Dublin Noir - Ken Bruen [63]
And not an hour later, we were doing it freestyle in my room and I had my hands and lips all over her gorgeous tatas.
“I know this is going to sound off,” I said later as we lay in bed, my hand rubbing her firm, what she’d call it? Arse. Hilarious.
“You’re mad for me and want me to journey to your mansion in America with ya?” She said it in that kind of exaggerated Irish accent they used to do in those old black-and-whites where some stooped-over gray-haired dame played Jimmy Cagney’s mother.
“Right,” I said, gently squeezing one of her breasts, getting a moan out of her. She put her hand on mine. “Do you know where to cop some crack? Get some, I mean.”
She laughed down in her throat. “Good thing I was in the States. Over here, crack means to fart and the craic means, well, means the good life. Which,” and her amber eyes crinkled at the edges, “I guess is a kind of way of looking at it. Though lately that slang has found its way here, meaning what you mean.”
I had no goddamn idea what the fuck she was talking about. I was needing, but had enough sense to know it was best not to go off and probably screw up what might be my only connection, and my only chance of doing the nasty again before I had to light out tomorrow.
She reached across me for the phone on the night stand, those wonderful titties mashing against my chest. “Let me make a few calls, darling.”
And that’s how I found myself staring, confused, at a sign. I figured the burning in my head had bored a hole in it and the crack cravings had me seeing mirages and what not. But then I remembered that Connolley, our backup quarterback, had been over here before to see some cousins and had mentioned that it wasn’t unusual to see signs in Gaelic.
I sniffed, resisting the urge to scratch my itching, the invisible ants marching up and down my arms in sneakers with spikes. I tried to get rid of the image of hundreds of those tiny pincer jaws taking little chunk after little chunk out of my flesh. There was a sign in English just to the left of the Irish one, but the only reason I’d stopped was not to locate myself, but to get psyched. I was on a field I hadn’t played on before, and had better be on my J.
Maura, yeah, that was her name, had told me that this place, Ballymun, was going through renovations. There was a main street running through the middle with brown and gray buildings on either side, and three tall main towers standing out. I didn’t grow up in the projects but had been in more than a few in my time for one reason or another. Lately, though, it had been for the reason I was here now after being given my walking papers from the NFL for failing a random drug test, and getting bounced to the European league.
And it ain’t like I was 24-7 on the pipe. I wasn’t no weak-kneed dope fiend. It was just that my gimpy hip had been giving me fits again and I’d been hiding that precious detail from the docs. But if I asked for more than the usual allotment of painkillers, they’d know something was up. Hell, if you played ball for more than two years you just naturally needed some kind of legal narcotic cocktail to dull the constant throb from that sprained ankle that never had much of a chance to heal, or the tingle you never lost in your hamstring when you had to cut sharp down field. That was expected. The league’s croakers knew what to give you for that shit, that was the ordinary.
But my on-again, off-again hip had started to pain me something fierce after I’d been tackled by this wheat-smellin’ Russian fuck playing for the Monarchs two weeks ago in Wembley Stadium. Bad enough after that I’d started cutting the pain with crack, knowing it would hype the demand in me if I wasn’t cool, and I could be the monkey dancing on the string again.
The fuck? Enough of that inspecting myself humbug. This wasn’t no excursion to some all broads college with me working to get some muff diving professor and her prize pupil back with me to my room. Had to stay on point. I crossed behind