“Make your own dinner, Romeo.” She threw the tea towel at him. “And if your girlfriend scabs your face that sore, make sure and think twice afore you put anything else near her.”
The slow hours he spent away from James felt overwhelming. His legs thrummed with a restless energy that irritated Jodie. The hours felt filled with nothing. It was time to sleep and eat and think of things to tell him when he saw him again, stupid little things hardly worth repeating, but he knew James wouldn’t mind.
As they lay around James’s living room one afternoon, James had seemed restless, swinging his shinty stick while they watched television. He sat up suddenly with a demented look upon his face. He was giggling to himself as he draped a blanket and then a bath towel across his shoulders. He pulled his woollen hat upwards till it sat on the very top of his head and resembled a peaked mitre. “Wait. Wait.” James held his caman as though it was a ceremonial mace, and then he turned to face Mungo. He extended his right hand, holding his index and ring fingers aloft as though he was hailing a bus. “Guess who I am?”
Mungo snorted. “Ah dunno. A bam in a bath towel?”
“Naw. I’m you.”
There was a mug of tap water they had been sharing; it somehow made the water taste sweeter to be drinking from the same vessel. Mungo motioned for James to pass it to him. “Fuck off, James. How’s that me?”
James threw his arms wide in a show of saintly grace. He flicked his fingers in an invitation for the believers to come forward and adore him. “Come to me, my child.”
Mungo thought about it. He wanted to obey.
“It’s you. It’s St Mungo.” James turned his profile to the daylight. “It’s the statue they have of you above Kelvingrove Museum. Have you no even seen it?”
Mungo had never been to Kelvingrove, and although it was only a few miles away, he had never been to the West End. To admit this would bring out a feeling of inferiority in him and he wanted so badly for them to remain equals, the very, very same. Mungo rolled his eyes and motioned for the communal chalice again.
James handed him the mug of tap water with a papal flourish of his hand. “Bless you, my son.”
Mungo took a long slug of water. “Wait. Are you wearing your big sister’s trackies?”
James looked down quickly. “Naw!” They were the same trackie bottoms he had been wearing for the past three days. They could do with a wash. “Piss off. Don’t come wide with a holy saint, son.” Mungo was laughing to himself when James looked up again. “How? Is that a bowl cut you’ve got?” He stepped forward and tugged on Mungo’s forelock. “Wait, you do have a bowl cut?”
They had crossed this line a day or two before. They had wandered from timid tenderness to affection wrapped in insults. It was a lovely place for two boys to be: honest, exciting, immature.
“It’s not a bowl cut.” Mungo slurped the metallic water. He peered at James over the chipped edge. “Besides, nice try, wingnut. Your first miracle as a holy saint should have been to fix those massive ears.”
“Don’t you like ma ears?” James was towering over him.
“Aye,” he grinned. “But can you move a bit to the left? I cannae see the sky.”
James made a grab for the mug. He tipped it and poured the water on to Mungo’s lap. “Piss yourself often, do ye?”
Mungo hooked his leg around James’s and brought him easily to the carpet, water sprayed everywhere. He had found someone he could say the cruellest things to and they would not leave. He didn’t care anymore if his lips were sore. They kissed and sucked and bit and lay on top of each other all the way through the evening news and well past the sour trumpets of Coronation Street. As much as they had kissed it had not yet gone any further. It was enough to put his hand up James’s shirt and feel the broad muscles of his back undulate as he rubbed himself against Mungo. James preferred to keep his own hands in the crook of Mungo’s back, softly stroking the downy hair that was growing above his buttocks. It made Mungo feel sleepy, it made him feel safe.
They pushed against each other harder now. He could feel James stiffen through his thick trackies. He moved his hand and used the back of it to rub where it was warmest, then he turned his palm to it and cupped it gently. James let out a low sigh. He pressed his forehead against Mungo’s, his breath was sweet with sugar and cereal milk. “Do ye want to?”
“I dunno.” Mungo was not sure what he was asking. So far James had been walking down a path ahead of him, while Mungo trailed behind. He led Mungo almost by the hand and several times when he stopped to look at him, it hurt Mungo to feel that the boy with the sticky-out ears might have already been down this road with someone else. He had wanted them to walk it for the first time together.
James raised himself on to his elbows, the front of his trousers tented and damp. As he left the room Mungo felt abandoned, exposed. Pulling his knees to his chest, he wondered what he had done wrong.
“I wanted to show you something.” James came back into the front room, a magazine in his hand. He was flicking through it, looking for something in particular, and Mungo knew from the naked contorted bodies and the cheap sound of the paper what the magazine was. “I visited my aunt once in Dundee. They sold these in the bus station. I missed two buses home before I grew the courage to buy it.”
“They let you buy it?”