Ugly Puggly 55

I’d an appointment with the doctor. I know you’re not supposed to have preferences, because mine would be for Dr Finlay. Someone that made up a fire in the grate. Lit it, while you lay poorly in bed, and gasped, ‘Thank you Doctor,' with your last breath. That was even before he examined you.

Mine was with a woman, in the new health centre. It was just like the old health centre, but even more difficult to get an appointment. They took advice from the National Lottery fund about how to schedule appointments. It was quicker going to Accident and Emergency over the other side of the Clyde.

I heard my name being called and there she was, smiling down at my bald spot. Dr Miller had bright red hair and looked like a yoga teacher. ‘Sorry for keeping you waiting,’ she said.

It used to be the People’s Friend and stacks of women’s magazines piled haphazardly on the tables. All I could rustle up was promotional literature. I quickly put it down in case I got promoted and followed her through to the office.

She’d my file up onscreen, but I gave her a crash course of where I was at. She had me stick my tongue out at her. I told her I never usually stuck my tongue out at pretty girls. Her smile didn’t waver.

She examined my chest. Even if I had to use a stethoscope, I’d much rather examine hers. But I was respectful of the distance between us. I couldn’t tell her I’d problems with my shit, and was constipated, even though she was a doctor, but because she was a woman. Dr Finlay would probably have guessed.

She talked about my tummy, as if I was a backward child. And I told her about being in AA and how I had trouble sleeping now.

‘I don’t mean they’re related.’ I corrected myself, before it was time to go. And she was onto the next one like me. And the one after that. Until it was the end of the day. She could slough us off like her white coat. Go back to yoga practice, a handsome husband, probably a brain surgeon and two children that went to Bearsden Academy. I envied her life being mapped out in predictable patterns.

‘We’ll get some bloods,’ she said. ‘And I’ll get you started on a prescription for B12.’

I bumped against the desk when I stood up. And for some reason went to shake hands with her. The smile disappeared. She flinched and backed away.

‘Sorry,’ I said, tapping the side of my forehead. ‘Must be Alzheimer’s.’    

I was supposed to be going to an AA meeting with wee Jim in the Hub. I was to phone him and arrange it, but I swerved it. Found myself standing in Aldi. The truth about Judas was he knew what he was doing. He’d already rehearsed it in his head. Drinking was a bit like that. It just rushes to meet you like the Gadarene pigs on holiday.

I had to admit I was too weak and trust in a Higher Power. But AA was full of guys like me. When they got to that top table it got competitive. One man betrayed his wife. Another betrayed his wife and children. However low the bar was set, somebody managed to limber under it.

I’d told the playboy that an AA member had been asked by his wife if he was clean that day. And he’d taken her by the throat and stuffed her in the washing machine. Put it on full spin cycle and forced his small chidren to watch her going round and round as a lesson. They’d never ask him if he was sober or clean again.  

‘Did he?’ asked Dave.

Even Ugly Puggly sounded exasperated and rolled his eyes. ‘Nah,’ he told him and patted his shoulder in consolation for being a booby.

The phone rang. I saw onscreen it was wee Jim calling. People in the queue were staring at me, so I answered.

‘Where ur yeh?’ wee Jim asked.

I couldn’t think, so I answered honestly. ‘I’m in Aldi’s.’

‘Ur yeh at the drink section?’

‘Nah, I’m at the mixed vegetables and cheeses.’

‘You’re a lyin bastard.’ He rambled on about honesty and trust. And how he’d stolen from his best pal to get a drink. And now he was dead and how he bitterly regretted it. I thought he was going to tell me the washing-machine story. Somehow that cheered me up. I didn’t even hang up on him. I waved a wee woman with shopping trolley on past me in the queue and shook my head at his antics.

‘I’m comin tae get yeh,’ he spluttered.

‘Jim, yer no Tarzan, swingin through the branches to rescue a Cheetah or two. I’ll gie yeh a phone and I’ll met yeh up the Hub.’  

‘You better,’ he said.

I did the walk of shame. I took the drink I’d piled into the basket back to the stacked shelves, and added to them. It would be a good story to tell at the AA meeting. They liked that kind of thing. Say I’d met an angel and I’d let her go in front of me in the queue. As a thank you, she told me how an angel stood at the gates of heaven and could spot the drinkers because they’d that martyr look on their face. And they already knew what hell looked like. So they didn’t expect much. But they were wrong, because every angel was the prodigal son. They knew what hell looked like too.

I drove up to the Hub and parked in at the back. I remembered it when it used to have a Saturday morning disco for kids. Ugly Puggly and me with twenty pence each in our pockets. We wouldn’t dance but we’d chew sweets. Wish we could dance, or would dance, but instead we’d just look at the girls creating their own worlds. We didn’t think we could be part of it. And we were mostly right. Now it was full of baldy old guys with rotten teeth, endlessly yakking about when they were young. Even the young guys were old. And sometimes even young girls slouched down low in a plastic bucket chairs would look at you out of the corner of their eyes as if they knew you. Maybe in a different life they could have been Dr Yoga. Maybe they still could

My phone rung. ‘It’s me,’ Jim said. ‘Where ur yeh?’

‘Livin in the past,’ I told him.

‘Whit the fuck ur yeh talkin about?’

‘I’m outside. I’ll be in, in a minute.’