Pick Up

Almost home. Angel hurried up in the hill at Byron Street, pulling her coat tighter around her flowery Boots' blouse, the high winds catching in her throat. The car horn tooting startled her. She’d almost passed the lime-green Jaguar, and hadn’t noticed it parked close to the pavement. She waved and then immediately regretted it as being stupid

Pizza Face was sitting in the driver’s seat. He leaned across and pushed open the passenger door. ‘Get in.’

The door shut back on itself. She pulled it open and slid into the passenger seat. The leather seats were shiny and smelled showroom clean.

He stubbed out almost a full cigarette in the ashtray. Smoke tendrils framing his face and lank hair. The bags under his eyes looked big enough to hold spoons and the two-tone birthmark on his face stood out more like half-moons, which it did when he was tired.

He stared at her for a moment, before blinking it away.

 ‘This is nice,’ she said in an overly bright voice. ‘I could get used to this.’ Sitting posh and a little straighter. The heater blasting air and warming her hand. ‘But hey, small world. How did yeh find me?’

Pizza Face chuckled. ‘Believe me Angel, yer no hard tae find.’ He took a deep breath before he continued. ‘Unfortunately, I’d a bit of a run-in wae yer ma, when I chapped yer door.’

   ‘Well, she’ll be well pissed by noo. And she hates yeh.’ She modified that with a slight grimace. ‘Well, no you, exactly, but Chaz…Well, you as well.’

Pizza Face held his hand up to stop her from continuing speaking and turned the radio up a notch. ‘I like that song.’    

They listened to Blue by You and when the song finished he turned the radio down. ‘I get it. I’ll no be exactly on her Christmas card list. Nane of us will be. But Chaz didnae exactly get aff scot free. Did he?’

‘Chaz got whit he deserved. Let’s no get into that again’. She glanced at his face. ‘Whit yeh here for anyway?

Pizza Face pursed his lips and looked out the window. ‘I thought, maybe, we could go for a wee drive?’

Angel shrugged. ‘Dunno. I’m knackered. And I was hoping for an early night. And there’d be enough hot water for a bath. I doubt it though. Yeh know whit my ma’s like?’

Pizza Face leaned across her and pushed open the door letting in the cold air. ‘Fine. Fine.’

Angel hesitated and smiled back at him. ‘Don’t be like that.’

‘Like whit?’

‘Like yer being a total dickface.’

Pizza Face rubbed the back of his head and a slow smile appeared. ‘I forgot.’

‘Forgot whit?’

He laughed. ‘Whit yeh were like. Yeh’ve no changed.’

She patted his knee. ‘And is that meant tae be a compliment?’

‘It’s as good as yeh ur gonnae get.

Angel shrugged. ‘Yeh huvnae changed either. I was sorry tae hear about yer ma. Obviously, I couldnae go tae the funeral. Though I really wanted tae and nearly did.’

‘Doesnae matter.’ Pizza Face’s head dropped onto his chest and his elbows tucked into his side and he became smaller and younger as he tried to gulp back tears. He choked on them before he broke.   

Angel patted his knee and held his shoulder.

He spluttered, ‘I guess it was aw too much for her. Wae Chaz and Junior and everything. She’s at peace noo.’

‘She is at peace.’

Sniffling, he kissed her cheek with his unshaven chin and laughed. ‘Yeh mean she’ll no be completely cream-crackers.’

‘Aye, that as well. She'll still be able to care for yeh, but no in the way she did. Run aff her feet.’

  He wiped the corners of his eyes with a fist and reached for his fags, lighting one, he offered the packet to Angel, but she shook her head.

‘Well, tell her no tae haunt me. I’ve got enough on my plate tae worry about.’

She laughed. ‘I will.’

He peered at her, his eyes crinkling. ‘Yeh, know I was only kidding, right?’

‘Aye, don’t be so daft.’

‘But I heard something. Something about you. A wee birdie told me. Would yeh really be able to speak tae my ma?’

Angel sucked in her breath.  ‘The honest answer  is I dunno. It’s no like we did when we were younger, knocking a hole in a can and pulling a string through and talking tae each o’er round corners. For wan thing, yeh don’t know who’s on the other side.’

‘Aye, but yeh’ve been on the other side. Huven’t yeh?’

‘I guess it was heaven in a way that I could understood it. Wae aw the church bells ringing. And the angel’s singing in a great glorious noise. And the way I wiz lifted up and Evan’s mum coming to get me.’

‘But yeh, ne’er met her. How did yeh know it was her?’

‘I jist knew. The same as I knew when you and Evan risked yer life and dragged me oot the water, even though yeh couldnae swim.’

‘Well, me mostly,’ a note of pride in Pizza Face’s tone.  

‘That’s true. But Evan too. Yeh jist know about these things.  How they were meant tae be.’

‘Suppose, we did bring yeh back. It was the best thing I ever did in my life. Sorry. Oor life. yeh were only a wee thing. And we saved yeh.’

‘Yeh did.’ She put a hand over her mouth to stiffle a yawn. ‘Sorry, I don’t sleep much.’

‘Snap, neither dae I, but I don’t see ghosts.’

‘Neither dae I.’

 ‘Yeh ever see Chaz?’

Angel took a few seconds to answer. ‘Let’s jist say if there’s a hell and there’s wee devils poking his eyes oot wae burning embers, for aw eternity, I wouldnae get too upset.  I understand that’s a failing on my part, but I really don’t gie a fuck.

‘Whit I was trying to say is there needs tae be a connection. An emotional resonance. It’s like trying tae stick two magnets the gither at the best aw times.  And there’ll ne’er be that wae me and Chaz. I hate him, pure and simple. Chaz and me ur on different planets and that’s no far enough away.’

Pizza Face took a long drag on his fag. ‘Fair enough.’

‘Sometimes, I hear the spirit. Jist the same as I hear you. But sometimes I jist sense them. A presence that might no want tae speak.’

Pizza Face snorted, ‘Maybe they need fucking elocution lessons. Cause aw they ghosts seem tae speak right proper English. Or they turn oot to be Jesus or John the Baptist or Napoleon or some o’er stupid cunt.’  

He held up his hand in apology. ‘Sorry, I spent too much time listening tae my ma.’

Angel shrugged. ‘Don’t apologise. Jesus is always good. John the Baptist isnae bad. And I can always use a good Napoleon, especially noodays wae Thatcher in charge. 

Nah, it’s no like that. Well… maybe a wee bit. I dae usually get the gist of it. But like anything else, I make mistakes. Some of them pretty bad.  It’s jist everybody has different ways of communicating. It’s like personality. A person and their reality. If yer kinda shy in life yer no gonnae by the life and soul aw the party in the afterlife. If yer an asshole, yer still an asshole. If yer Napoleon, yeh’ll still be Napoleon, but withoot the need tae conquer Russia, or o’er small countries.’

Pizza Face sniggered and stabbed out his dout in the ashtray. ‘Fuck yer weirder than  I thought and that’s goin some.’

‘Absolutely. I’ve an unshakable belief in my weirdness. If normal was aw it was cracked up tae be, I wouldnae know whit tae dae wae myself.’

Pizza Face toyed with the ignition key and stared out the window. ‘Where dae yeh want tae go then? I need tae go for a drive or something tae clear my heid. Yeh, want tae go tae the chippy?

‘I’ve already told yeh. Up the road to get a bath and get my jimjams on.’

He leaned across and kissed the side of her hair. ‘Awright. I know when I’m being told tae fuck aff.’

Angel pushed open the passenger door.

Pizza Face asked the side of her head, ‘Would it be awright to come and see yeh again?’

She blew him a kiss. ‘It’s a free country. But I wouldnae chap my front door again.’

He leaned across the seats. ‘Angel, gie me a minute. Yeh know the police came tae see us about some cunt, Ped—a complete wanker, as far as I can remember—who got left brain damaged by some dumb blonde smashing his heid in.’

Angel hung onto the door handle, listening.

‘Well, I put the boys in blue in the right. I said I’d been speaking to a blonde lassie earlier than night. A complete screwball. Hacked face. Tons of makeup. Aged 25-30. Maybe older. Lives in Faifley. I’d seen her in the club a few times. Whit I would say tae this o’er blonde lassie is, she’s got a pal that’s running her mooth aff. And she needs tae get a grip of her fucking pronto.’