The sleet turned to snow. Then sleet again. Then hail. The hail blew down the street bouncing like popcorn. Slush, thrown up by cars, followed. He counted his money. If I buy shoes I’ll have nothing left for a drink. I can’t go up looking like this. He stood in a doorway looking across at Burke’s shoe shop. This morning I made a promise to myself. But what’s the point? I’m going to die anyway. But who would I like to meet on resurrection day? Who would I like to find by my side? The thought unnerved him. The wind changed direction and blew frantically to and fro. When he was wet and cold enough he went into the nearest pub. But he didn’t drink there. Nor in the pub after that. No, he was looking for someone. In the third pub he was looking for no one, but found instinctively that he was. This is what I’m doing here, he reminded himself – looking for someone. The men drinking there watched him for a second as if they, too, understood – that you keep searching till you find the right place to begin the day’s drinking.

He sat down, thinking he had reached the place. He put his hand in his pocket to search for money. When he looked up each face had grown pale and ignorant and hostile. Then indifferent. Ea’ch was cocooned, not a human soul stirred among them. It was as if there was nobody there.

“I was looking for someone,” he said to the barman and left, taking care as he did not to walk into anything.

He moved on with the drinker’s ploy for fending off the first drink. The first drink that must be taken when all the signs are right. But none of the pubs was right. Loud TVs, piped music, strange glances. Eventually, in the fourth pub, he found that someone he was searching for. That someone who was no one. The person who didn’t exist was an excuse to move on. But here, in the low light, that non-person was.

He stayed in the fourth pub because he recognized the girl who had been covered in soot and tied to the pole. Now she was sitting with three other women at the bar drinking hot whiskey.

Jack was glad to see her again.

“I’m in mourning,” he said.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’ve been pissing balls,” he replied, “and I keep them back in my room. I keep them in little bags.”

“We had a brother went like you,” she said.

He ordered his first drink. “I like a Harvey’s Bristol Cream for breakfast.”

“Is that so?”

“I like the taste in the nose.”

“Do you want to join us?”

“Nah,” he said, “I’m getting the train to Dublin.”

They drank. The old feeling of being a camera returned. He panned the bar. He focused on the women with their hair piled and blow-dried who sat around him. Cufflinks gleamed. Men lifted drinks to their lips. It’s a B-movie, that’s what my subconscious is, and he laughed.