The Emerald Lie

Emily was raising a frozen margarita to her lips, seated in the bar of the newest cocktail club off Shop Street. Time back, this had been a lap dancing club but the Church, with its dwindling power, managed to get the place closed. Cocktail bars weren’t really a Galway thing but some poor fool forever kept trying. The locals gave it, tops, a month before it shut. Meanwhile, it was thriving, if briefly.

Doc came storming in, dressed in what ex-army guys thought of as casual. Cords, topped off with the fucked worn wax jackets, like a royal who wandered off from a pheasant shoot.

Took him a minute to find his bearings. He looked like someone who’d stumbled into the wrong scene in the wrong movie. Then he saw her, glared, and marched over. She raised her glass in mock salute.

He plunged,

“Where the hell have you been? Three days you don’t come home?”

She took a long hit of the margarita, then spoke very quietly.

“Home? Are you seriously calling the rabbit hole you have...”

Pause.

“Home?”

Got him.

Good.

Before he could stammer a reply, she said,

“I was using you as a way to be close to Jack and, hey, guess what, it didn’t, like, work.”

He moved to sit down, weakness hurling at his knees, and she hissed in that same lethal quiet tone,

“Don’t sit.”

He had served two terms in NI, did a stint in Bosnia, and very little fazed him anymore but now he was, well, fucked. He tried,

“What am I supposed to do, darling?”

She seemed to be seriously contemplating this, then,

“Hop on over there, get me another one of these babes.”

He looked forlornly toward the bar and she added,

“One more thing, macchiato.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t ever call me darling again.”

Tail between your legs. Doc had heard it many times but now knew what it truly felt like. He stood outside the bar, no idea where to go, when he heard,

“Doc. Is it Doc?”

The woman seemed vaguely familiar and, like most people in this damned city, in some way connected to Taylor. She said,

“I’m Sergeant Ridge. We met briefly last year.”

He didn’t remember and could care less. He said,

“Shouldn’t you be off catching the grammar lunatic?”

She gave a tight forced smile, said,

“I see being friends with Mr. Taylor has rubbed off on your attitude.”

He looked up at the sky and, as always, it seemed on the verge of storm, and how fucking fitting that was. He said,

“Unless you wanted me for anything, why don’t you just, in the idiom of this lovely town, fuck right off?”

Ridge watched him slump away. She had heard he’d been in the army but any trace of military bearing seemed to have been sucked right out of him. One thing she knew from being a Guard, a man looks that downbeat, there is usually a woman involved. On instinct, she headed into the bar. It was her evening off but maybe she could combine a few cocktails and work. Saw Emily immediately. All the energy in the room seemed to gravitate toward her. She thought,

“Bloody bitch.”

With an enigmatic smile, Emily watched her approach. As Ridge reached for a seat, she said,

“Don’t join me.”

Ridge smiled. Nothing she liked better than a confrontation.

She sat.

Emily studied her, said,

“See the clothes budget is a bit stretched, or is that a gay thing? You know, looking cheap?”

Ridge signaled a waiter, ordered a rum and Coke. The waitress protested,

“We have a full range of cocktails, I could provide the menu...”

Ridge didn’t even look at her, said,

“Just get the bloody drink.”

Emily curled up into herself, not from defense but from utter delight, said,

“Oh, that is so forceful. I’m guessing you’re the bull dyke in the gig.”

Ridge continued to watch her, but Emily didn’t blink, which gained a tiny measure of grudging respect. She said,

“In your somewhat colorful history and indeed brief one, you have managed to be around the scene of three murders.”

Emily put her glass on the table, said,

“Four.”

Ridge’s drink came and the waitress asked,

“Ice?”

Ridge with a tight smile said,

“No need, the atmosphere here is more than arctic.”

Then she took a slow sip of the drink, savored, said,

“Your friend Taylor has surfaced.”

Emily tried to mask her surprise and Ridge continued,

“Ah, so something you didn’t know.”

Emily suppressed the urge to inquire and stayed immobile. Her heart was pounding, damn it. Ridge let her stew for a bit, then,

“He is in hospital and it crossed my mind that maybe you put him there.”

Emily hid her distress and continued to work on her drink. Ridge switched tracks, said,

“Your paper trail is interesting, if not yet downright criminal, but I have the feeling you are on the verge of serious fuckup.”

Pause.

“And I will so enjoy that moment, the moment you are completely done.”

Emily waited a full five minutes and few things are longer than minutes when you are playing verbal chess, said,

“I have to wonder if your obsession with me is professional or if it’s some kind of gay twisted mind-fuck?”

Ridge kept her cool, surprising even herself, said,

“I do like a bad girl but no one likes a sick cow.”

Stood, felt she had gotten the last word, was near the door when Emily said, very quietly,

“Blowback’s a bitch.”