chicating

Bunk took another look at the young woman rubbing up against people on the dance floor as though she didn’t have a care in the world. No, that wasn’t right. She did it almost like that was her job, in itself. Maybe a work- hard-play-hard type, though she seemed too young for most legit jobs, but not quite fucked-up enough to be a full-on prostitute. Bunk had a niece that had turned Goth, as improbable as that seemed for a Black girl from Philly. As far as he could tell though, the black that they wore wasn’t usually sparkly, and she and her undernourished looking friends hung out in cemeteries, if the weather permitted.

“OK,” he amended. “She’s not twelve. Not bad to look at either, for all that she tops out at, maybe, nineteen. But, God, Jimmy, what would you ever talk about?”

McNulty grinned wickedly. Or at least, Bunk imagined, that’s how the parade of ladies that responded to his partner might have seen it, though sometimes he wanted to get behind the hype and tell them(even Ronnie, who seemed too smart to need much advice) that that was just his partner’s face. “We’d come up with something. I’d get her breakfast order, anyway.”

“You’re confident,” Bunk was glad he stopped with his last drink. “confident” felt too hard to say to convince Nadine that he’d turned over a new leaf. Maybe, with a little fresh air, time, and a pinch of acting, though, he could give her a chance at seeing traces of the man she’d married.

“Do you have any reason why I shouldn’t be?”
Without thinking, and not intending it as a taunt, Bunk began to hum “Hey, Nineteen,” under his breath. He never knew what would make him get these songs in his head: he could just be reading, or hearing something from the chat shows his wife watched, and it could be lodged there for hours. Given that he was murder police, he supposed he could get stuck with something more toxic, but that only made the habit slightly less annoying.
“Bunk,” Jimmy said, in that serious tone that Bunk knew was the first sign his friend and partner had had more than a few too many. “I’ll forgive you anything. Except Boz Skaggs.”