He shrugs and moves on to someone else.
I continue to watch her. Once, her eyes find mine and a hint of pink spreads through her cheeks. It is a simple response and yet it’s been so long since I’ve been with a woman who blushes that I’m temporarily blindsided.
She serves a guy at the end of the bar who seems to be watching her with the same kind of thoughts I’m having—his significantly less well-concealed, and finally, as though she’s being dragged through wet cement, she approaches me.
‘What’re you having?’ she asks, her eyes hovering on my lips instead of my eyes, so I smile slowly, and then panic flares in her gaze but she does look at me.
‘You’ve served me before. Don’t you remember?’
‘I serve hundreds of people in a shift,’ she says with a shrug. It’s obvious she’s lying.
‘Where are you from?’ I’m somewhat surprised by my own question. I’ve noticed her before—more than noticed her. I’ve been fascinated by her, but I’m not generally interested in chasing women. Why would I be, when they fall into my lap with satisfying regularity? Different women, rarely the same for long, never a relationship. Perhaps if I’d had a better example of marriage, of domestic happiness, I might have been eager to attempt to recreate it? Maybe to date someone, settle down, even get married. But seeing my father destroy my mother, piece by piece, has left me with very little interest in having a partner in my life—beyond sexual, or business.
‘Australia,’ she murmurs. ‘Are you ready to order? If not, I can go serve someone else while you make up your mind.’
People rarely challenge me. It’s a new experience and I can’t say if I like it or not.
‘Where in Australia?’
She expels a sigh of impatience and now it’s my turn to look at her lips. They’re beautiful. A work of art, full, and shaped like Cupid’s bow, pillowy and soft. It’s a mouth that is kind and sweet, and yet I am imagining it in ways that are far from that now.
‘Tasmania.’ She turns away from me, towards the mirror at the back of the bar, and lifts up onto the tips of her toes so she can reach the bottle of Foords. Her recollection of my drink amuses me, particularly in the face of her suggestion that she serves too many patrons to recall each person’s tipple, but then I see the way an inch or so of her midriff is exposed by the lift of her arms and I’m instantly sobered.
My body springs tight with awareness; desire flushes my system. I ignore it. Desire is an instinct and, like any other, it can be tamed.
She pours a generous measure of whiskey into a tumbler.
Without my asking, she grabs another glass and fills it with water and ice.
‘I thought you didn’t remember my drink?’ I murmur, and her eyes lift to mine.
‘Have you ever been?’
I blank a smile at her attempt to ignore my remark, but I roll with it. ‘To Tasmania? No.’
‘Australia?’
It’s the most we’ve spoken and each question spins around me like a spider’s web. I stay where I am, feet planted to the ground.
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’ She leans forward a little, despite the fact the bar is humming with customers. For a moment, time has ceased to move, people have ceased to exist.
‘The east coast. From Melbourne up to The Great Barrier Reef.’
Her smile is derisive. ‘Tasmania is the best Australia has to offer and you missed it because you bought the tourism myth.’
‘What’s the tourism myth?’ I can’t help asking, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the cash I use. When I’m drinking it’s always cash. It’s nice to have a visual reminder of what I’m spending and what’s at stake. I’m not my father—nothing like him.
‘That Sydney is about all we have to offer,’ she says with a soft smile and a roll of her eyes that is endlessly fascinating.
‘I don’t think that’s the case.’ I hand her a hundred. She ignores it.
‘Why don’t you start a tab?’
Because I’m not my father. Clint Brophy is nothing I’ll ever be. ‘I prefer to settle my debts up front.’
She wrinkles her nose. ‘You’re in here what, three times a week, and you’re carrying at least two grand in your wallet. I think you’re good for it.’
I lift a brow at these two facts she drops at my feet. Small details that she’s noticed—she’s attentive. Observant.
‘Settle up later,’ she murmurs and then shifts sideways down the bar. I watch her for a moment, a frown scored on my face, and then I pick up my drinks, leaving the hundred euro note where it was.
I choose a table at the edge of the room. Along with St Michan’s, these are the only catacombs in Ireland. Dug deep into the ground, they once housed human remains, but these were cleared out in the early nineteenth century and a private investor in the first half of the twentieth century bought the ancient network of tunnels and converted this section into a bar. Despite the lack of windows and the morbid associations, I like it here. Or maybe I like it because of those associations rather than in spite of them.
I am tempted to throw the Scotch back, to drink it fast and feel that burn of warmth and spice all the way down, but I don’t—my thirst is something I will control, always. I touch the glass to my lips, breathing it in first and then pouring just a hint into my mouth. I close my eyes and savour the taste. Strong and peppery.
My phone buzzes and I lift it from the pocket of my suit jacket. It’s Digbey, one of our firm’s investigators.
Witness bought ticket to London. Met in pursuit.
My scowl is reflexive. For fuck’s sake. I knew it was a wildcard but I thought I’d sold him on testifying.
An untrustworthy witness is already less than ideal, let alone when the witness is reluctant. I’ll have to paint this to the jury somehow. Explain it away.
Slowly, I drink the Scotch, watching the activity of the bar spin around me.
But I’m not left to my own devices for long.
Ten or so minutes after I’ve sat down, she moves to the table. The blonde. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen her out from behind the bar and I take a moment to look at her properly. Black jeans with one knee fashionably ripped and the white T-shirt that is part of the O’Leary’s uniform, with an apron that comes only halfway down her thighs.
‘You forgot this.’ She places a stainless steel plate with eighty euros on it down on the table.
‘Thanks.’
‘Did you want anything to eat?’
She’s been here a while. A couple of months, I guess. And we’ve barely spoken. Why do I get the feeling that she’s trying to talk to me tonight? That she needs to talk to me?
‘No, thanks.’
She nods but stays where she’s standing, her teeth digging into her lip. It’s like she’s on the edge of a cliff, words locked inside her. I’ve done enough interviews to know when someone’s sitting on something.
‘What’s your name?’
The question unsettles her more than it should. Her gaze slips back to the bar and then she breathes out, as if she’s forcing herself to inflate and deflate her lungs. She’s nervous.
I do have that effect on people—not intentionally but, more often than not, my reputation precedes me. I’m known for being ruthless, determined, cold-hearted, cynical, power-hungry. All adjectives that do describe me but they make me laugh