Page 11 of Little Wing
‘Did you?’
He looked from her to the array of products and picked up a can with a picture of a winsome calf and lamb on the label. ‘To photograph umbilical spray? A career high, for sure.’
Michelle appeared to believe him and at once, he felt bad.
‘I’m teasing you,’ he said, ‘it’s those bolus applicator guns from yesterday that inspire me most. The shape of them, the glint of steel – how to capture in one shot all that they do and the lives that they save.’
She observed him for a moment. ‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘Yes.’
‘Funny.’ If she actually found it funny, her tone and her expression belied it.
Dougie grinned. Something had to lighten the monotony of the day ahead. ‘Let’s start with those calf sucking preventors – let’s have them over there, no filter, natural light to present them in all their spiked glory.’ He larked around, making a square frame shape with his fingers.
‘Fuck off!’ Michelle joshed. She picked one up. ‘Looks medieval. Pretty kinky, even.’
‘Poor cow,’ said Dougie and Michelle looked at him askance. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you – obviously.’
‘Take me out for a drink later?’
Dougie caught Stevo’s eye who gave him a comedic lewd wink. Michelle was currently all hands-on-hips and a jaunty raise of her eyebrow, waiting for an answer. She’d moved from coyly flirty by Wednesday, to lingering eye contact yesterday and now this talk of kinky shit with a pout. So, go for a drink when the job was done, maybe get a little drunk, maybe have a fumble, maybe have more than that? Dougie thought how his cock could do with it, God knows.
‘Sure,’ Dougie told her. But it did cross his mind: the enormous hassle of lugging his entire kit back at some ungodly hour tonight possibly pissed; or tomorrow, no doubt hungover and reeling with regret. And he said to himself, why don’t you simply say no?
‘Let’s do that,’ he said. And then, in a moment of clarity he called out, ‘Stevo! Radhu! You coming for a drink when we’re done?’
They did.
But Stevo and Radhu had families waiting and they didn’t stay long. It wasn’t the sort of pub conducive to hunkering down for the evening anyway. It felt cold. The air was tainted with the sticky-sour smell of stale beer and seating was on hard wooden chairs at sharp square tables. On a main road, with its unattractive exterior, it was the sort of place to stop by for just the one drink after work or a quick one en route to somewhere else. The regulars were sitting at the bar, tapping the beer mats perfunctorily on the counter, hunched and drinking alone, silent.
‘Well, it’s been nice meeting you, mate,’ Stevo said, making light work of two pints on the trot. ‘Good luck with everything.’ And it struck Dougie how plain it was to both of them that they’d likely never see each other again. It was what it had been – five days in a warehouse with agricultural randomness and meal deals from the local garage.
Dougie looked at the time. If he left now, the journey home would be stifling with rush hour and feel twice as long. If he left it, say, the time it took to drink one more pint, it would be more civilized out there; there’d be a seat for him and even a seat for his gear and he’d be back at his flat with much of the evening still left. It was as if Michelle could hear him thinking this through but she stared resolutely ahead, turning a deaf ear to it all. In her determination to get more drinks in, adding bags of crisps to her round, Dougie sensed she’d timetabled her entire evening.
She handed him another pint. This one with an even feebler head than the first. ‘What part of Ireland are you from?’
Dougie choked on his beer. ‘I’m—’
‘I’ve been to Dublin loads of times – my cousin lives there and you sound just like him.’
He didn’t want to embarrass her but he was biting down hard on the urge to say for fuck’s sake I’m Scottish. His island accent was soft, melodious, almost Scandic in comparison with, say, a Glaswegian’s – but it was unmistakably Scots.
‘I’m from Harris,’ said Dougie, ‘the Outer Hebrides?’ He watched her face carefully.
‘Is that not near Dublin, then?’
He didn’t know how to react now, really. His accent he would never disown and his homeland he would never deny.
‘No – nowhere near,’ he said. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘little boys’ room.’
The toilets were dank: cold black institutional loo seats, two chipped urinals, a frosted window that didn’t close, a cracked mirror mottled at the edges and a broken hand dryer. Dougie regarded his reflection. Maybe this was what anonymity could be. Not being Scottish. Not knowing Michelle’s surname. Not needing to know much else about her cousin in Dublin or her weekend plans or her phone number or anything, really. After being so exhaustively involved with both the drama and minutiae that Suze had brought with her, perhaps the simplicity of just liking Michelle’s face and of not really having to be the whole him could be refreshing.
God, you look tired, man.
Give it half an hour and the Tube’ll have a seat for you and another for your gear.
Fuck’s sake you’re thirty-eight, not seventy-eight.
