Bill and the UFO30

‘So where does he live?’ Summy tried to keep his voice casual, but he couldn’t help it getting a bit high pitched. It was something to do with hormones and receptionists with long red hair and even longer legs that twirled on a chair and spoke with a woman’s voice so deep it might have come swimming from the belly of a whale, like a female Jonah on gonadocorticoids. His pecker had almost worn a hole in the front of his Wranglers. If it hadn’t been for the metal casing of the zip it would have probably burst all Christianising attempts at discretion and civility by not pointing your dick at the person not speaking to you. He’d found it hard not to look at the receptionist’s ballooning uncorked breasts. Wendy helped by being Wendy. That grounded him. The shelf like structure of the barrier also hid the worst of his excess. He ran from behind Rab, Wendy and Phil, scuttled sideways, backwards and forwards, along the sheet glass window, like a spider with only three legs and breenched out of the office door into the sunlight, his dick pointing the way like a Supernova he hoped they wouldn’t notice. His question was an attempt to catch Bill unawares.

But Bill was born unaware and tried to hone the God given skill. ‘Who?’ His voice had an edge of it’s own as he dragged the last of the lit fag he’d cadged and meant to share, but didnae, along the uneven facing bricks of the office.

Todger barked as Phil burst out of the door into a bubble of sunshine, with Wendy a step behind and Rab at the back adjusting his shoulder muscles like a dancer meeting the day. The only one that didn’t ignore the dog was Summy, who crouched down to pet him and hide his juvenile problem in a bout of dog worrying dalliances. Todger wasn’t fooled. The smell coming from Summy was the equivalent of hitting a drunk, last thing at night, with a pie supper in the face and saying ‘don’t eat that’. Todger barked and growled in delight, dribbled and drilled his way forward. Summy, like a toreador, with a right hand for a cape, backed away and tried to keep Todger from sniffing his crotch. The Clydebank Post receptionist coming to the window to see what all the fuss was about and parking her tits on the thin sheet of glass almost unmanned him.

‘What the fuck is he doin’?’ Rab growled and shook his head as if the world had gone mad and was against him.

‘He’s tryin’ to hide his hard on.’ Wendy sniffed and red crept into her face like a tulip trying to hide its bloom.

Rab’s head jerked round. ‘Don’t use words like that.’

‘What? Hard on?’ Wendy tried to brazen it out, but her tulip face turned purple.

‘Hanky-panky,’ shouted Bill, rubbing his hands together, making Todger stop barking for a second and tilt his head towards his owner.

‘I’ll fuckin’ kill him.’ Rab swung round to face Summy and booted Todger with a sideways swipe on the arse, the kind of pass that kept the dog on the deck and skittering down the pavement kerb line of Dumbarton Road in silent shock.

Rab’s fists balled up and his legs lengthened into the gunfighter walk of the hardman. ‘You been tryin’ to poke my sister?’ His voice was a needle tattooing the kind of pain he was going to cause into Summy’s head.

Summy’d thought about and dreamed about the day when he would get the better of Rab. It was always the same. Rab would say something to him and that would be it. He’d go berky and knock him out with one punch, or grab him by his stupid cut-down Wrangler jacket that smelled of chip grease and shake him about a bit first and then knock him out. There was always more people than Wendy, Phil, Bill and his stupid looking dog there, edging closer, scenting blood, cheering him on in his dream.

‘A didnae,’ was all his tongue could find to say. His legs, pedalling backwards, stumbling, almost falling.

‘Well, she said you did.’

Rab advanced quicker than Wendy’s sneer and his hands bunched Summy’s red Adidas top and pulled him almost off his feet towards him into the spittle from the corner of his mouth, or stick the heid on him range.

Nobody was more surprised than Bill to find himself flinging out his hands and in his forward zombie motion blindsiding Rab and almost knocking him off his feet. The last fight he’d won had been in primary 1 in Miss Boyle’s class and that had been against Ian Murray. Everybody, even his two wee Lilliputian sisters, got the better of Ian Murray. Ian Murray practically lay down on the playground with a big sign saying ‘kick me’. It had given young Bill no great satisfaction winning the fight with Ian Murray, but he had to take whatever satisfaction had been thrown at him. There and then he’d decided that he would be a lover not a fighter, or so he liked to remember. It had always been more an academic study of colour magazines with the pages stuck together than a practical interest. It was that more than anything else that made him act so stupidly. This was no Ian Murray. This was Rab Morrison.

Todger barked a dance in between the three of them. Wendy rushed Bill and threw a haymaker that caught him on the eye socket. He felt nothing but a shiny pain like a ten pence piece and then pride that he felt nothing. There was a first time for everything. Todger growled and bared his teeth making Wendy uncertain and back away. Rab, shamefaced, pushed himself into the fray slapping, not punching Summy.

Phil flashed in between them. His childish cries of ‘Ok. Ok. Ok,’ and his windmill waving arms making everything slow down.

‘I didnae poke at her Rab.’ Summy had the desperate voice of a drowning man.

‘Well, she said you did.’ Rab looked to his sister.

Wendy stood a little apart from the others. Her knuckles were bruised and hair looked greasy with sweat the way that Rab’s did, which was unusual for someone so particular about that side of things. Her voice, however, had lost none of its whip. ‘I said he’d a hard on.’

Rab shook his head and his eyes closed again momentarily at the shock that his little sister could use such language, but he wasn’t willing to let it go. ‘Did you have a hard on?’ He eyeballed Summy and took a step towards him. Out of the side of his eyes he watched Bill and his stupid dog.

Summy took a step backwards; seeing cowardice as the best form of attack. ‘I didnae have a hard on.’

‘She said you did.’ Rab took another step forward.

Wendy pulled at the little floral patterns on her blouse, straightening the bouquets out, in case they wrinkled when she gave him handers.

Bill didn’t know what to do. He’d used up all his courage and just stepped off the pavement and onto Dumbarton Road to give Rab a clean runway.

Todger slinked behind him and whined to be fed.

Only Phil with his hands up like an outlaw giving up the ghost, ‘no, no. no, Rab, we’re all mates here,’ stopped the latter taking off and flying after Summy.

‘Hing on. Hing on Rab.’ Summy reached the desperate stage of cowardice were pleading no longer worked. He goggle-eyed the path behind him and wondered how quickly he could sprint along it and hit the relative safety of a step ahead of the guy behind him. ‘I did have a hard on.’

The last remark stopped Rab like a blow to the guts. He’d expected anything, but an admission of guilt.

‘But it was one of those false hard ons.’ Summy’s hands came up like Padre Pio explaining the red dots. ‘We all get them.’

‘That’s true,’ said Bill, who was about to say more, but then changed his mind before his words buckled like a spooked wheel.

Phil bit at his lip and nodded assent.

Rab looked at Wendy to see how she was taking it. ‘He said it was a false hard on.’

Wendy sniffed. ‘That’s all right then.’ She turned away and seemed to become engrossed in the Town Hall clock striking the hour and the smell of sweat, which seemed to be coming from her oxters. She wondered if anybody else smelled it.

Todger wandered across and nosed her leg. She patted him absent- mindedly, tickling him under the chin in the way that the dog liked.