Lucky3

In short shrill bursts, Cassie received lots of phone calls, from her sister and family. All of them were to do with the same thing. Your Bob was doing this. Your Bob was doing that. She didn’t say anything much and knew I felt he was old enough to take care of himself.

But Bob brought his washing down for Cassie to do. And if he never, she went and got it. He dropped in for meals and snacks, when he felt like it. And he thought our house was like FineFare, without the hassle of a checkout and people asking for a donation because they packed your plastic bags. He just filled his own with toilet rolls, and tins, and once even took the bleach from beneath our sink home with him. Sometimes, he didn’t even bother, and I’d get up in the morning and he’d be sprawled out in a sleeping bag on the couch, with the telly still on and his collie dog, Jack, sleeping on top of him.

The dog would pad down when it saw me and go and hide beneath the kitchen table. He’d that cat like quality to disappear. Sometimes, in fact most of the time, I thought that Jack was more intelligent than Bob. He was certainly a lot less hassle.

The funny thing was it was Bob’s girlfriend’s dog. Andrea was only about sixteen, but looked twelve. She always wore a white baseball cap, down over her eyes, and chewed gum like an American GI. Andrea’s dad was an alcoholic and her mum was dead, so she’d ended up the Children’s Home, at Risk Street. Andrea hated drink; anything to do with drink, and all drinkers. So, just like that, Bob stopped. They seemed happy enough, rolling about the carpet, tickling each other and playing at dummy fighting in our living room. But sometimes Andrea would go into one of her huffy-puffys, with her baseball cap pulled down even lower over her eyes and sit on one end of the couch chewing a hole in her gum. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. But Bob had to keep saying he was ‘Sorry,’ ‘Sorry,’ ‘I’m Sorry,’ in that whinny voice, that spoke of love or being stupid, or a mixture of both.

It was one of those days when the sun shone, and they’d decided not to roll about out living room carpet, that the phone went. Cassie wasn’t in, so I had to answer. It was Steve Gouch. He was about the same age as me, and I kinda knew him from somewhere or nowhere; I didn’t know how he’d got my number, but that didn’t matter.

‘You’ll need to come down,’ he said, ‘Andrea’s going nuts in there screaming and shouting and asking for help. My wife’s talking to her through the letterbox’.

Cassie always had a spare key for Bob’s flat, so that she could give him it when, after six days of lying on the couch, he’d finally admit he didn’t stay with us and had lost his. I didn’t know where it was, but I did know that she’d left a key to get cut with the wee shop on Dumbarton Road, that also re-heeled shoes and Bob’s flat wasn’t far from that.

I was out of breath and I’d forgot my fags when I got to Bob’s flat. Of course, he stayed just beneath the swirling clouds, in the top flat of a tenement block. On every vertiginous grey landing, of black rail and brown banister, was the mountain goat of the tenement block; the scabby dog. I don’t know why Stevie had called his dog ‘Kaiser,’ maybe it was a bit of dog whispering psychology, to make it think big and brutal, rather than yakky and nippy. But I found it difficult to thank him, for his phone call, while trying to playfully nudge Kaiser away with my boot, and not just volley it down the stairs, which I was tempted to do anyway.

Steve’s wife was the other side of attractive, for peroxide blond, and she wasn’t one to give out gratuitous smiles either, but was still standing outside Bob’s front door when I scaled the final few stairs. She shook her head and walked quickly away slamming her front door behind her.

‘Thanks,’ I echoed after her, but wasn’t sure if she’d heard.

I tried the new key in the lock, not sure if it was something to do with the door, my key fiddling technique, or the key needed a wee bit more out of it.

‘Andrea,’ I shouted through the door, ‘is Bob there?’

‘He’s no here!’ I could hear the sob in her voice.

‘Well, can you push against the door. I cannae get it open.’

‘Ok,’ she sniffed.

I kept turning and turning the key, until my fingers were sore. I could hear her muffled sob on the other side of the door, as if she was trying to keep it in, but just couldn’t. I knew it wouldn’t work, and I’d need to go back down to that bastard that hadn’t cut the key right and robbed me. I’d rob him. Then the key clicked and I almost pushed Andrea out of the road, scared that the door would somehow lock itself again, before it unlocked.

I think that was the first time I’d seen Andrea without a baseball cap on, and her long red hair all fanned out. She was sitting slumped on the floor still in her pyjamas, but looked unhurt. I quickly looked past her, part of me, waiting for the danger that was in the next room to appear. I held my breath, stepping by her, into the natural light of the living room, then through, nudging open the bedroom door and into the kitchen. There was nothing. Nothing.

Andrea stumbled into the living room, her eyes and nose as red as her hair.

‘Andrea. What’s all this screaming and shouting about?’ I asked.

She picked a spot the couch, the furthest away place from me to sit, and carefully unfolded herself; her bare feet poking out of her pyjamas and crossed her legs. She picked up the packet of fags on the corner unit and lit one.

‘It’s him,’ she said, blowing smoke into the air.

I waited.

‘He went away without telling me,’ she looked up at me to see if that was enough, but then added, ‘he locked me in’.

‘So?’ I said, trying to understand. ‘Bob will be back soon? You could have put the telly on; washed some dishes; did some cleaning. You weren’t going to be locked in all day. And even if you were. What’s the problem? What’s all this carry on about?’

‘I don’t like it,’ she said, with a petted lip, that Kaiser the dog howling next door, would have been proud of.

‘I need to go,’ I said, before I started howling myself.

‘Can you no wait until he comes back?’ she asked, in a voice half girl-half woman, shifting in her seat, and looking directly at me.

‘No,’ I said, turning to leave.

‘Wait,’ she said, bouncing up from the couch, ‘and I’ll get changed and come with you’.

‘Here’s a key,’ I said, placing it carefully down on the table in front of her. ‘Let yourself out, or stay in, but I don’t want any more of these phone calls and I don’t want any more of this crap’.

‘It’s not my fault,’ she said, curling her bare feet under herself on the couch and settling down for what looked like a long stay.

I didn’t slam the door when I left. It wasn’t my house, but I felt like borrowing Kaiser from next-door, sneaking back in and attaching him to Andrea’s throat. But she’d probably bite back.

Andrea and Bob got the dog they called Jack, from the Cat and Dog Home at Milton the next day, to keep her company, but I wondered if she secretly knew what I’d been thinking when I’d left.