, and said, “You were young!”
    Lou tried to organize this radical new information in his head by switching into lawyer mode, asking about my indictment, my lawyer, the court in question, and what he could do to help. And was I a heroin addict?
    The beautiful irony of Larry’s family was that when something minor was amiss, it was as if the
Titanic
were going down, but when a real disaster struck, they were the people you wanted in your life raft. I had expected an explosion of recrimination and rejection and instead got a big hug.
    U LTIMATELY B RITAIN declined to extradite the kingpin Alaji to America and instead set him free. My lawyer explained that as a Nigerian, he was a citizen of the British Commonwealth and enjoyed certain protections under British law. A little bit of Web research revealed that he was a wealthy and powerful businessman-gangster in Africa, and I could certainly imagine that he might have connections that could make pesky things like extradition treaties go away.
    Finally, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago was willing to move forward with my case. To prepare for my sentencing, I wrote a personal