Cucumber Coolie by Ryan Casey

Embarrassment, or anger. Probably a mix of both. If I was a more reasonable person, I might’ve apologised.
    But I wasn’t. So tough.
    “I’m doing my best here, hun. Doing my absolute best. But you should answer Lenny’s calls.”
    “I can’t.”
    “Or what? You think Hose is tracing you or something?”
    I shrugged. “You tell me.”
    “I’ll tell you alright: you need to man the fuck up.”
    “Rich coming from you.”
    “I had a fucking gender change and still I’m showing more balls than you.”
    “You’ll be growing your fucking bollocks back if you keep on taking illegal sleeping pills!”
    I got up from Martha’s sofa. Stepped away from her, as she sat there blushing on the floor.
    “Is that what all this is about, hmm? All about me and my sleeping pills?”
    I got closer to the front door. I needed fresh air.
    I needed a kick.
    I needed menthol.
    “Because if I remember correctly, it was me who helped get you off painkillers ten years ago. So I’m sorry, but you aren’t really one to judge.”
    My arms tingled when Martha mentioned the painkillers. It wasn’t a time of my life I liked to remember too much. The aching pain I felt in my back, even when it wasn’t there. Just pop a painkiller or six in. Always did the trick.
    “You should know pills are silly,” I said.
    “You aren’t my dad, hun. Thank God, or I wouldn’t be helping you right now. But fuck, man—you need to get over yourself. Start focusing on your own problems before those around you.”
    I turned around. “Are you calling me nosy?”
    “You’ve always been the same. You’ve always had such double standards. Giving me funny looks right now when I take a pill to help me sleep while chewing away on all your cough sweets.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with cough sweets.”
    “Yeah, I figured there mustn’t be. Absolutely fine as long as you take them.”
    She went quiet. Lowered her phone and stood up.
    “Blake, I can see you’re hurting. Let me help you. Please. Let me phone Lenny, or something like that. He could have news on the fingerprints. The fingerprints or the CCTV outside Danielle’s house, or at the market when Donny sold his Ecstacia to Hose. But please. I… I know why you’re doing this. I’m not stupid.”
    I avoided eye contact with Martha. “Enlighten me, shrink.”
    “You’re worried about failing. About losing Danielle for good. And you figure that if you don’t even try, then at least you’ll have nothing to fail. But if I… if you leave it all to me, if I fail, you’ll have someone other than yourself to blame forever.”
    I did meet Martha’s eyes now. She was tearing up. A rare sight, for sure.
    I wanted to respond. I wanted to tell her how bloody wrong she was for thinking about me in that way. I wanted to tell her to get stuffed and leave saving Danielle to me.
    But I couldn’t. Because I knew she was right.
    “A great old writer friend once told me something: dare to be bad.”
    “Sounds like a recipe for disaster,” I mumbled.
    She stepped forward. Grabbed my hands. “It’s better to try and fail than to not try at all. Always. Dare to be bad, hun. Don’t leave this to me.”
    I felt Martha’s hands tighten, and I let them. She half-smiled at me, and I felt a warmth inside.
    Dare to be bad.
    It’s better to try and fail than to not try at all.
    “If you get your bloody hands off me, I’ll consider it.”
    Martha laughed as I yanked my hands away. I could see she was full-on crying, too, but then again I could taste salt on my lips so I was hardly one to talk.
    “Come on, Colombo. Let’s get to work.”
    Martha and I spent a good half an hour calling numbers from her little—or big—pad of contacts. Time went so quickly, and still no progress was made.
    Two thirty. Eleven and a half hours. That was nothing. No time at all.
    I puffed out my lips as I reached the bottom of the page. I’d just been on to a part-time “mechanic” called Stuart who seemed absolutely