Ugly Puggly 85

I was gagging for the meeting to be over even before it had begun so I could collect the cash. In my head, I slipped in and out with nobody noticing I was there and not there. An amber tail-light came on in the car that swerved to our side of the road and parked in front of us. Wee Jim jumped out and waved a hand to the driver as he sped off. I might as well have painted black and white stripes on my face and body. Conspicuous as a zebra trying to hide on a crossing. He grabbed my hand and pumped it up and down and might even have hugged me if I hadn’t pulled away. Gordy probably texted him.  

‘There’s a surprise,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ I sniffed, tears welled up in my eyes and made them shine.

Gordy hovered beside us and a passer-by, without breaking stride, gave us the once over.

Wee Jim let go of my hand, but then hooked his arm through mine. He guided me up the stairs like a blind man.

‘This is Jim,’ he introduced me to some familiar faces that had them and then me with a delicacy, but smirking.

I didn’t think I’d changed that much, but there was no way of telling. I knew how to seal the deal. I stuck out my hand and shook their hands like a politician, repeating the mantra—‘I’m an alcoholic’—as we made our way to the wee hall, a longer space in the backroom. The blinds were pulled down and the lights were on. They’d moved the pool table and put a mat on it. Grey plastic chairs were in rows, but nobody sitting yet. Peeling paint. Grey walls and a tacky floor underfoot. The familiar smell of someone having just put out a fag and too many bodies being in a small room and having got there, never been away.

A girl with red hair came up and gave me a hug. Her perfume washed through me and dispelled the gloom.  ‘How are you?’

‘Hi, I’m Jim and I’m an alcoholic.’  

She laughed. ‘I’m Laura and I’m an alcoholic.’ She squeezed my arm. ‘And thank you.’ It was her posh accent I recognised.  

I needed a blood transfusion just to look at her. Drop-down peal earrings added a glow to her face. She was so healthy with flawless skin and long eyelashes that weren’t stuck on with glue. But she dressed down in an oversized hoodie and red patent shoes.

Wee Jim felt confident enough to leave me with her. He wandered away to have a word with the other guys at the top table.

‘You think it’s cold in here?’ she rubbed her hands together. ‘I’m just in from my work and not had a chance to shower.’

‘I’ve no hud a chance to wash either, but you’d never guess.’

Quick to laugh, she offered a self-effacing smile, and changed the subject. ‘How is your wife? Molly is it?’  She added with gusto, ‘and Dave?’

‘Fine,’ I snapped back at her. ‘How is yer?’ But I didn’t know what to say next and my mouth hung open.

But wee Jim had already begun calling the meeting to order. Other less pretty members filed into the seats. She guided me into the seat next to her. Older guys that should have known better turned their heads and squinted as us to see who she was sitting with and muttered to each other. I gloated in their envy.

Confession of a confessional. I hadn’t been paying attention to what wee Jim had been saying. I’d heard it all before about him being paralytic drunk. And a long list of his misdemeanours. But it all seemed so long ago that I wouldn’t have recognised him if his younger self introduced us to each other with a lasso at a roundup. Wee Jim finished what he was saying by asking if there were any new members and asking them to stick their hands up.  

A guy in his thirties, two rows along, stood swaying. He mumbled his name out the side of his mouth, ‘Chris or Charlie.’ He was at the teary stage with his head down and couldn’t look at anybody. It was so stupid. I was annoyed with his naivety. He reminded me of my younger self. ‘I’m an alkie,’ he said.

A roar of spontaneous applause that lifted bums from chairs. A bear of a man with a walrus moustache leaned across and hugged him. ‘We’re aw alkies,’ he growled. ‘Together!’ If it had been a boxing match he’d have held Chris or Charlie’s hand aloft.

Laura rubbed at her eyes and reached for a perfumed handkerchief.

‘The first step is acknowledgment,’ wee Jim spoke without notes. ‘And acceptance we ur whit we ur. And only a Higher Power, which I choose to call god, can change us.’

Our gathering was back on track. ‘Any oer, new members?’ He stared at me and others followed his gaze.

Laura shifted in her seat, a slight movement of her body and thighs to give me the space to stand up and proclaim myself. I kept my head down and my mouth shut. The joyous cacophony of affirmation wasn’t for me. Anger grew in me to tell them what was what and how far they could go and stuff it. I was an outcast among outcasts.

Shutting my eyes, I drifted through the rest of the meeting, listening to the familiar and unfamiliar language. But when the meeting broke up, and they were bringing out the tea and coffee, sausage rolls and sandwiches from the kitchen area, I woke up. I brushed past people I knew, cutting off what they were saying. I made my way towards George. He was standing with wee Jim sitting on the edge of the pool table.

They watched me approaching and smiled like Mormons when you answered the door. I stuck my hand out.

‘Twenty quid!’

George didn’t quibble. He pulled it out and handed me the note and explained to wee Jim about the bet we’d made.

‘Gie me a minute,’ George chortled and bounded away. ‘And I’ll gie you a lift doon the road. I’ll jist get a pish and a pie—No that I need another pie.’ He patted his belly.

Wee Jim started in on me. ‘So this is the path yev chosen?’

I wasn’t going to reply, but a peevish desire to justify myself made me speak out. ‘I didnae choose any path. It chose me.’

‘Pish,’ replied wee Jim. ‘Yeh know its pish.’

Laura came towards us, parting her followers at the knees like Ben Hur at the chariot race. She sounded out of breath when she reached us. ‘I’m just going now. And I wondered if you needed a lift. I never got the chance to properly thank you for everything you did for me.’

I glanced at wee Jim and scratched at my head to check whether my brain had melted like a wax effigy. ‘I might,’ I admitted sticking the twenty quid in my pocket.

‘I need a lift tae,’ said wee Jim. ‘An I’m jist goin.’