the lost manuscript 2

He didn’t set out to be a slob. It was just easier not to care in a flat-footed way to wear the same clothes until they were like twins with an optional third skin. One second skin was in the laundry. Pick and mix.  The sniff test.

He liked to vent. If he employed an expensive Italian tailor that’s exactly where he would have let rip. He couldn’t afford to be choosy.  Dressed down when he went to meet Trouble in Donegan’s.

Donegan’s was ladies’ choice. The only pub in Dalmuir Trouble wasn’t barred from. It was the kind of pub where the police patrolled in twos and always came with backup, usually in the form of an Alsatian on a short leash.  It didn’t take a dog to sniff her out her pungent perfumes or find where the tattoos led. Her ginger hair was dyed blonde and her head was the size of a condemned tenement block. There was a technical name for it in the same way there was a technical name for pig iron, but with longer letters that made no sense to those that nursed pints and their hangovers with the same indifference that made them the men they were. She walked with a roiling movement that scared small children and had lesser men scrambling to get out of her path. He tried not to be petty and not judge her on appearance alone. But he was too small and weak. She was the worst kind of woman to date. It was better just to fuck her like everybody else. She was the ugliest woman in Dalmuir, where the standard was so low, or high—depending on whose side of the bed you got out of—women moved away to places like Yoker, to live a different kind of life.

Ugly was relative to Trouble, but they couldn’t all stay in Dalmuir, was a common refrain.

Trouble was gulping down a pint of Guinness when he came in. Nodding at the barmaid, he ordered three pints, two for her and one for himself. Squinting sideways to see how much trouble he was with Trouble.

He slapped her on the back. ‘How’s it gaun, Trouble?’

‘Don’t call me Trouble.’

‘No trouble.’

When her crossed hazel eyes passed the equator of her nose, she looked surprised, and it was time to back off.

‘Gie me a couple of double whiskies.’ He liked a dare. Flung a twenty quid note on the counter. It didn’t go very far. Money didn’t in those days. If you can’t beat her—and only a fool would try—you could only join her.

Later when he got maudlin and weepy, he tried being upright and sensible. ‘Yeh’ve got wee kids at home, kinda waiting on yeh,’ he told her. ‘Yer lucky.’

She changed the subject. ‘Yeh want a threesome?’

‘Aye,’ he admitted. ‘But no wae you.’

That was a hard one, although it wasn’t hard. The barmaid was eavesdropping. He apologised with a flapping hand for nearly falling off the barstool.

Trouble reared up in front of me. She flung an arm out to catch him, but missed and knocked him over. Squinting at him.   ‘Whit dae yeh mean by that remark. Yeh trying to get funny?’

He shook his head and lifted his specs off his big nose. Holding them out in front of his reddened face and inspecting them as other customers gloated and giggled.

‘Nah, I’m too pissed tae count tae more than two. I might be seeing doubles.’ He pointed to the drinks and glasses crowded in front of them.

That confused her enough to give him time to slip away to the toilets, play the puggy machines for a bit and slip out the door before she noticed he was away. But standing under an umbrella of fag smoke at the door chatting with the locals, he realised he was horny.

Trouble was trouble, but even a bad fuck was better than fuck all. Trouble had a big head but a small memory. She didn’t remember he’d left, because he hadn’t. He helped her up from the floor.

‘Time tae get yeh hame,’ he said. ‘People don’t change much.’

‘I dae,’ she cried. ‘I’ve peed myself.’

He pulled her upward in stages as she tested her legs. ‘Yeh’ll be awright. Naebody in here will notice. Soor plumes always smell like smelly fannies.  Same difference.’

She winked at him or had something in her eye. Her idea of being flirtatious was wanking him off in the taxi. ‘Whit you staring at speccy?’ she said to the driver. ‘Yeh, never seen a cock before?’

Most of the Hackney drivers knew Trouble, but this guy was Eastern European and his English wasn’t much better than the Troubles ability to speak Lithuanian. He was swallowing his tongue with glottal stops and trying to get the words out that stuck in his gullet. We got the message when he swerved into the side of the road and dumped us.  

‘Fuck you,’ cried Trouble to the back of the cab and cabby.

But he’d slipped him a twenty to keep the driver sweet.  

‘They’re aw uncivilised bastards,’ she said, leaning on him and trying to take his hand. ‘They cannae even speak English.’

He pulled away his right hand. ‘I’m no hauding hands wae the wan you spunked me with—that’s gross!’   

Back at her place, lying on her mouldy mattress with his cock inside her, she bounced up and down like Stig of the Dump on home turf.

Damien looked up from the computer screen. It was mixed metaphors. He’d compared Trouble to Stig of the Dump. Then he’d want onto write, ‘her head rolling like Linda Blair in the Exorcist.’

He erased that part. It was rough. Very rough. But at least when he couldn’t write, he could edit. It was almost like writing.