Dublin Noir - Ken Bruen [31]
In the glare of the BBC news, Kathy had a long, hard, self-hating cry, and when she finally recovered she missed Jim. Yeah, he’d cheated on her and, yeah, he’d treated her like shit, but he was a good guy and she loved him. She felt safe and protected and secure when they were together. Without him she was lost.
Kathy couldn’t believe she’d sent that e-mail; that had to be the stupidest thing she’d done today—much stupider than falling for the scam.
It was about 5:30, New York time. She tried Jim’s cell and their home number, but there was no answer. She kept trying, off and on, for the next few hours; he either wasn’t home or was screening calls. Then she realized that, since she’d written to Jim on their AOL account, she could “unsend” the message if he hadn’t read it yet.
She went down to the front desk, waited for the man to finish a phone conversation, and then asked him if there was a computer with Internet access she could use.
“I’m afraid the business room is closed,” he said.
“This is an emergency,” she said. “I have to e-mail my fiancé.”
“I’m terribly sorry, but the door is locked and I don’t have the key. The guy who does have the key should be back in about a half hour though.”
“What about your computer?”
“I’m afraid it’s not connected to the Internet.”
“Is there an Internet café close by?”
The man gave her instructions to one that was open twenty-four hours a day.
Kathy raced out of the hotel and, after a couple of wrong turns, found the café, which was still very active. She had to wait a few minutes for a computer to become available. It was past 9 o’clock in New York and Kathy didn’t see how Jim couldn’t be home by now. He always checked his e-mail first thing after he came into the apartment, so it seemed impossible that this would work.
It was a slow connection, but she was finally able to log onto AOL. Kathy opened her “sent mail” file, clicked “unsend” on her message to Jim, and discovered that the message hadn’t been read yet.
“Thank God,” she said aloud as she unsent it.
Later, back in her hotel room, she called Jim and he picked up on the first ring. He explained that his cell battery had died and he’d been out wining and dining a client. Kathy sensed that he was lying, that he’d really been out with that bitch from his office again, and that he might’ve even brought her back to the apartment with him. Still, it was a relief to hear his voice, to know that everything would return to normal, and she said, “God, I miss you so much, sweetie. This is the last time I go anywhere without you.”
TAINTED GOODS
BY CHARLIE STELLA
Abroad tells you you’re a comfortable fit, what it means, make no mistake about it, boyos, it means you have a small dick, she’s trying not to hurt your feelings,” Jack Dugan said.
Dugan was a tall gangly man of fifty-two years. He had a thinning hairline, a long uneven nose, and dark deep-set eyes. He was dressed in a black polo shirt, black slacks, and black leather loafers. He wore thick jewelry on his wrist and around his neck. He’d been drinking since the early afternoon. Now that he’d switched to the hard stuff, he was rambling in overdrive.
“It’s the same thing, you hear about a broad has a nice personality,” he went on. “Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. You’re guaran-fuckin-teed, though, she has this great personality, she’s no looker. Comfortable fit is the same fuckin’ thing. It means you don’t need to stand around a locker room full of Mandingos to know you were robbed at birth. It means you’re the type has to crowd the piss stalls. Even the stalls in this place, which are like fuckin’ showers, you got a comfortable fitting dick, you don’t want nobody else to see it. Not that they can that easy, anyway.”
The two men sitting across the table were twin brothers from Ireland several years younger than Dugan. Both were stocky men of five-foot-ten; each weighed about two hundred pounds, had short blond hair, blue eyes, and thick necks. The older of the twins by a few minutes sat directly across from Dugan. He had grown a fuzzy