Allegiance: A Dublin Novella Read Online Free PDF

of her skirt. Her shirt spread open enough to show her small pale breasts, and her head tipped back as she pressed herself into him, her dark hair spilling down his arm, and when his lips moved across her throat she clutched at his back and gave another high-pitched sigh.
    “Adam …”
    William’s breath stuck in his throat. His instincts pushed him back through the arch and up the staircase, but not a single muscle responded. He stood motionless, eyes wide and round and dilated in the gloom. The paper packets of soap crinkled warm and soft in his palms.
    Adam was kissing Sarah now, hard and fast, his fingers gripping the shelf as he pushed up sharply and she moaned against his mouth. His cap hung from a cork on the next row, and her hands mussed his hair in sweaty spikes along his brow. He pushed faster, his thighs straining with tension, his arm jerking Sarah closer as she clawed silent trails down the back of his shirt. They rocked together against the crate until the wood began to creak, and now her breathy whimpers were matched by his low grunts. Adam broke the kiss to catch his breath, and his eyes opened in the dim light to fix directly onto William’s face.
    William blinked. His mouth opened, then closed again. He wet his lips and swallowed; his fingers twitched on the paper in his hands.
    Sarah dropped her forehead to Adam’s shoulder and quickened her tempo with another soft cry of his name. Adam stared at William for a long moment, eyes glittering in the dark as a single bead of sweat rolled down his face. Then his upper lip twitched into a grin, and he turned his head to bury his face in the soft skin below Sarah’s upturned ear. She bucked and he swore, their pace increasing until the bottles behind her back began to rattle against each other with small tinkling sounds.
    William backed up a step, then another, and then turned and fled through the arch and up the stairs as silently as he had come.
    The bright electric lights in the kitchen made him blink and squint. Mary took the wrinkled soap packets from his hands and peered into his face.
    “Are you alright, love?”
    “Aye, I’m fine.”
    “I was afraid you were getting lost down there.”
    William wiped his sweating palms on the front of his shirt. He pulled off his apron and hung it on its peg before he turned to take the back stairs to his room.
    “I was,” he said.
     
     
     
    5.
    January 23, 1922
     
    The lunchtime customers seemed more subdued than the evening crowd, but William enjoyed this time of day the most. True, the number of men who greeted him by name at the bar increased with each passing shift, but the nights were so beer-soaked and hectic that it was sometimes difficult to take proper mental notes. The days, however, were not spent tied to the bar but rather roaming among the tables, listening to the old men at their dominoes and the young women bouncing babies on their knees, conversations quieter and often much more useful. The notebook under his floorboard grew steadily fatter with his penciled observations.
    On this particular afternoon the rush was over by two o’clock, and the tables sat empty a bit earlier than usual. The day outside was clear, though bitterly cold, and bright sunlight shone through the front windows and reflected off the mirrors behind the bar. William was sweeping the floor, enjoying the warmth and quiet, when the kitchen door swung open and Mary appeared with a plate in each hand and a smile on her face.
    “We had so much of it left, it seemed a shame to put it all away,” she said. “Will you sit with me awhile?”
    She didn’t have to ask twice. William propped his broom in the corner and wiped his hands on his apron as the smell of shepherd’s pie reached his nostrils. Mary had meant her question literally – she set the plates down and then hopped up onto the bar next to them, swinging her feet between the stools. William, not quite so bold or so spry, took a seat on a stool beside her. She