Sex in the City--Dublin Read online

  And I’d let him tangle his fingers into my hair and kiss me. And I’d let him drag me wherever he was going, just like I did then. Up the rickety steps and into the interior, smelling of biscuits and air freshener and damp towels.

  He flicked a switch and a weak, yellowy overhead light dripped from the ceiling.

  Everything was beige. It was like I’d gone back twenty years to a simpler, browner time; before everyone I knew I wore white-soled dubes and talked about irony and house prices. I was about to ask what the fuck we are doing in the bachelor pad from hell, when I realised how close Frank was standing, and suddenly it didn’t really matter any more. There was another thing that was familiar, and that was the way his eyes shifted out of focus as he leaned in to kiss me.

  That mouth. It might have produced some of the filthiest lies you’ve ever heard in your life, but there’s no denying that when Frank McAuley kissed you, it was enough to make St Peter forgive the devil. He tasted of whisky and wet nights on the town, he covered my lips with his own and devoured me, drew me forward so it felt like I was falling. I banged my shin against some clutter on the floor, swayed against a hard edge and knew I’d be bruised.

  Around us the caravan creaked and swayed. Frank bent his head and bit into my neck, pushing me back until I put out my hands and felt the clammy plastic surface of a table and gripped it. A magic tree hung from the rear-view mirror, smelling of sickly synthetic vanilla. It swung back and forth in time with his movements.

  Frank drew his tongue over the pulse point in my throat and flicked at my collarbone. He jammed his leg between mine and rocked closer and closer to my groin. Always quick on the advance, Frank. Still, I couldn’t pretend I didn’t like it. I had to press my lips hard together to stop myself from groaning.

  ‘Dat’s it, girl,’ Frank murmured, nuzzling lower, pushing my jacket aside, burrowing into the dark, soft places where he chased my pulse with kisses. I whimpered.

  ‘You like that, Niamh? Will you sing for me, eh?’ He found my breast with his finger and squeezed it tightly, plucking at my nipple until I let out a long, loud sigh. Pleased, he gave a soft laugh and tweaked it harder. Sadist.

  ‘God, I missed you,’ I said, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Been pining for me?’ he murmured, slipping his head down to suckle me through my dress. With one hand, he worked his way up my thighs, incy wincy spider. I opened my legs.

  ‘Oh, you’re impatient still, Niamh.’

  His hand withdrew.

  Of course he wouldn’t give me the satisfaction. Not Frank. Not that easily.

  I moaned.

  ‘You fucking big tease, Frank’.

  He kissed my earlobe, bit into the tender flesh, and my knees sagged.

  ‘I don’t have any johnnies,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t presuming this would happen, d’you know.’

  ‘That’d be a first,’ I murmured. I looked around the shabby interior, as if there might by some divine ordinance be a contraceptive vending machine installed in it.

  ‘I’ll nip out,’ Frank said, licking his lips. His eyes tripped down to the wet patch on my dress where he’d left teeth marks. ‘But I want to make sure you’re still here when I get back.’

  I shrugged. ‘Can’t promise anything.’

  ‘Oh, I know that.’ He started sliding my jacket down my arms, and I stood dumbly while he plucked at the buttons on my dress.

  ‘You think it’s time I slipped into something more comfortable, so?’ I said, bemused.

  ‘Not exactly,’ was his answer, and as he roughly stripped my dress from me and left me shivering in my underwear, I got a sudden pang between my legs. I recognised that tone.

  ‘I don’t know if I’m in the mood for games, Frank.’

  ‘You’ll like this one.’

  He unpeeled my stockings – tugging them off my legs with less finesse than I’d imagined when I rolled them on earlier – and rolled the nylon around his fists.

  ‘Lie down,’ he said, nodding towards a bunk bed at the back of the caravan.

  I lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘For old time’s sake,’ he said, ‘lie down,’ and his voice was a soft growl. It made me wet.

  I did as he said. While he tied my hands to a cupboard door handle above my head and my ankles tight together, I found myself staring at a water stain on the ceiling. It was in the shape of a map, perhaps, a country that no one had ever been to before and no one else would ever notice.

  Frank was quick with the knots. He knew how to fix me in the right position. From our left came a sudden burst of muffled noise. Music. Some loud, hard beat. Frank looked up.

  ‘Ah, that’s the club kicking off,’ he said, ‘The night’s just beginning.’

  He smiled at me as he pulled my knickers halfway down, leaving my fanny shockingly exposed. His eyes lingered. He hesitated, and then with one quick movement, he bent down and thrust his tongue between my legs, giving me one big gasp of a lick from arse to clit – the kind that makes you breathless.

  ‘Got you goin’?’ he asked, smacking his lips. I rolled from side to side.

  ‘Do it again.’ I tried not to let it sound like I was begging.

  ‘Not for now.’ He tucked my hair behind my ears and ignored me as I squirmed from side to side. ‘You be a good girl, now, and wait here for me and I’ll be back soon enough and give you the fuck of your life.’

  I blushed. When he said things like that, I could feel his cock in me already, like he could penetrate me just with his words.

  He looked over his shoulder.

  ‘I tell you what, though, Niamh. You wouldn’t want big Eddie coming by and thinking you were on your own in here, would you?’

  My eyes got wide at the thought.

  ‘Don’t you fuckin’ even dare think about it, Frank.’

  ‘Shh,’ he said, laying a finger on my lips. ‘Oh, hush, I wouldn’t. I’m just saying, for your own comfort, like, it might be best to act like I was here.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  He nodded at me. ‘Roll around some, you know. Give it a bit of the groaning like you do.’

  ‘Groaning?’

  ‘You know, a few oohs and ahhs. Put on a wee show for old Eddie, like.’ Frank tweaked my nipple until I arched my back.

  ‘Ahhh,’ I said, predictably.

  ‘That’s the one,’ he said, his smile twisting just as his fingers were. ‘I’ll be back in the blink of an eye.’

  And he left me, tits smarting, pussy craving, bound hand and foot and trying pathetically to wriggle around and rub myself off on the sticky nylon bristle of the couch. I didn’t even have to pretend – never mind who was outside. I’d been turned on and left to simmer and nothing was going to calm me until Frank McAuley got back and made good on his promise. I bit my lip and dreamed of his long-forgotten cock, growing bigger and stiffer and more beautiful by the minute.

  God, and it was hard to leave her like that. The ties, now they always did suit her. Black nylon against that soft white skin. Like a bowl of cream, she was, even after ten years in the birl and bluster of the city. Sweet. I could still taste her on my lips, which, right enough, I couldn’t stop chewing.

  Nervous habit. No one would blame me for the nerves, even though I could have used a steady hand right at that moment, holding the drill tip hard up against the safe so that it wouldn’t slip. The sweat on my hands didn’t help. Eddie’s office was a dingy little hole the temperature of hell itself; I reckon the body heat from two hundred shitfaced clubbers must have been seeping in through the walls. And fuck-all breeze from the fire escape, either, even through the broken door that I’d propped open behind me.

  I’d to wait, every so often, for the music to slide from melody into thumping bass, so’s no one would hear the groan of the drill. And then the air was thrumming with music and I could bend to my task, gritting my teeth against the fearsome smell of hot metal, watching tiny bright corkscrews curl out of the holes and scatter over the floor.

  Eddie would
be lurking in his doorway listening to Niamh’s performance. God, the noises she makes! Purrs like a kitten. Enough to make my knob twitch just thinking of it. And that fat-headed cunt never could resist a peepshow.

  Concentrate, Frank. That’s three holes now, just another dozen or so and the lock’ll come loose. There’s just inches between me and a glorious bonus that I’ll be keeping all to my grand wee self. I’ll be free of my curse and those nasty shites who’d laughed like scuttling drains all me life – soundtrack to my grim fucking childhood, their laughing – oh, they’ll be stuck, won’t they? Left with a big box full of fuck all, and me halfway across the Irish Sea already with the gear tucked nicely away and my balls aching sweetly.

  They thought they had the measure of me, still. Thought I was just a thick-headed mule, the type that would scare with their fat necks and insinuations and the slightest crack of their grazed knuckles.

  Jesus, what’s that? That great croaking sound? A door?

  Calm yourself, Frankie boy. Doors open and close, that’s what they do, doesn’t mean anything much. Doesn’t mean Eddie is coming back this way; why would he, when he’s got a club to run and his money all tucked away in here safely behind an inch of solid steel? Who’d expect dumb wee Frankie would have the nous or the clackers to bring along a drill, eh? Who’d expect he’d know to use a cobalt bit at slow speed?

  Aye, if there’s one thing I am grateful to Her Majesty for, it’s the useful skills she taught me in the metalworking shop. Getting there, now. Eight holes. I can practically smell the fucking lucre.

  Dreamed of her a few times, when I was inside. Niamh, I mean. The ginger-coloured curls of her cunt, as snug and cosy a place as I’d ever longed for. Yes, she knows how to present herself, does Niamh. Give me fifteen minutes, and by god I’ll be drilling a new hole right in the hot wet centre of her.

  Fortune favours the bold, they say. But then there’s a thin line between the bold and the bloody stupid.

  If Frank McAuley had listened to the blacksmith who sold him the gear, he’d have realised that the batteries needed to be charged for fully twenty-four hours before he used the cobalt-tipped drill.

  And if the drill had not slowed, with a pathetic, weakening whine, just as he was halfway through making the tenth hole, while he was lost in dreams of Niamh’s dear warm wetness, Frank may not have shouted his dismay quite so loudly. His cry, unfortunately timed, just cracked through the silence between two tracks when the air was still throbbing with the echo of bass.

  Eddie, waiting out in his shadowy doorway with one eye on the queue of punters and the other on the gently rocking motorhome, heard the agonised, distant wail coming from deep in the bowels of the club.

  A frown gathered and settled on his forehead like a small rain cloud.

  He looked at the Laika. For the past fifteen minutes he’d listened to the various whimpers and growls, muted but pleasant nonetheless, that emanated from the decrepit old van. They were entertaining enough to keep him out here with his hands in his pockets, waiting while the club filled up.

  But he could have sworn that howl of anguish coming from the direction of his office was that snivelling little gobshite Frank McAuley. He’d listened to the bastard crying for mercy often enough in the good old days. The pitch was familiar.

  Eddie walked closer to the Laika. The net curtains were drawn closed, and he couldn’t see the ghost of a thing. He licked his lips. She had a fine rack on her, that betty Frank had dragged back.

  Clutching at his balls, Eddie leaned in close as if he could smell whether there was a man in there or not. He put a hand against the thin metal wall. There was a sharp intake of breath, and the moans broke off.

  ‘Frank?’

  Jesus, she sounded all but desperate. The sound of a woman with the raging horn – enough to break yer heart.

  ‘Frank, is that you?’

  Eddie looked over his shoulder. His mind moved like tectonic plates; with geological slowness to begin with, but with eventual cataclysmic consequences. Behind the restless queue of young D4s forming at the raspberry pink wall, there was a fire exit, and behind the fire exit there was a corridor. Along which, Eddie’s inner sanctum. Eddie licked his lips.

  If Frank was stupid enough to be attempting what Eddie thought he might be, he was tucked away in there, fiddling with a safe that, to be honest, would hardly hold up if you farted on it.

  Eddie was only holding the cash here for this one night, of course. By tomorrow, it would be counted and split and distributed to various laundries around the republic. Nobody wanted to keep that amount of money in one place for too long. It only leads to trouble.

  ‘Ah, Frank,’ Eddie sighed. He really couldn’t be arsed with this.

  ‘God’s sake, would you get in here,’ the girl hissed. ‘The circulation’s going in my wrists.’

  Eddie raised an eyebrow.

  It had been six months, minimum, since he’d had any hole. People thought a man like himself would have whores buzzing round him like flies round honey, but those times were long gone. They’d all read too many women’s magazines now, they all thought they were fucking worth it. And, despite what many of his friends thought, he wasn’t inclined to pay for it. Deep inside Eddie’s craven bulk there was a soft, sentimental heart that wanted a good Catholic girl with a bit of pink in her cheeks and the ability to smile while she sucked your cock.

  He climbed the rickety little step, reached for the door handle and turned it slowly. About as secure as the tin-can safe Frank was currently trying to break into, he reckoned. Inside smelled of damp weekends. There was another smell, too – the smell of an impatient woman. Eddie’s eyes searched the half-gloom. He moved across the room.

  Niamh was spread-eagled on the bed, tits and fanny all bare-naked and hanging out for anyone to see. The blush ran to Eddie’s cheeks, and he gritted his teeth, keeping his eyes fixed on her wide, terrified eyes.

  ‘Christ.’

  The girl gasped. Eddie’s hand swayed for a moment over her chest, which heaved and bucked, although he hadn’t laid a finger. Swiftly, he pulled the curtain down and draped it over her, covered her from her chin to her knees with dingy white lace.

  ‘Jesus. What has he done to ya?’ Eddie asked, shaking his head.

  ‘Frank,’ the girl said, almost whispering. ‘Where is he?’

  She was a looker, Eddie thought. Classy bird, with that haircut. Probably drank white wine and read proper books. Wonder if she knew any of those fancy kinds of sex tricks he heard about but never actually encountered. You know, European type stuff. He ran a hand through his slicked-back hair.

  ‘Frank?’ He made it sound like a swearword. ‘My guess is he’s currently trying to rob me.’

  Niamh frowned. Her hands were still tied, but she balled her fists and tugged against the rope.

  ‘Get me out of this,’ she said. Eddie shook his head sorrowfully.

  ‘Sorry darlin’. Not just yet.’

  Eddie allowed himself to glance at the outline of her breasts under the lace curtain. For a moment he swayed between lust and common sense. Then he cleared his throat, roughly.

  ‘What’s his plan, so?’

  ‘Who, Frank’s? How the fuck would I know? Do I look like his PA?’

  Eddie scowled. She’d a mouth on her. Slowly, deliberately, he took his knife out of his back pocket and knocked it against the table edge before prising it open. To her credit, the girl didn’t even flinch. She just opened her eyes wider, till you could see the whites. Only the goosebumps on her bare arms gave her away.

  He started to clean his fingernails with the tip of the knife.

  ‘How should I know you’re not colluding?’ That Frank, he hasn’t the brains of a dead haddock. We both know that.’ Eddie concentrated intensely on his thumbnail.

  ‘So, maybe he needed someone to tink up a plan like this. Someone with a bit o’ nous.’

  ‘What plan?’ She actually snapped at him. She did.

  Eddie nodded at the bed
on which Niamh lay. ‘Yer arse,’ he said pleasantly, ‘is lain on a mattress on top of a rather large parcel of quality cocaine. The money for which, Frankie brought me last night. And as we speak he is in my office trying to rob it back.

  ‘Now Frank is after the drugs, the money and the vengeance,’ Eddie continued, ‘and I’m wonderin if you’re Bonnie to his Clyde.’

  ‘The gobshite.’ Niamh slammed her head back against the mattress. ‘The dirty great scheming lying cock-awful gobshite. I should have listened to my mother. I should never have let my hormones get the better of me.’

  Eddie allowed himself a smile. He knew guilt like an old friend, inside out and up and down, and Niamh’s was not the reaction of a guilty woman. As he reached for the nylon stockings with the blade of his knife, he wondered, idly, what the best way would be to punish a ratface fucker like Frank McAuley.

  At least, when the drill ran out, Frank didn’t waste too much time kicking the safe. He’d only sprained his big toe before he realised he was onto a losing game, and that he’d less time than a priest’s wank to clear out of the place and get back to the Laika.

  Breathing hard, he reassured himself. So he didn’t have the money, but he did still have the goods, wrapped and bagged nice and tight under the bench where Niamh was tied.

  Frank opened the door of the office a crack and checked the corridor. Oh, she was a fine bit of woman, that Niamh. He’d forgotten, in truth, just how much she wound him up. What an arse she had.

  He’d only to wait for the next song now, something loud enough to cover the sound of the door scraping open. He craned his neck around the corner. The place was empty but for scuffed footprints on the lino and a few crushed fag butts. The walls in here were oxblood red, about the same colour as Neve’s lips in the deep centre. Frank remembered how he’d left her, pliant and willing and begging for it. He slid along with his back to the wall, one eye on the door through to the bar. His heartbeat thumped so loud it almost drowned out the steady drone of the music. But no one appeared. Breathing hard, he reached the fire exit, propped open with an empty beer bottle. He could smell the yeasty mix of Dublin’s night air, the cigarettes and laughter and the thousand jokes that mingled on the warmed-over sea breeze.