Glass:

The bar itself – the place in the bar where the alcohol is served – is an invitation to talk. If you sit down there by yourself, doesn’t really matter who you are, then someone’s going to come and speak with you even if it’s just the bartender. The table, by contrast, is the socialite’s nest. People like me come inside and sit at the bar because they want someone to talk to while the kind of people I was looking at occupy tables because they have someone to talk to. When I sat down there were lots of full tables but many stools unoccupied, and once my arms were set on the table I ordered a pint for company.
But like the phone calls and get-togethers with the boys my beer was not plugging the right hole. My eyes drifted over from it to survey the scene, having quickly passed over the bartop itself. When I sat down there was only one other person at it – a woman in a black jacket and wide-rimmed glasses. She kept a glass of something before her though touched it rarely, and to me she seemed awfully still. I hesitated calling out to her and then it seemed stupid, and so I picked up my glass instead. She was a generous distance from me; I would have to hop across the stools to actually talk to her if she was even interested. I shook my head for not paying better attention to my choice of seat.
And so my eyes wandered out, waiting for someone to sit nearby. There were enough patrons. The table perhaps nearest to me caught my eye, attended by a poorly dressed man sitting alone but with a pair of glasses before him. Each had started as a pint and had been whittled down to about the same level, the sweat on the cup’s outside adding to its allure. Tapping my finger on the wood I wondered who he waited for until a woman about his age in light blue jeans joined him. She was smiling like she had thought of something tremendously funny while away and now prepared to share the joke. I looked away. My own glass did not seem so inviting then and I thought it would look better in a pair, but that didn’t stop me drinking from it.
The man who joined me then was far better dressed. He called quickly out for what he wanted and then sat back in the stool while the bartender wielded his rags. He put his case to the floor and looked to be doing something similar to me when I spoke:
“You’re a man who knows what he wants.”
He turned suddenly and flashed a grin. “Always. What’re you drinking?”
“Beer.”
“Piss,” he said. “Never liked the taste of beer.”
He was a quick-talking Irishman, dressed finely and with a hat tucked under his arm which did not match it.
“What kind of Irishman doesn’t drink beer?”
“Whiskey,” he said, and the glass was put before him. “I never felt the need to pretend to like something I didn’t. Do you know?”
“Yeah,” I said and nodded. I glanced back at the couple and then to the Irishman, and decided to put them out from my mind.
“You from around here?”
“Hardly,” he said. “Born in Ireland but I live here now.”
“And do what?”
“Paralegal,” he said.
Then he asked me what I did but what I could see was occupying my mind instead of what I was saying. There was little leaving my lips worth thinking about. Pinned to his shirt was a pair of sunglasses, folded on and sitting at a funny angle. The sun flashed in my face as it had earlier in the day, and again I thought I should carve some space in the budget for a good pair.
Neither of us pressed each other on the details of our lives but we continued to drink like Irishmen. On the other end of the bar the woman with glasses pulled out her phone, and it seemed to relieve me. She was waiting for someone. She put it back in her pocket and looked ahead and I ordered another glass. My Irish friend stopped me and paid for mine and his.
“Do you have a name son?”
I told him.
“James,” he said, handing my glass to me though I could clearly reach it. As he did I found a high-end watch on his wrist, of a make I did not recognise but a brand I did. I continued to drink and listen to him talk, and once I’d had enough I clunked the bar top with thickened glass and asked:
“You’re not really a paralegal, are you James?”
He’d had enough too and wanted to know how I knew.
“You’re wearing too much of your money. I don’t know what a paralegal makes but it isn’t what you’ve got. What’d you really do?”
He shrugged.
“You don’t do anything?”
“Not really fella.” His words rolled quickly from his mouth and became harder to follow. “I am a distant relative o’ somebody important. Lotta money.”
“So?”
“So I don’t do anything. Don’t have to.”
I felt myself becoming a bit red. “Why’d you tell me you were a paralegal then?”
He shrugged. “Something to do. I’ll tell you what it is, I’m big into all that true crime shit but I don’t know anything about the law in the places I go to. So I can’t be a lawyer.”
“What?”
“Lawyers know too much about the law so I have to be a paralegal. Do you know? And then I get to talk about the case that I’m watching and working on. Do you know?”
In my pocket the phone was beginning to ring. On the other side of the bar that woman was still sitting by herself, and James was continuing to talk and talk about someone’s murder. The colour and warmth that drew me to this place was beginning to smother and the city street seemed to me to be appealing. I put a hand up to James and took the call, and a familiar voice was talking in my ear. As he spoke I glanced around. The couple at the table were finishing their pints together and drained the shining two towers stood, their owners talking and talking and laughing. My eyes lingered on their pair of glasses. Then James flickered his eyes toward the woman at the edge of the bar, as if he were noticing her for the first time, and a hot irritation swept up within me at this slippery Irishman. And she was just sitting there, still, doing nothing and associating with no one and I gripped my phone tightly.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m out. I’ll meet you there.”
I left saying an Irish goodbye. I simmered at him and stalked away because I should have talked to that woman. I could see her wide-rimmed glasses in my mind, the eyes they covered still unoccupied as I walked out the door. It pricked me still.
That bar sat along one of the wide city streets, and a breeze blew through the heart of the city. It cooled me and relieved the sweat along my body, and I took in the night air and the skyscrapers surrounding me on each side. They were all so close to each other. Hundreds and thousands of people stacked in concrete together and strangers one and all. In that bar with me could have been everyone on the floors above and below. If it were would I have known it?
I didn’t say anything to my friend, I just changed direction. I didn’t feel like being anywhere then, and rounding the wide city corners I strolled home to my apartment block. I opted for the stairs, looking over each level of strangers with my eye as I headed to my floor. I did not feel at all drunk shimmying the key in its lock, but when I pushed it open the light within seemed very bright.
I shielded my eyes and headed toward the kitchen. Things slowly adjusted, and I felt I was living somewhere dingy and old where the cost of James’ watch could cover years of rent. I opened a cupboard and forced myself to finish two cups of water to help myself feel better in the morning. Drained, it stood alone on my countertop. Thinking back to the pair of glasses between that couple I thought my empty glass was so sad to be by itself, so I fished another out from the cabinet and put it by its side.
There. A pair of glasses. The thought returned me to that woman, seated alone, and I wondered if she was still sitting there doing nothing. I came toward the benchtop and from there I could see my windows which peered out into the city street, a pair of them, twin panes of glass held together in the frame of the building like a pair of glasses. I looked back at the two on my benchtop and they did not seem right. It was obviously fake; one was wet and had been drunk from and the other had not, it was dry and did not belong, they were not a pair at all. I savagely grabbed it from the benchtop and thundered it into my floor. By a great bang it shattered and little glass pieces sprayed across my apartment floor, and the feeling of debris hitting my legs and the sight of a sole glass standing free of any pairs made me feel much better. I let it leak from my mind and crawled into bed.