Steelie 4

Steelie nudged him. ‘Get another round in. Tae even think of Cockeyed Bill’s stink’s making me boak.’

Brodie’s eyes felt heavy. He hadn’t drunk whisky in years and was out of practice. Clinking glasses, murmured conversations, a jukebox striking on a familiar tune. High Noon. More a childhood memory made him morbid. Warbling and westerns and men in white hats drifted in front and behind them with their backs to the wall, swallowing the sharpness of the room like the smell of new rain.

Steelie’s gaze flickered over Sharon returning back behind the bar and glaring at them, then back to Brodie. He exhaled through his nose. ‘Aye.’

‘Who put that shite on,’ cried DJ, sniggering and joining the communal laughter. A regular who won more than he lost on the pool table. The cue ball rolled slowly down the white down the cushion. It kissed the black into the pocket. He whooped, brandishing his cue in triumph.  ‘Granny,’ he cried. ‘Get the drinks in, yeh fanny.’

 Connor. Maybe eighteen, maybe younger. Whippet thin. His puffer Moncler jacket giving him body. Unzipped just enough to show a designer tracksuit beneath. He kept his face closed, his movements quick, eyes darting across the room like he was waiting for confirmation that all his yellow balls were still on the table. ‘You hit the white ball, twice.’

DJ’s face glowed under the lights as if forged in the thick scent of beer, sweat, and fag smoke, his neck dipped into the damp wool of his jacket. His smile like a burst couch. ‘Whit?’

 ‘Yeh, nudged the white ball twice.’

‘Don’t talk shite.’

‘I’m jist saying.’ 

Steelie put a hand on the edge of the table. He got up from his seat with a huffed groan. ‘I need tae go for a pish,’ he told Brodie.

He picked up the cue ball as he was passing the pool table and rolled it towards the bottom back, hitting against a yellow ball and falling into the bag and rumbling down the shute into the machine.

‘You hit the white ball twice,’ he told DJ as he waddled past. ‘Accidental like, just a wee nudge.’

DJ’s hand tightened around the handle of the pool cue. He sneaked a look at Brodie before answering. ‘Maybe I did.’ He scattered the yellow balls on the table. ‘Fucking bastard,’ he chuckled. ‘I’ll get this fucking round in, then.’

Steelie came back from the bar clutching two double whiskies and a couple of packets of cheese and onion crisps.

‘I’d have got them,’ Brodie complained.

Steelie whistled the theme to High Noon. ‘Ne’er mind whit you’d huv done. It whit yer gonnae dae. The Playboy will have assembled his posse and they’ll be on their way here. Sooner, rather than later.’

Brodie’s finger traced the finger of his glass.

Steelie slumped into the seat beside him. ‘Tell you whit, we’ll play a wee game, while we wait.’

Brodie glanced sideways feigning interest with a knowing smile on his lips.

‘Did you e’er play wae a Ouija board when you were younger?’

‘No, my mom and dad were very religious. If they’d caught me or my brothers…’ He’d chucked at the idea. ‘There would have been hell to pay. Sheer hell.’

‘Well, you get the idea?’  

  ‘Yes.’

Steelie tapped his whisky glass. ‘We’ll take a wee drink before we start.’ He drunk it in a oner and banged the empty glass down on the table, upside down, the rim still wet.

‘You want me to drink my whisky?’

‘Not necessarily.’ Steelie cracked his knuckles. ‘It’s really up tae you?’ He tapped the upside down glass with his forefinger. ‘We’ve got oor mark here.’

Brodie leaned sideways to look at Steelie and the glass from a wider angle as if he was trying to catch him out. ‘What do I do?’

Steelie tore the piss out of him. ‘Whit dae yeh usually dae wae a Ouija board?’

  ‘You get an alphabet and letters.’ Brodie tried to explain with his big hands. ‘Yes and No.’

‘And whit next?’

The balls on the pool table rolled out of the machine, but one remained locked inside. DJ lifted the table and let it drop to the floor with a bang that sent out vibrations. A yellow ball trickled out.

Brodie rubbed at his eyes and squinted at Steelie’s pinkie finger atop the glass. He felt tired or drunk or both. ‘Is this really necessary?’

He shrugged. ‘Probably no. But we’re no goin anywere. Ur we?

‘Probably not.’

‘Right then. Hook yer wee finger through mine on top of the glass.’

‘Don’t you need candles and letters and words and a darkened room?’

Steelie scrunched up his face and stared at him. ‘Aye, we dae. You got any aw that stuff?’

‘No.’

‘Well, shut up and hook yer finger through mine.’ He waited until Brodie had put the tip of his pinkie on the glass and then pushed against it. Surprising him by hooking onto it. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s much better.’

Brodie leaned forward on the tips of his toes between their tables as if he was typing and not falling between them. ‘What do we do, now?’

‘Whit dae we usually dae?’

‘I don’t know.’

The glass jumped. Brodie jumped too. Catching his breath. He thought he’d heard something. A familiar voice whispering in his ear. ‘What was that?’

‘I was asking if yeh knew the difference between a ghost and a spirit?’

The glass bucked again.  Brodie could have sworn she’d said his name. Something inside him shifted and his hand jerked away from Steelie’s knocking a half-full glass of lager onto the floor.

‘Sorry,’ he apologised.

Steelie only roared with laughter. ‘That was pretty good. Yeh ur wae better than I’d have  thought. Must huv been aw they prayers  your mum, Martha said.’