I get down to reception and the peelers are starting to arrive. I put my hand in my pocket and I’ve still got one of Patricia’s silk hankies from the other night in there. I hold it over my face like I’m wounded and I pretend to stagger outside. Somebody goes to put an arm around me but I tell them I’m alright, I’m alright, and all I can smell is Patricia’s perfume as I cut over to Brunswick Street, this heavenly woman smell, and now I’ve got a hard-on. I’ve just popped one. It’s like the whole city just spread its legs in front of me.

*

I’m supposed to meet Tommy back at The Tim’s Harbour where we set up the ruckus in the first place. But I’ve got this fucking bomb in my hands. I head back to my ma’s house in Jamaica Street instead. Nobody’s in. I run up the stair and I slide the briefcase under my bed. I’m not thinking straight. I turn on the news. Some fucking dissident organisation, some fucking unofficial Republican terror cell has claimed responsibility. The FSV. Okay, what the fuck. How do I play this?

I look out the window and I can see Billy McNab’s weans playing in their back garden. The boy has a toy gun and is leading the two girls into a shed at the bottom of the garden with blindfolds on. The whole fucking city is at it, I says to myself. Okay, okay.

I take a packet of twenty B&H from my top bin, crack it. I neck two cans of green, one after the other. I always had a set of cans stashed under my bed in case of emergency even though they would get mouse shite all over them. Probably pished on them too. The mice, I mean. Fuck it. Might make it taste better.