Screwed by Eoin Colfer Read Free Book Online Page A

out of the shower to find her standing there in workout gear holding my towel on a finger.
    “Oh, baby,” she says, her voice sensual from years of Jameson and Marlboro. “You look good.”
    I don’t feel like I look good, never have. But there’s a woman in my bathroom who resembles Let’s Get Physical’s Olivia Newton- John telling me I look good, and that’s never a bad start to the day.
    “Thanks, Sofia,” I say, trying to cover my privates without using my hands. Tricky. “You look good too. Great.”
    She laughs. “Baby, you have no idea. I’ve sent bigger men than you home with a limp.”
    This is not fair. This woman is the right age for me, i.e., she falls within my ten years up ten years down parameters, she has the correct amount of sass, and sex appeal that’s going to last until the day she dies, but thinks I am her long-gone asshole husband.
    She backs up with the towel and I have no choice but to follow.
    “Oh, baby,” she says and just the sound of her plump lips smacking on the b’s makes me feel a little excited, ignoble and also weak-willed.
    I cannot take advantage of a delusional woman, says my angelic side.
    My other shoulder demon comes back with: Yeah, but is there even a victim here? You’d be doing the dame a favor.
    I am half-expecting another compliment from Sofia, which would be my undoing, but instead she says: “I thought it was bigger, Carmine. Didn’t it used to be bigger? You should see Dan’s.”
    Even though I’m not sure who’s been insulted, the excitement drains out of me like air from a punctured balloon animal and I mutter some lame crack about perspective. Sofia doesn’t laugh, instead she goes all metaphorical with:
    “Like the playgrounds of my youth, all seems smaller now.”
    Deep. Too deep for a semi-horny man getting out of a shower.
    Sofia has a moment of lucidity and says. “I gotta scoot, Dan. Carmine might call and if I’m not by the phone there will be freakin’ fireworks.”
    I pluck the towel from her fingers and nod. I wanted her to leave, but now that she’s going I feel cheated.
    Sofia kisses me so hard my shamed region forgets it’s been insulted.
    “That’s better, baby,” she says with a smile that might even be for me.
    I step back in the shower when she’s gone.
    I feel myself surfacing but Sofia’s eyes are still there. Not the same sky blue though—more of a dirty petrol.
    They are not Sofia’s eyes, says my subconscious. Notice the thick brows, not to mention the rubber gimp mask.
    I have a pretty open relationship with my subconscious. A little unhealthy even. We dialogue a lot, which kind of defeats the purpose of calling it a subconscious in the first place.
    Still, my inner voice is right. Sofia does not sport thick brows. I flop around a little trying to earth myself in whatever situation I’m in.
    I feel a chair underneath me. Remembering the word for chair is not necessarily an indicator of no brain damage but I’m optimistic. More information seeps through the haze. For example the office chair seems to have me cuffed to it, and the room that me and the chair are in has swathes of pink satin streaming down from the ceiling. Also I seem to be naked apart from a pink leather thong, which I definitely did not snap on earlier this morning. This can’t be real? Maybe the Taser rattled my neurons a little. I blink the world into focus and immediately wish that I hadn’t.
    There are two guys, presumably Krieger and Fortz, dressed in gimp masks and rubber aprons, dancing happy little jigs either side of a stool-mounted laptop. The floor is lined with plastic.
    What happened to human beings? Once upon a time Marilyn Monroe holding an apple was the raciest thing on the planet. Now we gotta have middle-aged cops in gimp masks?
    I cough a few times, which feels like it’s inflating my brain, then say:
    “You know, guys. Whatever happens, at least we have our dignity.”
    Denial. That’s what it is.
    “Hey,” says Fortz,