Johnny gave me a look that said he knew me for a liar, but he didn’t try to argue.
Instead he reached into his pocket.
'Look, I’ll give you my number. It’d be good to catch up.' He pulled out his wallet and flicked through its contents. 'Fuck, I never have any cards when I need them.' The thought of Johnny Mac with business cards amused me and I smiled in spite of myself. 'Here,' he took out a bit of paper and scribbled a couple of telephone numbers and an address on them. 'Now you can get me at work, home or on the move. Mobiles, eh? They were yuppies-only when we were knocking about.'
I glanced at the scrap of paper and saw a half-familiar address. I pocketed the note, intending to drop it in the street when I got outside.
'No, no.' Johnny shook his head he knew my game. 'I went to the trouble of writing that down, the least you can do is keep it safe.'
I fished the paper out of my pocket, found my wallet and slipped it in.
'Happy now?'
'Not really, but it’ll do.'
'Catch you later then, Johnny.'
'Aye,' he said. 'Make sure you do or I’ll hunt you down.'
I made my way into the street. Eilidh gave me a wave as I passed her table. I looked straight ahead and pretended not to notice.
I wasn’t surprised that my mother and Johnny Mac had run into each other. However hard it pretends to be a city, Glasgow is just a big village. I’d known it wouldn’t be long till someone recognised me, and news of my return filtered along the M8 to the pensioner bungalow in Cumbernauld. That was one of the reasons I’d only held out a month after my return before phoning her, that and the brown envelope from another time that she was keeping safe for me. Mum came through the day after I phoned, as I knew she would.
The clock outside Buchanan Street bus station is a fey sculpture, a working clock frozen fleeing towards the entrance on long aluminium legs. I wondered what had come first, the image or the title, 'Time Flies’ — too bloody true.
On reflection the bus station probably wasn’t the best place to hook up. It had been renovated a few years back, but no one had bothered to maintain it since and the building was shrugging off the revamp. I arrived early, or perhaps the bus was late, so I took a seat on one of the cold perforated metal benches that sit on the edge of the concourse unprotected from the elements, smoked a cigarette and watched the buses sailing in and out of their slots, sliding across the forecourt like reckless ocean liners on speed. A bus left the far stand, the faces of its passengers blurred behind fogged-up windows. As it revved into top gear a second coach sped into the concourse from Buchanan Street, slicing towards the departing bus. They faced each other like reflections in a mirror and I tracked their course, tensing myself for impact. Just when collision seemed inevitable one of the drivers, I’m not sure which, peeled back and they cruised by with a quick exchange of salutes, one two-fingered, the other a single digit.
A woman of around my mother’s age sat at the far end of the bench. I gave her a reassuring smile and said, 'They should set that to music.' She shot me a sour look and shifted away from me. I muttered, 'Stuck up old cow,' just loud enough for her to hear, then threw my cigarette butt onto the concrete, walked to the edge of the stand and looked out into the forecourt. The wind had full reign across the open space. It blew down from the Necropolis, through the infirmary, across the motorways and round the high rises until it could reach its goal and whip loose grit into the inadequate shelter. I rubbed my eyes. There was an illusion waiting to present itself on the edge of my mind.
'Excuse me, Jim,' an old man stood at my left hand. 'Could you help us out with my fare to Aberdeen?'
I searched in my pocket for some change, the illusion still shifting angles in my head.
'There you go.'
I put fifty pence into his palm. He glanced at the coin before folding it in a firm grip, like a child scared of losing his pocket money before he made it to Woolworth’s.
'I need to get away frae this godforsaken city and back to civilisation, see?'
'Aye, well, I hope you make it.'
'This is a bad place, son; Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing on London. Land of bloody heathens.'
'You’re not in London,' I said, distracted away from my vision of collisions and vanishing buses.
'I know that, I’m no bloody daft.'
'Fair enough.'
I was through with illusions, magical and philosophical. I pushed the calculations from my head and turned towards the benches, but they were full now. The wind was growing sharper, cut through with a dampness that meant it would rain soon. I leaned against the wall of the shelter and the old man shifted with me, muttering something I couldn’t make out. The wind was bitter, but it wasn’t strong enough to carry away his tang. I wondered when he’d last had a wash. Maybe it’d been in London. I pulled out my half-empty pack of cigarettes.
'If I give you a fag will you go away?'
'That’s what you bloody yuppies are like.' The old man’s voice was getting higher. 'You think you can bloody buy and sell everyone. Well Jackie McArthur’s no for sale.'
The people on the benches turned towards us. I didn’t care, maybe it would be the last time I’d be the entertainment. I held the pack towards him.
'Aye fine, you can have one anyway, if you lower the volume.'
Jackie took a cigarette.
'Bloody fucking metropolitan yuppies. No room for a working man any more.'
