The Hunter

by Tana French

Their mam is silent, but it’s not a silence with peace in it. It takes up space, like some heavy thing made of rusted iron built around her.

He still has that smile, the wide impish crinkle that woke your reckless side and lured you into thinking the stakes were low.

For most of his life, one or more elements always insisted on being interesting, to the point where dullness took on an unattainable end-of-the-rainbow glow. Ever since he finally got his hands on it, he’s savored every second.

The best thing you can have in life is a bit of a shine on you. A bitta possibility; a bitta magic. A shine. People can’t stay away from that. Once you’ve got it, it doesn’t matter a tap whether they like you, or whether they respect you. They’ll convince themselves they do. And then they’ll do whatever you want from them.

They’ve got a bad case of allurement.”

Barty swears bitterly at a rip in one of his new bar stools. In the alcove, someone whistles, high and shrill, cutting through the laughter and the voices like an alarm.

It’s a place whose dangers only come into focus when you’re already engaged with them.

Like most guys he knows, he finds few things as nerve-racking as a woman with something on her mind.

He has no qualms about having given Johnny a beat-down—it needed doing, and if anything he feels like he did well to hold out so long—but he’s made uneasy by the fact that he did it because he lost his temper. It feels unmanaged, and this situation needs managing.

“What would ye be talking about, the two of ye?” he inquires. The question startles Cal. “Like what?” “That’s what I’m asking you. One way or t’other, I’ve never had much opportunity for conversation with the women—apart from my mammy, and sure, I knew what she was going to say before she did. She was a fine woman, my mammy, but she’d no truck with variety; the same conversations she’d been having for seventy year were good enough for her. I don’t count that. What would a man be talking about with a woman?”

The memories overlay themselves too easily on the man; he hasn’t changed, not the way he should have.

everyone loves a bitta redemption, specially with a comeuppance thrown in.