Love Story 8

I agreed to go with Pastor Colin on a mission. He expected me to know what it was without telling me. His silver Ford Escort was more reliable. He kept it clean as the inside of a washing machine, even the ashtrays were spotless.

‘Put your seatbelt on,’ he instructed me, before we left the church hall armed with prayer books and his favourite Bible.

Only sinners were forced to Clunk-Click-Every-Trip. God was on his side. A strap of grey webbing wouldn’t save him from going through the windscreen, but Jesus would.

He was taciturn before I knew what it meant. I’d been collecting words from the Oxford English Dictionary because that was one of the few books in our nominal school library, which was a dilapidated shelf in Mrs Watson’s classroom where I often hid at playtime.

With the hot-air blower on and the windscreen wipers shuttling back and forwards I felt my eyes closing. I tried to hang onto what Ali had said when she said she wanted to get back together.

I was tempted to say ‘No,’ but her smile was held together by spittle lurking in the corner of her mouth. She was too much of a hunk to try and support if she cried and fainted. I remembered how Adam had been innocent too when he was thrown out of the Garden of Eden. He went on to father nations. I didn’t mind being a dad too much. It was better than being a poof.

I’d also heard the familiar tittle-tattle. Alasdair had dumped her for that girl whose name I could never remember. She had a braying laugh and her body was the size of a donkey sanctuary, but she had blonde hair. That gave her pretty status in most of the guy’s eyes. In my eyes to call her pretty made a mockery of justice and common sense. The light in her eyes were her brain cells dying as they flickered on and off like broken Christmas lights. Alasdair simplified it for everybody by boasting she was a much better ride. At the rate he was going he too would be the father of all nations.

Ali took up her old position in my bed as if she’d never been away. Huddling under the blankets to keep the heat in.

‘Brrr,’ she muttered, patting the pillow next to her. ‘Yeh want tae join me.’

I was conscious of Mum in the kitchen and Da in the room next door. Just through the thin walls. But I was more conscious of Ali wanted to slide together and kiss and cuddle and expecting something approaching  rumpy pumpy.

I sat on the edge of my bed. ‘It’s not that cold,’ I said, my teeth chittering. ‘I’m fine here.’

‘Suit yersel.’ She lay back snuggling into the pillows. She sat up and glowered at my collection of pop stars. Pinnned together but not exactly touching. I’d Slade and Sweet and T.Rex and all the butch men and their Number One band of equally big-haired band members.

‘Whit’s that?’ her nose crinkled as if she was smelling her ochters.

It took me a wee while to work out what she meant. I made a joke of it. ‘Welcome Home.’

‘But that’s the kind of hing my Ma doesnae even listen tae.’

‘I know,’ I nodded, half-smiling as if that was explanation enough.

I’d cut Peters and Lee out of a magazine—not the Jackie, obviously. They were like a glamourous married couple nobody knew. Long hair and glittery dresses, even my Da didn’t care where Peters put his hands on the piano’s keyboard, she was piping hot.

I always sided with the small fry. Peters might have had good hair and an equally shiny suit, but he had to wear dark glasses. He was easily led from one stool on a stage to another. A performing piano monkey. He probably bumped into Lee a few times, but didn’t even know Lee had breasts and was a real looker. The kind of girl Alasdair wouldn’t get to say he’d shagged for toffee.  

I wondered if I should learn a musical instrument and take piano lessons. I went as far as taking out the right kind of shirt and trousers I’d need to wear for public appearances out of my wardrobe and placing them on my bed.

Shoe polish was kept in a biscuit box with a tartan lid in the top cupboard in the hall. I had to tipote along the edge of the walls and ease the cupboard open. Peters would have heard me because blind people can hear everything, even your thoughts.

I worried about that as I polished my shoes. Sitting side-saddle on the bed with a hardon.  By the time Peters and Lee became Peters and Me, I’d have hairy arms and need to wear a clip-on tie. But when our voices duetted like flutes to high and strange delights, our world would move at a higher speed to compensate for the ringing applause. I’d need to lead Peters on the encores.

Pastor Collin’s car passed Drumchapel which I thought was our destination. I worried about getting home. The golden pathway in The Wizard of Oz butted against the road to ivory towers in Bearsden. Surgeons, bankers, and businessmen sent their children to local schools. I was sure we were lost among the smaller of the big houses. We parked on the road outside a non-descript two-storey that had been painted a bright colour to blend in with the sun.

We made our way up throw the foliage, and I tucked in behind Pastor Collin, carrying the prayer books. The door was opened by a radiant young woman wearing the glimmer of dress that Peters would have to use his fingertips to find. It showed all her assets. Behind her was the outline of the treble cleft of a grand piano on a mahogany floor.

I assumed again, we were at the wrong house.

Pastor Colin was rarely wrong. ‘Dr Kim?’ He smiled at the young lady with his mismatched teeth. Giving her time to suck in her breath and reach for the smelling salts as a cure for his foul breath. She pulled the door over at her back. We could hear a dog yapping at her back.

She corrected him. ‘Dr K-H-A-N.’

He adjusted the leg of his specs and rubbed at his watery eye and apologised for his mispronunciation.

‘You are the exorcists?’

I liked her pronunciation. It was cute. I wondered if I could get away with speaking like that without being pounded to mush.

Pastor Collin went into his usual boring spiel about not being exorcists but God being something or other. She looked over his head and down at me and smiled. I tucked my chin into my chest because I glowed with satisfaction because she’d noticed me.

‘Come in,’ she said, when she heard the phone ringing.

I was glad to get inside and longed to run my fingers over the frame of the piano. She wound the phone cable around her fingers and waved with the other hand as she talked non-stop at a frightening speed in a language I didn’t understand. She took time off to yell at a little Pomeranian dog that barked and yakked and danced around us still standing in the hallway. It tried to nip at my heels and I wondered if I’d get away with a fly boot, but she was watching us.

When she finished on the phone, the dog dashed to her and she swooped and picked it up and cuddled it to her Amazonian breasts. It licked her chin and she kissed its lapping tongue. It was so disgusting I felt like clapping.

I glanced at the side of Pastor Colin’s face. He was equally transfixed.

When she put the dog down it howled outrage and barked incessantly. Dashing between our feet and back to his Amazonian owner for approval.

She waved a hand and flicked a wrist in Pastor Colin’s direction. ‘Take Zissy outside and exorcise it.’

‘Well?’ she acted surprised, when Pastor Colin didn’t jump to it.

‘You mean exercise?’ I said. ‘Like dog walkers?’

She used two hands this time to sweep us on our way. ‘Yes, exorcise. I heard you offered this service for freebie.’