"What?" he says, sounding exasperated. A bar person gets in the way, pulling a pint and then turning to the optics above where I'm looking, and I have to move my head, trying to see, but I can't until she moves away.
"Cameron, what are you gibbering about?" Al says. He turns, looking at me. I look in the mirror again.
Christ! I can't see him either!
Maybe it's all those Southern Comforts we had earlier, drinking to Bush's defeat by Clinton. Thank fuck we didn't have Buds like Al suggested; how could he even think about polluting our bodies with a brewed-in-the-UK copy of a beer that's basically just fizzy piss even in its original incarnation (and they have the nerve to advertise it here as "The Genuine Article'! Another one of those Great Lies In Advertising, aimed at the brain-dead of Essex, their grey matter irretrievably compromised by years of reading the Sun and drinking Skol, the bastards).
I point, getting a funny look from a bar person passing at the time as I almost poke her in the eye.
"I'm invisible!" I squawk.
"You're pissed," Al says, going back to his pint.
One of the people in the mirror is looking at me. I realise I'm still pointing. I turn and look behind me but there's just a whole load of backs and bodies; nobody looking at me. I turn back and stare at the mirror, just as the bar person I almost assaulted reaches up and takes the bottle of Bacardi down from the shelf. I stare. Its reflection is still there! Even more amazing!
The man who was looking at me is still looking at me. Then it occurs to me I can see a bit of a tile mural on the wall above him. I turn round and look above the people behind me; there is still a fair bit of light coming in through the tall, engraved windows. No mural. I turn back again as the bar person puts the Bacardi bottle back on the shelf. It is not quite straight, and slightly out of position. One of the older male bar staff passes by, reaches up and sets the bottle in exactly the right position again to maintain the mirror illusion before going to a pump and rilling a couple of pint glasses with 80-shilling. I glare at him as he comes towards me. The complete bastard. Then I pull back, afraid, as he comes right up and puts the glasses down in front of Al and me. I look down at my own glass and see it's empty just as the bar man takes it away and accepts the money from Al, who pours the last few millimetres from his old glass into his new one.
I shake my head. "No, man," I say, sighing and looking up at the ceiling. "I can't handle all this."
"What?" Al says, frowning.
"I can't handle this. Today's just been…"
"You look like shit, Cameron," Al tells me. He nods past me. "Look, there's a couple of proper seats. Let's sit down."
"Okay. Let's get some fags, eh?"
"No! You're giving up, remember?"
"Yeah, but it's been a difficult day, Al…"
"Just head for those seats, okay?"
I forget my coat but Al remembers it. We sit at the end of one of the bar's ribbed green leather semicircular benches, pints on the oval table.
"Do I really look like shit?"
"Cam, you look shafted."
"Fuck off, you uncivil bastard."
"Just calling it the way I see it."
"I've had a traumatic day," I tell him, pulling my Drizabone about me. "Grilled by the fuzz."
"Sounds painful, certainly."
"Thanks for coming for a drink, Al," I tell him, looking into his eyes with drunken sincerity and punching him lightly on the forearm.
"Ouch! Will you stop that?" He rubs his arm. "But anyway; think comparatively little of it."
"Al, you got any fags on you at all, Al?"
"No, I still haven't."
"Oh. Oh well. But I really appreciate you coming for this drink, really, Al. You're my only pal who isn't another fucking hack… Well, apart from Andy. And… well, anyway; I really appreciate being able to tell you all this shit."
"And share it with the rest of the bar if I didn't keep telling you to shut up."
"Yeah, but you wouldn't believe what they're getting at. I mean, you wouldn't believe what they're trying to fucking pin on me."
"A badge that says Nil By Mouth, perhaps?"
I wave this away and bend closer to him. "I'm serious. They think I've been murdering people!"
Al sighs deeply. "What a gift for dramatic hyperbole you possess, Cameron."
"It's true!"
"No…" Al says calmly. "I think if it was true they wouldn't have let you go, Cameron. You'd be in a cell; you'd be looking at bars, not trying to drink one dry."
"But I haven't got an alibi!" I whisper angrily. "I haven't got any fucking alibis! Some cunt's trying to set me up! I'm not kidding; they're trying to set me up! They call me on the phone and get me to go to some lonely spot and wait for a phone call on a public box or get me to stay home all night, meanwhile they're offing some fucker! I mean, by the sound of it every one of the bastards deserved to die… though actually he hasn't killed them all, just seriously assaulted some of them, whatever the hell they mean by that, wouldn't tell me… but I didn't do it! And the police are fucking crazy, man! They think I had enough time to get to the fucking airport, get down south or wherever and kill these Tory fuckwits. Christ, they took my new computer! My lap-top! Heinous bastards! They've even told me to keep them informed of my movements; can you believe that? I've got to report in to the local police if I go anywhere! What a nerve! I tried ringing some of the cops I know, top-brass types, to find out what they knew about all this, but they were all out or at meetings. Suspicious as fuck." I glance at my watch. "I got to get home, Al; I have to flush all my stuff down the toilet, or eat it or something…" I drink some of my pint, spilling a little on my chin. "But I'm being set up, I'm not kidding; some bastard rings up calling himself —»
"— Mr Archer," Al sighs.
I stare at him. I can't believe this. "How do you know?" I screech.
"Because this is about the fifth time you've told me this."
"Shit." I think about this. "Do you think I might be getting drunk?"
"Oh, shut up and drink your beer."
"Good idea… You got any fags on you at all, Al?"
An hour later and Al's made me return a packet of fags I bought and taken one slim panatella from my lips just as I was about to light it at the bar and taken me round to the Burger King and made me eat a cheeseburger and drink a large milk and I seem to have sobered up a bit except now my balance has gone and I'm having trouble standing. Al has to help me and insists we get a taxi and refuses to drive or let me drive and I accuse him of being scared because of his record.
"I'm heading for the hills, I'm telling you," I tell him as we make it out through the door and into the open air.
"Sound thinking," Al says. "It's always worked for me."
"Yeah." I say, nodding emphatically and gazing up at the sky. It's sunset and the air is cold. We head west along Princes Street. "I'm heading for the hills, getting out of town," I tell him. "I'm going to ditch all the gear in my flat first, but then that's me; I'm off. I think I'll tell the boys in blue exactly where I'm going so they can check up I'm not this fucking serial killer/assaulter or whatever, but I'm rattled, man, I'm telling you, I don't mind admitting it. I'm off to the Highlands, I'm off to Stromefirry-nofirry."
"Where?" Al buttons his coat as we turn up St Andrew Street and the wind gusts down from St Andrew Square.
"Stromefirry-nofirry."
"Ha!" Al laughs. "Aye, of course; Stromefirry-nofirry. I've seen that sign, too."
Al leaves me propped against a wall while he pops into a shop and gets some flowers.