Dougie Lets Himself Go

Contributed by Nicolas Papaconstantinou on 27/08/09

So I’m in this greasy spoon, down on Mary Street. It was back when I was doing temp work, and as last-lad-on-the-job I was out shopping for everyone’s mid-morning fried-egg and mushroom sandwiches.

I wasn’t foreign to the area, so I knew well enough to keep myself to myself, as I sat at one of the tables nearest the counter, waiting for the sarnies to be made. Head down, half-listening to the banter of the old woman and tall, tanned and handsome guy behind the counter. At odds utterly with the clientele and area, the two of them sounded like preening old biddies working in a local hairdresser.

This was back when those places were still as permeated with cigarette smoke as bacon fat. I’ve never been a smoker, but I’ve always been certain that certain food just tastes better when it’s made in grimy places. The sheer volume of fried-egg, cheese and mushroom sandwiches I ate back then only bolster that viewpoint.

After a while, the camp guy called me by name, and I stood up to receive the grease-spotted paper bags full of oily bounty.

As I turned to leave, someone over near the door called my name.

It was Dougie.

He was sitting at a table with his back to the big window that fronted the place, which was why we hadn’t noticed each other. I hadn’t seen him in a while, and he didn’t look good.

“Alright, mate?” He called, ever genial. He pushed the seat opposite him out with his foot, inviting me to sit. It’d been a while since I’d seen him, so I sat.

We talked for a while, catching up, but we could both tell that I was distracted by the stuff on the table in front of him.

On his plate – and bear in mind this was around ten in the morning – was a double cheeseburger, half-eaten, oily mushroom and onion making themselves known under the saturated bap. The unreal yellow of the cheese punctuated brightly by the acid redness of ketchup squirted from the tomato-shaped plastic dispenser on the table. The burger dominated the plate, but the rest of it was crammed full of chips, fried egg, and beans.

Which was striking on its own, but combined with the half-smoked cigarette in the little foil ashtray that he kept taking drags from, and the carrier bag full of lager cans next to his mug of coffee, it made a slightly shocking tableau.

“Blimey, Dougie, you look well.” I said, and the grin on my face obviously told him that I meant the opposite.

The thing is, I’ve known plenty of walking car-crashes, but Dougie hadn’t ever been one of them. He liked a drink, and a smoke, but he was always in pretty good shape, compared to the rest of us.

But now he looked like shit. His cheeks were puffy from over-eating, but drawn and dry from chain smoking. When he shifted in his seat, you could tell that his previously imposing frame was all off-kilter – round at the belly, but thinned out at the wrists.

He grinned, and said “Yeah, looking good, eh?” then took a massive, painful looking bite out of the burger.

“Steady on, mate!” I said, instinctively. I knew it wasn’t really any of my business, but fear that he might choke himself made me blurt it out.

“Ah, it’s alright…” he said, after forcing the mouthful down, “…I’ll get hit by a bus tomorrow.”

“I suppose.” I said, worried. As I watched him take another puff, I remembered the bag of sandwiches, and started feeling the pull of obligation. I stood up, and said, “I’d better go, mate. Good seeing you, though, yeah?”

He nodded, a big smile on his face. “You too, mate.”

I’d got to the door, my back to him, before I twigged what he’d actually said.

“You mean, ‘I might get hit by a bus tomorrow’.” I said to the back of his head. He shrugged.

“Yeah, maybe.” He chuckled darkly. “Or maybe I know something you don’t.”

I laughed, though afterwards I wasn’t entirely sure why it had seemed to be the right thing to do.

I never saw Dougie again.