‘Don’t worry,’ Danni said. ‘It’s not the smallest I’ve ever seen.’
Which, of course, implied that it wasn’t anywhere near the biggest she’d ever seen either. The dirty bitch.
I watched them both get dressed with robotic efficiency. They went from naked to half-naked in mere seconds. The sudden change in the red-lit room’s atmosphere did little to abate my self-loathing. I was a fool. A loser. Simply ridiculous. And I’d paid through the nose to feel that way.
‘Let’s go,’ Kylie said.
‘Can you leave me here for a minute or two, girls? Just need a little quiet time before I hit the street.’
‘Sorry, love. No can do. House rules.’
Kylie folded her arms, cocked a hip and waited for me to get up. I looked her up and down, noted the streaks in her fake tan and the patches of cellulite on her upper thighs. There was a certain sadomasochistic pleasure in deconstructing my object of lust. It diminished her for the sake of my pride, but it also needled me for thinking she was worth the desire. I figured the confused thought process was a sign that I was over her.
I slipped off the chair and made for the exit. Kylie led the way and let the door swing back on me and Danni. Rude as fuck, like. I shoved against the spring-loaded hinges and held it open for Danni. She brushed past me, stopped and turned on her heel. She produced a scrap of paper from God-knows-where and slipped it into my hip pocket, taking care to brush against my tender bits before she drew her hand back.
‘Call me next time you need a little bit of relief, mister. I reckon you could do with something a bit more regular. You near blew a hole in the back of me head earlier.’
I woke early on the Sunday. Felt pretty good, too. I’d skipped the nightclub and spent a few hours walking around Dublin after my time with Kylie and Danni. Cleared my head out. When I got home, I’d slipped quietly into bed without wakening Mary. No awkward questions or unconvincing lies. Just a decent night’s sleep.
I figured Mary had gotten up before me and was laid out in front of the TV with little Liam. The sheets on her side, though rumpled, were cool. I rolled into her spot and smelt her shampoo off her pillow. Breathed deep. I didn’t lie for long, though. Needed to empty the bladder.
After a quick slash I padded down the stairs, thinking I could get the kettle on before the nipper rushed me.
I almost stepped over the suitcases before I registered them.
Then I noticed the silence. Like, really noticed it.
I barged into the living room. Clocked the TV. Not even a glimmer of standby light. I scratched my head. Got the feeling. Dread. Tried to shake it off as paranoia.
I remembered the suitcases at the foot of the stairs.
It wasn’t paranoia.
I went back to the hallway. Nudged one of the cases onto its side with an outstretched toe. It flopped onto the floor tiles with a hollow thud. I hunkered down and opened it. Empty. Except for a white window envelope.
The top of the envelope was ragged. Split open by a forefinger, most likely. There was no paper inside. I looked at the back of it. Mary’s familiar scrawl in blue biro. It looked angry. Jagged and non-uniform. Big letters, small ones. Upper and lowercase. Hard to read. Except for the last two words: Dirty bastard.
Perfectly printed.
No xox.
I crumpled it and threw it at the front door. The little white lump fell short, so I picked up the empty case and launched it. I missed my target again, but took out a row of family pictures on the hallway wall. Glass skittered across the tiles. I could hear myself breathing like a phone pervert. Thought about Mary’s note and grabbed the hall table from under the stairs. Sent it after the suitcase. This time I hit the door. Gashed the fuck out of the wood.
I pounded up the stairs and snatched my jeans off the bedroom floor. Upended them and shook them from the cuffs. My mobile and wallet slid out of the back pockets. I scooped up the phone. Tried to call Mary. She didn’t answer.
After my third attempt to get though to her, a text message popped up on the display.
Pack ur shite n get 2 fuck!!!
‘Ah, Jesus.’
I phoned Benny next.
‘What do you want, Jimmy?’
‘Was it you?’
‘Me what?’
‘Mary’s gone.’
‘I know. She’s here.’
‘Did you tell her …?’ I replayed what he’d just said. ‘Here where? At your place?
‘You’re a stupid fucker, bud.’
Benny cut the line. I stared at the ‘call disconnected’ message. It faded to black.
I’m a little slow, but I figured that Benny had told Mary about my little adventure at the gentleman’s club. My first one, at least. As if the cheeky bastard wasn’t there with me. And he was using it as an angle to get into Mary’s knickers? Not that I could tell her that Benny was with me. Had led me there, in fact. Sure I’d only be talking myself into a deeper hole. For fuck’s sake. The stupid bitch.
I wanted to get angry all over again. Knew I had no right.
I dropped my mobile onto the bed. It landed beside my wallet. I picked it up and flipped it open. The little scrap of paper with Danni’s number on it was tucked into a corner of the note compartment. I hooked it out and unfolded it.
OK, I’d been no angel. But my best friend and my wife? Did shite like that really happen? Maybe I should have accepted it as karmic retribution, but my immediate thoughts were far from noble. I had the remainder of Benny’s cash, which he’d never see again, and a contact to help me reach new lows.
I tapped Danni’s number into my mobile. Wondered if she could get in touch with Kylie on a Sunday.
About the Story
Right, you’re not goingto believe this, but I got the idea for this story after a good friend of mine told me about his first visit to a lap dance club. Yes, that old chestnut. Last year, my friend, who is the same age as me and is also a happily married man, visited a club with some friends on a stag night and treated himself to four private dances. And he thought it was great craic. Now, this friend of mine is a pretty sensible guy. Decent, like. I was pretty surprised by the fondness of his memories as he related his experience over a few pints. And get this – he told his wife all about the four lap dances he bought.
I said, “You told your missus?”
He nodded. Smiled.
I needed to know more. “And she said?”
“What else would you do at a lap dance club?”
That impressed me. Both my friend’s honesty and his wife’s blasé attitude.
But it got me thinking. What if my friend wasn’t quite as honest? What if he knew his wife wouldn’t have been anywhere near as laid-back about his confession? What if …? That question is a writer’s bread and butter.
So I sent my character, Jimmy, to a Dublin club and made him a nastier piece of work than my friend. And I got him to take the whole experience way too seriously. Tried to present him as unhealthily intrigued by his first dancer. I pretty much explored the extreme opposites of all my friend’s reactions.
As to the setting, I’ve been to Dublin loads of times. Love the place. It’s ancient but snazzy. The people are slick but homely. And the nightlife? Phew.
I set a scene in Fireworks in honour of a terrific night I had there when I was still young enough to fit in at a nightclub. I drank too much, met the president of Ireland’s daughter (never thought to buy her a drink) and got escorted off the premises when I fell asleep on my feet. Legendary. I still smile when I think about it. It was only a matter of time before I jotted down a little memento.
Author Biographies
Colin Batemanis a novelist and screenwriter, originally from Bangor in Northern Ireland. His first novel, Divorcing Jack, was published in 1995, won the Betty Trask Prize and was later turned into an acclaimed – at least around his house – film. He has written twenty ‘quite good’ selling novels, and also five books for children. He has recently embarked on a new series of crime
thrillers based in a real life Belfast bookstore, No Alibis. The first of these, Mystery Man,was selected for the Richard and Judy Summer Read, and the sequel, The Day of the Jack Russell, has recently been published by Headline and is currently being developed for television. Bateman also created and wrote the BBC1 series Murphy’s Lawstarring James Nesbitt and has the distinction of having written the only episode of Rebusnot to be based on an Ian Rankin novel. He was one of the few living authors to feature in The Daily Telegraph’s 50 Crime Writers to Read Before You Dieand was named in The Times’100 Masters of Crime. Despite this his wife still shouts at him when the dinner isn’t ready on time.
Shelley Silaswas born in Calcutta and grew up in North London. Her stage plays include Eating Ice Cream on Gaza Beach (NYT/Soho Theatre), Falling(The Bush Theatre, Pearson Writer-in-Residence), Calcutta Kosher(Southwark Playhouse, Birmingham Rep, Theatre Royal Stratford East), Mercy Fine(Southwark Playhouse, Birmingham Rep). Her plays for Radio 4 include, I am Emma Humphreys, The Sound of Silence(short-listed for the Imison Award), Ink, Calcutta Kosher, Molly’s Story in Celluloid Extras, The Magpie Stories(devised and co-wrote), Collective Fascination, Nothing Happened(with Luke Sorba). She adapted Hanan Al-Shaykh’s novel Only in London, and Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet(with John Harvey). Shelley has written a television film for Touch Paper TV, The Wedding Dress, and compiled and edited the short story anthology, 12 Days, published by Virago. She has written and performed specially commissioned short stories at the Cheltenham Literature Festival and the Hexham Book Festival and has contributed stories to Little Black Dressand The Flash. She is currently developing a TV comedy series (with Luke Sorba), which has been optioned, and writing a new play for Radio 4, Mr Jones Goes Driving.
A fine art graduate, Severin Rossettitaught the subject in Liverpool for a number of years before becoming disillusioned with the career. He now works as a gallery attendant for National Museums Liverpool, a job which leaves him poorer financially but much more contented and with time for thought. Coinciding with the switch in career, a similar dissatisfaction with what passes for artled Severin Rossetti to turn from painting to writing. Since doing so, and being drawn to the erotic genre, his work has been published in the UK by Black Lace, Forum and others, while in the USA his short stories and novels are currently represented by e-book publishers Renaissance Books, the most recent publications including Shackled Maids, Faustina’s Petand Masoch’s Domain.
Ken Bruenhas 26 published novels
Ten awards for the Jack Taylot novels
Three movies of his books completed in 2009
Have been receiving a lot of acting roles recently
Has a Ph. D in metaphysics and that’s just simply to confuse people
Nikki Magennisis a highly strung incurable Romantic (with a capital R). She lives in rural Scotland and is sometimes a writer, sometimes an artist, and since late 2009 also a mother. Since her first erotic novel, Circus Excite, was published in 2006, she has written over twenty short stories and another novel. You can find her work in anthologies from F is for Fetishto the Mammoth Book of the Kama Sutra; including Hurts So Goodand Love at First Stingedited by Alison Tyler and several of the Black Lace Wicked Words anthologies (Sex in Public, Sex with Strangers, Sex and Music.) Her latest novel, The New Rakes, also published by Black Lace, is a tale of sex and sex and rock and roll set in Glasgow. Nikki particularly loves writing 100 word fiction and her short pieces appear in several erotic anthologies from Cleis Press including Pleasure Bound, Frenzy and Playing with Fireedited by Alison Tyler. You can read more of her work and find out more at her blog: nikkimagennis.blogspot.com
Maxim Jakubowski is a twice award-winning British writer, editor, critic, lecturer, ex-publisher and ex-bookshop owner. He shares his time between the wonderfully dubious shores of erotica and the perilous beaches of crime and mystery fiction. He is responsible for the Mammoth Book of Erotica series and the Mammoth Book of Best British Crime series, is editor of over 75 anthologies and counting, as well as being the author of two handfuls of novels and short story collections. He was crime reviewer for Time Out London and then the Guardian for nearly twenty years, and also makes regular appearances on radio and television. He also co-directs Crime Scene, London’s annual crime and mystery film and literature festival, and runs the MaXcrime imprint. I Was Waiting For You is his latest novel.
Though based in London, he has been known to travel and frequent hotel rooms with depressing regularity, which no doubt inspired his London Noir, Paris Noir and Rome Noir collections, as well as the Sex in the City series. He has lived in, or regularly visited, every city featured in the Sex in the City titles published so far. When not writing, he collects books, CDs and DVDs with alarming haste.
Craig J. Sorensenhas been crafting stories since before he could write. In the thirty years since he left the small American country town where he was raised he has been fortunate enough to live in a number of fascinating places and meet people which have fed these creative endeavours. By day he is an Information Technology professional – a career geek. By early morning light continues to hone his love for storytelling and poetry. A musician and visual artist, he seeks to fuse these other artistic expressions into his written works as well. His varied erotic stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies internationally as well as numerous online publications. He recently completed Augsburg Diary, an erotic novel that draws upon his experiences while stationed at a US Army military intelligence unit in West Germany during the early 1980’s.
Visit Craig online at: http://just-craig.blogspot.com/
Kelly Greenehas worked as a dancer in Portland and Seattle, a cocktail waitress in San Francisco, and a Feng Shui consultant in Los Angeles. She currently lives in Cardiff-by-the-Sea in California. She has stories forthcoming in several anthologies from Cleis and Harlequin, and a novel forthcoming from Harlequin, The Next Wedding. She is working on her next novel, an erotic thriller titled 69.
Sean Blackwas born in Glasgow, Scotland. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he went back to college to finish his exams, eventually winning a place to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Hugh’s College, Oxford. During this time he also worked as a freelance journalist and published his first short fiction alongside fellow Scottish writers A.L. Kennedy and Irvine Welsh. Figuring that there might be more money in screenwriting than novels, he went on to study for a Master of Fine Arts in Film at Columbia University in New York. Five years after graduating, he finally got his first paid television job, writing for the iconic British television soap, Brookside. After nine years writing television drama, he started work on his first novel. Inspired by his experience of training as a bodyguard in the UK and Eastern Europe, Lockdownwas bought at auction in September, 2008 by Bantam/Transworld. The paperback of Lockdownis due to be published in July 2010, alongside the hardback of its sequel, Lock Up. Both novels are set in the United States and feature ex-military bodyguard, Ryan Lock.
Elizabeth Costellois a short-story writer living in Dublin city. The journals Southword, Loch Raven Review and Glossolaliahave been kind enough to publish her stories. An Arts Council grant recipient, her work has also been broadcast on Irish national radio. In 2008, she was shortlisted for the Sean O’Faolain International Short Story Competition.
Stella Duffywas born in London, grew up in New Zealand, and has lived back in London since 1986. She has published twelve novels. The Room of Lost Thingsand State of Happiness were both long-listed for the Orange Prize. The Room of Lost Thingswon Stonewall Writer of the Year 2008. She has written over thirty short stories, including several for BBC Radio 4, and won the 2002 CWA Short Story Dagger for Martha Grace. Her eight plays include an adaptation of Medea for Steam Industry, Prime Residentand Immaculate Conceit for the National Youth Theatre. In addition to her writing work she is a performer and theatre director. Her latest novel is Theodora(Virago, 2010).
Gerard Brennanlives in Northern Ireland, with his wife, Michelle, and their two chi
ldren, Mya and Jack. His fledgling novel-writing career is represented by Allan Guthrie of Jenny Brown Associates. He is not ashamed to beg and has been successful in two bids for funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in the last two years. No mean feat in the current climate and something he is fiercely proud of.
He has written a screenplay, titled The Point(thanks to NI Screen for their funding and development guidance), that he intends to send to every production company he can find. The stage play co-written with his father, Joe Brennan, titled The Sweety Bottlehas been picked up by a West Belfast production company and (if funding allows) it might just make it to the stage in 2010. On the side, and to preserve his sanity, he writes short fiction.
And he runs a blog dedicated to crime fiction in Northern Ireland,
http://www.crimesceneni.blogspot.com/.
Sleep is no longer an option, so pass the coffee, please.
www.gerardbrennan.co.uk
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Sex in the City--Dublin Page 18
