Their eyes had met earlier as they both reached for the same little green pen in the bookies that morning, and being the gentleman his mother raised, he let her take it.
“Go on”, Martin said flirtatiously, “that’s my lucky pen, maybe you’ll get lucky too”
“Maybe that makes two of us…”, Harriet replied with a suggestive smirk, as the bookie watched with a sideways glance.
This sent Martin’s heart aflutter and his cheeks a brighter shade of red, as his attempts at flirting in the bookies at 10am had never really landed before. But then again, this wasn’t usually the place you’d expect to meet a beautiful woman with similar interests. He bashfully turned to his betting slip and found another pen, and began his morning gamble.
After a few unsuccessful bets, Martin’s luck began to turn, and the wins started to come. Things were looking good, and his wallet was getting thicker. “GO ON!”, he would shout at the TV, and “GET IN!”, when his horse came in. And he would glance over at Harriet occasionally, who was watching him with come hither eyes, as intently as he was the horses.
It was approaching mid day and Martin was on a winning streak. He was no stranger to good fortune in the bookies, but just as whiskey comes with a hangover, or gonorrhoea your aul doll, his good luck was always accompanied by bad. But today was different. He could feel it. For one, the last time there’d been a woman in the bookies was fifteen years ago, when the late Spud McBearty’s late wife landed in and knocked seven shades of shite out of him for being late to her late mother’s funeral. And that was Spud McBearty’s wife! The last time there was a beautiful woman in the bookies had passed into myth and legend. But Martin had a curious thought, a thought rarely had in the bookies at mid day on a Tuesday.
“What if I quit when I’m ahead?”. The thought alone sent a chill up his spine. “What if instead of just handing my winnings back over to the bookies, I take it and go? What if I leave here, on the up? Imagine what I could do with that few extra hundred pound in my pocket, I could be king for a …”
At that moment his thoughts were interrupted when he felt a hand gently touching his, and he looked up to see Harriet, with that same wanton look in her eyes, as she softly slipped a small piece of paper into his sweat-moistened palm. With a trembling hand he unfolded the note, written on a betting slip.
It simply read, “Pints?”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”, Martin thought, as he actively ignored the plethora of possible answers to that question. With very little hesitation, Martin grabbed Harriet by the arm and charged out of the bookies and into a booze fueled fever dream of chain smoking and belly laughing, and ugly crying and dodgy renditions of classic rock anthems sung with little regard for vocal pitch or actual lyrics.
They sat there together in the corner of the bar, behind a mountain of glasses of every size and shape, on a Tuesday at 5.30pm, melting into each other as they drew closer and closer. Before this morning he’d never laid eyes on this girl, yet here they were now, draining the bar and his wallet in one fell swoop. And what’s more, he kind of liked her.
“Tell..tell me – hic – tell me this…”, the words fell out of him like the shite from a cow’s arse, “tell me this – hic – w..wha’s a guy like – hic – you..doing drinkin’ – hic – with a..with a girl like – hic – me…hmm?”
Harriet laughed silently at his question and Martin watched her with a smile, waiting for her to share the joke she found so funny. After a minute doubled over, she flopped herself back up and looked at him with one eye open, as he in turn strains to focus on her.
Harriet faced him with her eyes half closed and her finger pointing just slightly off to the left, and mustering the ability to string a coherent sentence together with all her might she slurred,
“Ah just ‘hink ‘at you’re a whiiile fuckin’ lovely fella’ an’ you’re whiiile funny an’ when ‘at useless baaasssstard a mine finishes his shift in the bookies he’s gonnee see me here wey you and he’s gonnee fuckin’ flip his fuckin’ lid an he won’t be tikkin’ me for granted again ah’ll tell ye ‘at ah can have any man in this here pub an’…”
She continued to speak but Martin could no longer hear. His whiskey soaked mind was racing as he looked at his watch. 6.03pm. He looked back at her, then back at his watch. Still 6.03pm. And then to the door, through which for a brief moment he considered bolting, until in the blurred glass panel he saw silhouetted by the street lights outside, the imposing shadow of the bookie, just finished his shift.
It was at that moment that Martin realised Harriet wasn’t joking, and that he had now, once again, found himself in mortal danger…
