29
“Where you staying?”
“The Empire Hotel.”
“The Empire eh? Nobody but drunks stay there.”
“That’s fine. I’m something of a drunk myself.”
Andrew Pyper, The Lost Girls
*
The bad drop.
I’m not talking about a pint of Guinness gone sour. It’s a concept I tried once to explain to Clancy, back when we were friends. It’s a slice of ice in your heart. And not a bad thing, the ability to lash out at the final moment, a shard of preservation that comes into play when you’re backed up, right against the wall. You don’t even know you have it till it’s absolutely vital.
Then, suddenly, a voice takes over, goes,
“f**k with me…you have no idea of the ferocity I am capable of.”
Clancy had shook his head, gone,
“Ary, that’s mad talk.”
He went on to become the embodiment of a very bad drop. N
