Rat bites3

It was one of those days. Mac almost missed the 46 bus. He had to get a bus because the back tyre, driver’s side, of his retro- lime-green E-type was flat. He pulled all the crap out of the back, lifted the carpet and the spare was even flatter. The boot banged down like whiplash, and his breathing was ragged as if he’d gone the last round with Ali, then Smokin’ JoeFrazier stepped into the ring. Mac needed a fag, but was all out. He couldn't look, but had to, and he just knew, just knew, the keys were still in the ignition, he’d locked the car’s front door and he’d have to go home for a spare set and bring them back. It was a knock-out blow.

The stale smell of deoderant and perfume hung like an invisible wall Mac had to break through and catch his breath, but was lucky enough to get a seat on the lower deck of the 46. There were a couple of school girls sitting in front of him, with their green and gold blazers and Latin inscription on the pocket. Nobody ever read Latin, so it could have meant anything. He’d an aisle seat. The elderly man, who had the window seat, was reading a Metro. He was very proper, very correct, sure to make sure that no matter how busy the bus got their knees would never touch. In another life he would have worn a bowler hat. Even if the 46 bus hit a landmine at Scotstoun Mac was sure their knees would only glance off each other in the passing. The Metro reader, despite his slicked back hair, smelled of booze and fags, as if he’d been dipped into an all-nighter inside a Tennents’s pint tumbler, pulled out, shook about and placed in the seat next to him. Mac’s neck was stiff and his knees were just as bad, so he knew how he felt. Something was wedged down on top of his toes from the seat in front. It was warm and sodden, and about the weight of a rucksack, but had the feel of manure. The air conditioning blasted out heat, which in the thermal conditions smelled of pasty old socks, but seemed to be aimed primarily at him, as if it knew he couldn’t take off his Crombie coat because, what with the Xmas excess, he’d put on a bit of a belly, and one of his shirt buttons was missing, pinged lose, as if it couldn’t wait for the delivery of twins or triplets. Mac tried texting his wife, something lovey-dovey and not the usual ‘will be home late,’ but his fingers felt like thumbs opening a bottle of ginger-beer. He also felt as if someone was watching over his shoulder, and the screen looked a bit wonky and small. The journey home should have taken about forty minutes tops, but the bus trundled between Partick and Knightswood and that took at least thirty. Mac tried to make the conviction stick that getting the bus home was for the best, as he had perhaps too much of that ‘53 Margaux. He was good at that. It had been expensive and he’d drank more and more of it to convince himself that it tasted rich enough. Driving home could not have cost him more than the £900 bottle.

The young guy in the seat in front got off when the 46 got into Clydebank and Mac was able to move his toes. He turned round to see how much traffic was behind them. Annie, his school boy's girlfriend's sister was sitting on the back seat, her head against the window, looking bone-tired and straight ahead. She was certainly much older, coarser around the face, but not in a bad way, and gave no sign that she saw him looking at her.

Mac’s head whipped round and he too looked to the front of the bus, his head dropping down a fraction, as if that disguised him. Annie had been unable to get a seat and was one of the passengers standing in the aisle. She smiled such a smile at him that his heart did a handstand, and he was happy, but realised just as quickly that she hadn’t seen him; his male-pattern-baldness had camouflaged him as effectively as a nylon pair of stockings over his head. It took him back; that smile intended for her sister.

No stolen kisses-they were given freely, abundantly, so that they breathed each other in at every opportunity. She smoked. Mac tasted nicotine, her lips, and was addicted, could never go back. The Victorians had a name for premarital relations among the lower classes: ‘bundling,’ and that is exactly what it was, a peek-a-boo around clothing, hands around the frames of bodies, so close that they sculpted the slippery slopes of desire and reeled each other in. Her black hair was cut boyish, tapering in at the back and up and over, like a cute Elvis, there was something tomboyish about her long legs, hard and heavy blue-jeaned, with boots, not shoes, but her breasts, when they were uncorked were the champagne of his lips. She had one little black hair that hung down on the brown mottled aureole that somehow made their perfection pure. Annie was ashamed of it as a full-grown beard and moustache. She clung to whatever cover she could get, to hide its hardy ugliness, and the tug-of-war of tongues and desire would have to begin rocking and rolling anew.

Mac didn’t know he was holding his breath as Annie moved up the bus, swaying her hips this way and that, adjusting her feet, her hands picking out the guard rails and the seats’ hand- holds, until the jolt of the bus as it turned back onto Kilbowie Road pushed his knee against his neighbour’s and something like a sigh escaped his mouth. One of Annie’s irises was coloured brown, the other sky-blue. She hadn’t changed. Not much. Not as much as him. He looked down at his feet, as if something was stuck there. Her hand was poised on the rail, momentarily flickering like a Luna moth he could have reached out, cupped and captured, but he’d let her go. He’d always let her go.

‘Just promise me,’ she’d once asked, ‘just promise me you’d never cheat on me.’

Mac had promised her with tongue kisses and hands that never let up and would never let her down. It was coming up to his stop at The Plots. He didn’t look behind him. He didn’t need to. His belly played the part and was sucked inward, and his lips like puppet maquillage props put on a smile for the young school girls that looked up at him as he passed them in the aisle.

‘Hey Baldy.’ He recognised the throaty voice of Annie’s sister. ‘You’re still a wanker.’

‘Thanks.’ Mac winked at the driver of the 46 bus as if he was his chauffer. Out of the corner of his eyes he looked up the aisle at Annie sitting bolt upright like a school-marm . He stepped off the bus onto the pavement at Dumbarton Road, crossed over and went into The Park Bar needing a curer.