Barfly

They made him from the beer they drained under the taps. Sloshing around, he was more ale than lager, the bar in a gentrified place, nestled in the shadow of a stadium and apartment blocks all around. They sat him in the back corner, unseeable from the road but there to find if you poked your head around in the downstairs bar. 

They called him Alan.

“Have a chat to Alan,” they’d say to anyone who came in, not frequently, wanting just to talk to someone. For the price of another beer, a top up, insurance against evaporation, he was available to anyone who just wanted to sit beside him. He couldn’t speak back but he could articulate, move, his limbs made of liquid not bound by bones.

On weekday evenings they’d loan him out for free sometimes to the lone drinkers not to encourage overindulgence but to give them someone just in case. As the nights got long and cold Alan’s golden pulse would keep them too warm. 

I asked him once what to do. He was useful.

His arm sloshed about as he waved. I sat opposite him at the longer table towards the back of the downstairs bar by the TV. We got some mid-strengths to start and it’d be a little while and at the end of it he’d be a bit darker. I poured his beer into him and then I started working my way through mine.

“What do you reckon?”

I explained it all to him. The move, mostly, the relocation all over again, something else fresh as if it’s just this endless reinvention. What would he know about that? He shrugged and then thought for a moment before he pointed to his feet where the heavier stouts had settled. Yea, I suppose, he hasn’t been the same thing for the whole of even his short life so far.

“But then specifics, you know? Like the chair.”

He points to his stool, wood stained wet. He would get that. I mean, he’s only ever known one chair. He can stand but without the stool he’d sort of slump down and spread slowly over the floor. As it is he keeps human shape mostly by leaning forward on his forearms, careful not to spill himself all over the table. Coasters where his elbows would be. At his feet bar runners. As for chairs, I’ve had a few. Have a few. Some I could even leave behind. Except this one that doesn’t fit, a replica, part of who I like to think I am. A real one something like a goal for when I’m in my fifties. I wonder if Alan will make it that far.

“Do you ever get afraid it’ll all just be…”

He shakes his head before I even finish. True, he’s got no idea what fear even is. 

“It’s just that I wonder…”

He raises a hand, shakes his head. Looks to his empty beer glass and then to mine. Oh, they’re empty. That’s what he means.

“Fear, see? You’re afraid that they’re empty.”

He shrugs.

“Cheers mate. Same thing?”

He nods but it’s sort of side to side like it’s up to me. I mean, of course it is. So I come back with another and this time it’s a strong one. One more each we’ll call it I reckon. Just someone to chat to after hours on a Thursday, my better half occupied. Why I’m here. I pour his into him and sit down to work on mine.

“What about the commitment? The, like, attachment to one thing by choice, over and over, forever? You don’t struggle with that?”

The 6.5% going straight to my head. My heart maybe. 

“That’s what it is, I think. All of it, what it boils down to.”

Alan sort of rolls his hand forward. The liquid inside rolls like it’s inside a barrel we can’t see. He kinda gets it but not quite.

“Yea,” I tell him. “Like the fear of that.”

Everyone else has the walls of a responsible life between them and last-minute plans. Old enough now it should all be working, the jobs, the houses, the families, the world about us writ large part of what we care for now too. I have that in a way. But I am easily distracted. Maybe I like Alan so much because I reckon a good chunk of him is my next beer running away after the kegs change over. Defaults.

We chat for a bit more like that. I give him specifics — where is the chair going to go? Where do I start running from now? Do I take up that new coworking space? I won’t be back here so often, I tell him. Like that’s part of it. A loose part of it, in a one bedroom apartment doing remote work from home. Coming here is a good little third space that’s rewarded me nicely even without him. 

I finish my pint off to cheer that out. Alan raises his glass and puts it to where his mouth would be. His smooth face, round in the right places but featureless, feels like a composite beer mirror even through the opaque foam all about his edges. 

“One more?” The bartender asks.

“Go on.”

It’s a problem. One more. A nightcap. Easy talking now, about footy, and the TV, and what’s on. When’s game day? What do they do with him on full game days?

“He just stands behind the tanks and waits,” the bartender tells me. I’ve always liked the idea that she’s maybe, in another life, interested.

“No one ever sees you?”

He shrugs. He looks around at the quiet pub, just him and I and two others, alone, downstairs as well. The bartender running errands up and down. I imagine the place full to the brim with people. Everyone’s got someone or a few folk. No one even thinks to look for him.