He stared quietly at Dublin for a moment, feeling uneasy. Beyond the fact that his co-worker was a hung-over mess, something about him didn’t seem right. “Actually, I’ll be staying on the boat for this one,” he replied, sipping his coffee.
“The fuck you say,” Dublin replied, looking back at him with wide,
blood-stained eyes.
He took his colleague’s surprise as genuine, if for no other reason than it was the first time he’d heard Dublin say ‘fuck’ without an Irish accent. “You don’t mind, do you?”
Dublin considered him for a moment, his temple twitching under his shaggy mess of dark hair. He abruptly drained half his mug of black Colombian and shrugged. “Fine by me, but why the sudden change of heart? Finally gettin’ a taste for da finer thangs in life, eh?”
He leaned in and looked at Dublin closely. “Dublin, what did you take last night?”
“What?” Dublin replied as he suddenly tensed in his seat. He set his coffee mug on the table and crossed his arms defensively. “What are you talking about?”
“You heard me,” he said calmly. “What was it?”
“Nothin’. Besides, that ain’t your business,” Dublin snapped back.
“No Dublin, it absolutely is my business,” he replied, watching as Dublin tried his best to conceal the twitches and shudders that were now noticeably plaguing his body. “Now what did you take?”
Both men sat quietly for a moment, listening to the muted sounds of the Lorelei creaking in protest to her mooring lines. Dublin looked up suddenly, his expression swirling with a dangerous mixture of fear and rage.
“It isn’t easy ya know… this feckin’ job,” he said as his eyes flickered wildly around the galley. “No nine-ta-five gig like the rest of tha normal feckin’ world.”
“You were never told it would be,” he replied, watching his colleague with calm interest. Dublin suddenly fixed his stare on him, the tremors in his body momentarily subsiding.
“Yeah, well hearing it and living it are two completely diff’rent things, ain’t they?” he retorted, holding his gaze for a quick, frightened moment before fumbling at his pocket and fishing out a pack of cigarettes. In an instant he had a cigarette in his mouth and was frantically groping at his pockets for a lighter, mumbling obscenities in an accent too thick to comprehend.
“Don’t,” he said quietly.
Dublin pretended not to hear him. A frustrated sigh escaped his pursed lips as he finally pulled a single match from his pocket.
He reached over and snatched the match from his hand. Dublin shot him a murderous look through his ruined eyes.
“You’re compromised, Dublin,” he said flatly. He snapped the match in two and dropped it in what was left of his coffee, his eyes never leaving the face of the Irishman. “Given the fact that you can’t sit still, I can only assume that you’re taking a psycho-stimulant such as meth, which means right now your head is suffering from a very pleasurable torrent of dopamine and serotonin. Unfortunately, that amount of euphoria-inducing chemicals is also highly unnatural, and as you’ve no doubt realized from past experience, coming down can be a bit nasty.”
Dublin sat sullenly, his fleshy shoulders slumped forward like those of an overgrown child being reprimanded. He stared at his hands as they repeatedly balled themselves into fists; seemingly indifferent to the fact that his head was twitching every few seconds. “You don’t…. you just don’t understand,” he muttered. “It keeps me sharp.”
“I’m sure you think it does. And just how sharp do you feel right now?” he asked.
“Hey fuck you, Chilly!” Dublin screamed as he smashed his fists on the table before pressing his hands into his temples until the knuckles of his fingers turned white. He then rocked his pale heavy frame back and forth in the chair for nearly a minute before the swollen lids of his eyes crept open and his brown eyes peered out menacingly. “You don’t know anythin’ about me,” he said in a tired, hollow voice. “You don’t understand what this job demands.” He stood and walked heavily over to the coffee maker. “Sure,” he continued, watching the steaming black liquid as it poured into his mug “you know what I take care of for you, what I can get for you, but you’ve got no feckin’ idea what it takes for that to happen. If you did, you’d understand why I need a little boost sometimes.”
He watched as Dublin threw back a long slug of coffee before tossing his mug angrily into the sink. The sound of the ceramic mug crashing into the stainless steel basin echoed through the boat.