The Quiet Man Caimh McDonnell Copyright © 2020 by McFori Ink All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Caimh McDonnell Visit my website at www.WhiteHairedIrishman.com First edition: October 2020 ISBN: 978-1-912897-12-4 Contents Author’s note Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Chapter 62 Epilogue One Epilogue Two Epilogue Three Also by Caimh McDonnell The Stranger Times – C.K. McDonnell Eagle-Eyed Legends Author’s note The following book contains scenes that some readers may find offensive. These scenes contain violence, bad language, good language, the occasional bit of sign language, and references to the inappropriate use of a mechanical rodeo bull. The action itself is not actually offensive but if you’re North American then it is the spelling that’ll really boil your grits – along with that reference right there which clearly shows I don’t really understand what grits are. The reason for the spelling is that the author and the main character are Irish and so everything is spelled as it would be there. The author has previously blamed this on his mother, but she has firmly told him to stop. He would now like to blame this on his dog, who, inexplicably, has strong opinions on this matter that agree one hundred per cent with his granny. The dog’s granny would further like to clarify that she is not granny to a bloody dog. Chapter One Jack Trainer polished a bar top that didn’t need it and sighed. Times like this, when it was quiet, a man could get to thinking unhelpful thoughts about where his life had gone wrong. Back in the late eighties, when Tom Cruise had made being a cocktail bartender cool, Jack had been at the top of his game. He’d been in his early twenties, a college dropout and a mixology master, working the big bars in Manhattan and getting paid handsomely to do so. He’d been sharp. The perfect combo of science meeting art. His nickname was the Iceman. You needed an angle, and ice had been his signature. He’d come up with new frozen cocktails and crazy ways of mixing them – tossing around frosted glasses, messing around with dry ice. He’d been a success on his own terms, no question – and then he had met her. Margareta, the ice-sculpting queen of New York. The shows they put together were legendary. At the peak of their fame, you had to drop sixty large to have them at your event. She’d unveil a breathtakingly complex sculpture and then he’d stand atop it and work his magic, sending rivers of booze down the various flumes and tunnels before perfectly mixed cocktails arrived at the bottom. Kobe and Shaq, Fred and Ginger, Woodward and Bernstein, Margareta and the Iceman. They had been one of the all-time great duos – the rock stars of the beverage prep and delivery business. Negotiations to open their own chain of bars had been at an advanced stage. The affair had been as fiery as it had been misjudged. The passion between them had burned like a supernova and left a trail of destruction in its wake. They’d often stayed up all night, working and screwing, screwing and working. You’ve not lived until you’ve made love in the bowl of a perfect ice-rendering of Shea Stadium while gin rains from a specially constructed sky. Ironically, it was weather that would be their downfall. Margareta had seen him talking – just talking – to the weather girl from Channel Nine News, and she’d come after him with an ice-pick. They’d made up, but then, at their next performance, he’d been standing beside a twelve-foot-tall Empire State Building, dressed as King Kong and dishing out funky-monkey cocktails, when the ice-rendering of a helicopter detached and smashed into his head. To the world it had appeared to be an accident, but he’d known different. Margareta did not make mistakes. Under her control, ice did not melt unexpectedly. She was the Ice Queen for a good reason. Also, amidst the blood, ice and panicking New York Jets cheerleaders, as they put him on the gurney he’d noticed that the helicopter bore the insignia of the Channel Nine News. After the break-up, Jack had tried to carry on, but it hadn’t been the same. He’d started taking his work home with him, drinking more and more. He’d also become obsessed with trying to create the great new cocktail. Like there was something he could do that would be so awe-inspiring that it would bring her back to him. He had sunk further and further. During a demonstration on morning TV, he’d lost control of a bottle of vermouth while executing a backside throw. It smashed a beloved sofa-sitting TV icon in the head, and that had been that. He’d got the shakes, and all the money he spent on doctors and psychologists couldn’t get him back to where he had been. So when Jack had got out of rehab – well, he was actually kicked out when the money ran out – he’d moved to the desert. He wondered if a part of him had picked the location because it was the farthest you could be from ice without boarding a rocket to the sun. His mixing days were over. He never so much as spun a bottle these days. The
