Dublin Noir

winces, willing himself soft. Surely in this circumstance, he’ll go soft… but he stays hard. Maybe gets harder.

Mell says, “Hmm. No baz. Not appealing.” She then adds, squeezing him again, “This wood of yours is the result of a Viagra knock-off. If you’re online, you’ve probably gotten Spam e-mail offers for it. You’ll stay hard at least another two hours, George… maybe three. You’ll stay real hard, regardless of anything-hardness that could be confused for excitement. But, I jump ahead.”

“What is this?” George sneers unconvincingly, hearing his dope-stoked drunkness in his slurred voice. “Fuck you doin’, Mell?” Drool slides from the corner of his mouth. “These fucking drugs… they could fucking kill me.”

The woman sits on the edge of the bed and shakes her head. “Stay easy. I’m a doctor. Know what I’m doing. And it was a half-dose of Rope. I wanted this talk with you.”

A doctor. Now George is in full panic mode… Stories he always thought were urban myths about organ thefts… Pick up some chick… take her to a hotel… and then you wake up with a kidney missing… Jesus fuck! He blubbers, “You want my fucking kidneys.”

A husky laugh. “If that was the game, you’d be in a tub of ice now with a hole in your back. Two, if I was really ruthless.” Mell leans in now, searching his eyes. George thinks about screaming and maybe she senses it- she drives a fist into his solar plexus and he doubles up… chafing skin off his wrists and ankles… his mouth open, gasping for air. Suddenly, there’s a rag in his mouth.

“You’re done talking, forever. I asked you if names are important. Well, they are important, George. Here’s a name for you: Nora MacKiernan. That name ring a bell?”

George shakes his head.

“Well, she remembered your name, George. You were dumb enough to use your real first name, just like you did with me. She remembered that Zippo of yours, with your initials. You doped her in that same bar I met you in. None of that made it nearly hard enough to find you. Four weeks, cruising the same five or six bars… and I found you back in the one where you drugged her.

“Nora MacKiernan was twenty-three, George. She was at that bar with irresponsible mates who were there to be laid and shamed her along after work. Nora was engaged. Would have wed next month. But you moved in. She was polite… Nora was always polite.”

The woman’s eyes are drifting now, going sad and a little hard. George is breathing faster.

“You hit Nora, my sister, with Ecstasy, slipped her Rope… I know because I ran the rape kit and stomach pump at the hospital. And you gave her genital herpes, George. Those are fucking incurable. Nora’s fiance couldn’t take it… broke their engagement. Nora couldn’t take it, either… losing him… carrying your disease. Nora opted out. Wrists, razor… a warm bathtub. Suicide-very bad news in an old Catholic family.”

Lipsanos shakes his head.

“Names are important, George.” She rises now, sways across the room, and picks up her big black purse. She rummages. Mell turns, holding a hypodermic. She flicks it, squirts a little out-clear those air bubbles. She says: “My name is Ceara, and as even you have probably gathered, George, I wouldn’t be sharing my real name with you now if there was any prospect of you ever leaving this room.”

Mell-Ceara-perches again on the side of George’s bed. She slowly crosses her legs. “Question was, how to make you really pay. I thought about that. I went to the personals… Gaire.”

Ceara jabs George’s thigh with the needle.

His eyes go wide and his muscles tense.

“Hush,” Ceara says. “It’s fine, George. Just a cocktail… blood-thinners… anti-coagulants.” Her gloved hand on his penis again-still rock hard. “Shouldn’t interfere with this.”

The woman stands, slips off her latex gloves, and smoothes her short black dress over her thighs. She slips the needle and the gloves back in her big purse, then slings the bag over one shoulder.

“Gotta go, George. But, just so you know what’s in store: I’ve been corresponding on your behalf for several days with a sado-masochistic she-he, deep into domination. You’re into bondage. Some match, yeah? I’ve been stringing ‘shim’ along until I found you. Called him-her… whatever-a few minutes before you woke up. Quite soon, you and your righteous wood will be serving as bound top to his-her’s… whatever’s-enthusiastic bottom.”

George is still reeling… dopey… scared… slow on the uptake: Jesus, I have herpes?

And this girl, Nora … couldn’t remember her… but there had been a dozen since George found his Rope connection.

Ceara is framed in the doorway of his bedroom now. She tips her head to the side, shows him those dimples. “Last thing you should know, George.”

George’s eyes are wide, besieging.

“I told your soon-to-arrive last lover that you’re also a cutter. Ya know what Angelina Jolie once said? ‘You’re young, in love, and you’ve got a knife… shit happens.’ George, those blood- thinners will have you pumping like a world-class hemophiliac when your new friend cuts you. Once the initial slices are made, and the serious blood loss kicks in, well, it’s not the worst death… almost languorous. Probably why Nora chose to take herself out that way.”

Ceara blows George a kiss and backs out of his bedroom, humming “The Parting Glass.”

George, spread-eagled, hard-panicked-thrashes wildly against his bonds, wrists and ankles sloughing more skin.

A short while later, he hears the door of his apartment open.

George closes his eyes and whimpers against his gag. Sweet Jesus, Nora… I’m so fucking sorry.

On Grafton Street, behind the bright red facade of the Temple Bar, Dr. Mell Mulloy sips her Russian Quaalude. Rain thrashes the windows. Positively bucketing. She savors George’s final expression: bronach.

The herpes angle always sets their hearts hopping.

And poor imaginary Nora? Her piece de resistance: Send the luckless bastards out on a mega guilt trip.

Finding the Rope on George made it sweeter still-so so fine to find a fellow predator… yummy, happy accident.

Mell checks her watch: Time for one more. But nothing elaborate. The personal-ad gambit takes time… and time is always a dangerous commodity.

So something simple is in order: Pick up another mark… dope him. Entice the sucker to his car or an alley for an ostensible jaw-job and shoot the fucker.

Then it is probably best to move on.

The Garda Siochana will soon start putting two and three or thirteen together.

Mell sips her drink and tips her head back, shaking loose her hair, lifting it off the back of her damp neck. Mell plucks an ice cube from her drink and rubs it between her breasts, listening to Knopfler: “The Lily of the West.”

She winks at a strapping stranger across the pub.

He’s headed her way now.

She smiles, shifting her long legs and arching her neck.

Come the morning, she’ll make the crossing… start again, perhaps in Glasgow.

But now Mell smiles up at the stranger, says: “’Tis himself.”

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