1
Through the haze and it’s you.  But that’s all it is, the rows of drinks, the blues and greens.  The wet tables meaning to fall like the mats.  The mirrored wall at the other end and the reflections of the orange.  Those colours dominate.  The tints and the shades.  And you turn around but it’s nothing.  The floors, the wooden floors for the echoes and then the walls.  But then the time arrives, the people.  And the silence fades away, no longer is it the casual wipes of cloths and the filling of pumps.  Empty for a long while after the time but as the hours, which you don’t see, lengthen the filing and filling begin.  The shades of colour on the faces, reds and violets.
The evening should be alight with fears as the blood fills.  The worries over tomorrow and the worries of tonight.  The haze is the smoke, lying softly over it all like blankets and covers.  As it leaves the lips and the stains of red and finally reaches the other side.  And then the box turns on, and the coins fall.  The notes begin, mental and musical as the room fills again.  And then all the breaths, the hazes and the sounds turn it from the empty silence.  It escapes out from the bottles and boxes until it rolls.  It’s dizzy when you feel the phlegm and the noise, all the noise, lying in front of your smoke.  Hands over your face, your hair at the front, soaked in the new, your forehead supporting the squints of eyes, toughened from sunlight and glasses.  And over the nose, congested with the smog and into the dry bleeding lips, sore from the glasses again.  This time yourself, you pour it.  But a stronger label can’t really help that.  Another order and you’re by the register and looking down at the rims with their writing and they’re waiting there, wondering what the talk is and why it’s him.  But you pour eventually and hand it to him, touching his hands almost lightly as the metal reaches him and you lean against the back and bring the glass up to the chapped lips, and feel them burn.  Burn and burn as it reaches the mouth and the lights.  It’s only some hours left and you can reach your room and stretch and then lean over for the machine and break a tape in.  But the coins aren’t enough and the eyes don’t last long after the time is up.  And the talking, the mouths, focus.  Zoom into them, their smiles and frowns, the listlessness and the sickness.
But now the boy at the table is looking back and you have to turn away, and the gesture is sweeping until you’re staring into a violet mouth, the one I said.  But it’s only, it can only, it is a mistake.  But eyes can see you through and when you turn back to see him still watching you wonder what it is all for.  Smile like the counterfeits until the lashes reach into your eyes until you’re red.  But the other is still watching and of course it’s only last orders.  Because that’s what they come for.  Meeting can’t happen when the time is nearly up and the only want, for now, is another volume.  And you ignore the corner, your eyes seeing it in there, rolling roll-up paper and it’s not tobacco.  But you’re not the owner.
So you laugh and light as the song you want is finally chosen, and you laugh again because the numbers on that neat box are all wrong and the selector didn’t mean it.  But you can smile once more at the frown around it and take the drags like they were all that mattered.  But he’s coming to the main one now and the time is over.  It’s only a box of matches though, and tells me cheers.
The time is finally up and all that are left are the final wipes and lock-ups.  After that these tired blocks of ice can close.  Feel the door swing back as the breeze catches your shoulders and step closely as you circle past the lights of the city.  Silent apart from the noise of cars and trucks speeding past.  No music to accompany it all by until you reach your room, green-washed walls to the lift and the closing of doors as you get to the mirror and watch the prince of the senses, fumbling with the buttons.  Only the buttons of the lift before the smooth treads of the carpet to a white-washed room.  Or greyish when you pull the shoes off and push the clothes off, until you collapse onto the springs, reaching only to press another button for the tinny sound of music through portables.
Close the ice finally and feel it all moving in your stomach.  Can’t sleep, just fall.  And the night turns to blue.  Light and bright, with a nearly straight line for a cloud.
It’s time.  The kettle awakes more and you pour it, looking out over a city still bounded by greens.  That hazy sun the weather-men talk, it moves through trees here.  And the people.  The streets are filled, masterfully filled with people hurrying in usually one direction and then the opposite one come evening.  And the dirty reds of the buses, brightly reflecting so it touches the insides of your eye.  But the flints are gone and you reach for the matches and strike them.  The small window stares at you too long and when you’ve tired, though you never will, you look into the small reflection, upright on the table and apply the strokes to your face.  Occasionally you glimpse out again, maybe to vainly push the window one more fret and then you again.  The liner runs until you squint and reach for tissues before you dress and give up.  The water has cooled and as you look into the cup and feel the wetness of your cheeks you decide to leave, to leave that loose hair and leave the room.  No hellos except one in the small lift, the stench remaining from last night.
You are so conscious now of the stickiness of your face as you squint again because the 99p blades are lost.  You look at the legs for a while until you reach the store set amongst the shoppers for buying the aspirins.  The assistant doesn’t stare too long and her impoliteness is her excuse.  You ignore the news-stands as you swish past it all and ignore every stare that comes your way.  You don’t even bow your head to make sure the wind runs up the right way.  And you are moving with a soundtrack spinning through that mind until you reach a bus-stop.  Get on knowing where it’s going, you know.  And it’s jump up the stairs as it speeds along because it was only a traffic light that stopped it.  Ignore.  Press onto a seat, but it isn’t the back.  Move your hands to the back of your head as you realise the blades or shades are in the lining.  Push them over the ice and gaze into the faces of hundreds.  But the time runs like the wind that so many speak about, and you know it’s only a couple of hours until you return to the work, hoping you’ll meet someone who knows about the futility.  There’s been hot weather that suddenly reached out over the week into your bus and you watch those beautiful expressions change when the driver hits the unexpected curb.
Rise and walk down, pausing as the bus begins to halt until you get there.  Walk in and have a drink that isn’t allowed.  Starve yourself and sit looking at the headlines that you bought without thinking, ignoring the old face of the seller on the way.
Suddenly, because it is, the rumours begin to fill the already smoky atmosphere as twilight returns.  The ties in evidence as the rumours are the bomb.  And as night falls, this is no ordinary night at the bar.  The doors have been locked as the scare begins.  The police in evidence outside as the room hushes with murmurs.  The defusing of the bomb is the order and we are the victims.  So the doors have been locked and the screeches of a stray car are like bullets hitting your spine.  How long are we in here?
 
2
A romantic image.  Trapped and this time the eyes are looking different.  It’s the knowing.  She looks with worry.  He looks with hesitation.  Conversations easier to strike up now.  Easier because of not knowing what the next minutes will tell.  She asks for a light and it begins, classic you suppose.  No one can see you clinging to your counter and watching the uneasiness shift, from bombs to moves.  Worn-out chess analogies and the quiet skies, completely still.  What’s underneath?  A complete and conscious concentration as they move like symmetry tasting the tops of the glasses and gently tipping it like threading a needle.  Different?  You can’t hear but the eyes are different and maybe this is the only circumstance that can give conversation its extra airs.  Fear that should be there all the time, that is there all the time, now slowly uncovered as the room recovers slightly from the initial cries of the owner: “We have to lock up, there’s been a bomb and the services are trying their best to defuse it.”
That’s all that’s needed, for the couples to silently scream at each other.  The real romance is suppressed but it has been just a few minutes from the message.  One girl is crying and her friend is smiling with embarrassment as she puts her arm around hers.  You give it a couple of minutes and look down at the newspaper, past its rapes and murders and to the wider world.  It is only that that affects.  The two people’s blasting.  It has only been a couple of minutes and you, the satellite, watch the arms go around with caution.  But the symmetry is consistent.  And this time the lights go out as ten lighters knock their flints and you help take the candles out.  But for a while it’s a misty darkened twilight with the yellows of the lampposts poking through and the flicker of a drag from a cigarette, with the sad accompaniment of tears.  As you light the first, the shadows begin to waver, orange light through the glass of a half-full bottle.  The arms are still there as you take another candle and deliver it to a boy, alone and expressionless.  And then a pair of girls, sensitivity hidden and more silent than usual.  The fear’s rising as the shadows sparkle and waver for a cracked second as a breeze blows from the window.  The candles are out now and back at the bar it’s only the expressionless boy who asks for a drink because the flicks tell him to.  Detections of slight sycophancy as you sit down with a cold glass of clear water.  It’s dark now and the only light is from the re-lit candles.  The mirrors at the back give the room lights of curaçeo and menthe, scotch and vodka, an alcoholic séance almost.  And the girl’s talking more confidence finally.  And they’re reading each other’s palms now.
You walk beside the tables until you reach the window on the street and see spotlights, lighting the quite alone man fixing one of the bags, there are more than one.  You’ll know the face now if that’s the last job he ever does.  And you can hear a police radio, confidential remarks that there are probably more bombs spread in the shops, and then you hear the reply: to defuse one at a time.  But some coins have dropped and the sick chart splutters into the ear-drums.  Turned down, it’s true.  And the owner beckons to you as you are asked for a light.  A policeman is at the back, wanting a drink.  And you carelessly pour it without a question.  And meanwhile the owner turns the box off and turns on a portable radio, that in between reports of no consequence explains by implying.  No-one’s prepared for it as you walk back to the girl who wanted a light and see she has one.  “What’s going to happen?”  sounds a silly question but you answer slowly, faltering a few times because you hear a sound—just another car.  Girls in leather jackets, you turn around to see that she isn’t the only one.  Fashion again.  You turn back and she smiles.  So all the confidence is shattered by the thought of death because it isn’t accepted, because freedom isn’t recognised.
But you draw a chair up beside her and say that you’re sure it’ll be alright, just the way anybody would have said.  (I admit to you that I don’t know that it will be alright.) She says it’s just like a book she read in which the optimistic times meant that no-one worried.  And the end?  They all died, but you’re quite sure that we won’t.  This decade has enough of the people in this room to last forever.  “Who wrote it?”  you ask but she can’t remember.  You only asked to put the ball in her court, you turn around and see the others talking more.  Only a few are left sitting, looking into their glasses for consolation.  Training hasn’t been given to us for this inevitable situation.  We should have seen it coming.  And we hear an explosion and crying in here.  The owner closes all the shutters under orders from the men in blue, and you help.  You watch for a few seconds before the shutters close and see the ambulance taking away.  “There’s another one,” the owner whispers to you as he tells us all that we’ll be let out soon.
You’re glad, glad that some of these are here, you sweep the air with my hands.  You close them and forget the candles that have flickered too soon to remember a hot summer’s evening in a litter-strewn central high street with its ices and coffees.  You remember the way the cafés stared at yourself.  But you open the eyes and see the girl not seeming to miss you, maybe it’s worry.  All that experience, they must think deep down, all the people they’ve met, every gulp of air taken as you talk, what was it all for?  Was it just meant to die in a freak bombing in the centre of London?  It probably was, the fatalism continues.  Possibly rash, you walk back to the table, as she smiles.  Then you sit and her girl-friend appears from somewhere and they talk.  There are a few at the windows trying to peer out and see what’s going on, but the owner or king soon tells everyone to sit and calm down.  The nearest to the window dies first, I suppose he says, until you realise that it might help his profits.  Who are you?  You work here and mumbled dangerous conversation continues until you see someone in the hazy distance who you think you’ve known before.  Ear-rings I think.  You smile at the confusion, what do you do then?  That’s what you ask, returning like you’re normal.  Secretaries, should have seen by the bright fingernails.  Where?  A company.  It would sound interesting to others.  Looking and leaning over towards you, the one you’d seen before and again you get that annoyance from your two clicks.  You stare for a while until it seems almost stupid and a smile turns away.
Do you find it fun?  No it’s terribly boring, but who’s asking who?  Well, guess then.  The radio drones on and comes alive when we hear about riots further down, officers hurt.  I smile again and again, it seems because I don’t give a damn.  Tell me it was inevitable.  But that sounds like I’m tightening the leash.  Well so what?  You don’t expect you’ll have much longer.  They all think they’re so right, so pathetically right, reading and working like bastards raised on the newspapers.  You start tearing it and decide you’re going to look down, right down at it, but you see the person again.  How long before you meet, you wonder?  The awareness hurts, really stabs when the being goes to the bar in a long black clothes and asks the owner for a drink when of course he calls you to serve.  “What do you think’s going to happen?”  the being says.  You can’t think that you’ve heard it before really because the inflection is different.
“I’m not sure.  But I suppose we’ll soon know,” you say, not meaning to sound half-empty.
“That’s a bit pessimistic,” being says smiling again.  A smile beating you to pieces so you can’t tell if being’s posing for a shot of a camera or a gun.
“Well I’m not sure,” you repeat myself,” are you afraid?”  you ask.
“Yes,” as the smile stops.
“What’s your name?”  you ask and hear it, and then you swap.  “Well, why are you afraid?”
“Don’t say it like an analyst,” being smiles to prove joking and you forget the features of being’s face, noticing the hair toss, “I don’t know, but if something goes wrong we’re going to die,” she said, seeming to believe it.  “There’s nothing we can do.  We are all totally powerless.”
I’m surprised that people can tell when they’re powerless and when they’re not.  Only a few fear planes.  “Yes, but surely there’s something we can do.”
“What?”  being says before a pause,” is there a back entrance?”
“We were told not to use it.”  You think the person was scared, of you maybe.  But then it occurred to you that if the thought of a backdoor was hurtling around the being, could it be in the minds of the others, would there be a stampede to the door?  But of course not, like the horoscopes, it’s all destined, so if there’s a backdoor exit to freedom, read as stability, someone will stand up, swirling a lager maybe and shout: “Backdoor.”
“Well can I have a drink then?”  person said as you noticed the fingers close up and delicately binding a five-pound note.
“No charge,“ you said, turning your head around while the measure was delivered, just before you took some money out of your jacket pocket and slotted the fare into the register.  Probably saw it.
“Won’t you have to pay?”  being asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” you said as being took the glass and drank most of it.
“Well you’re already buying me drinks.  Maybe…” and the sentence tailed off until something flew through one of the windows on the other side, a rock or a bottle.  A sudden collection of screams as the seated customers ran back from the windows.  Someone’s jacket had orange juice on but that was all.  Being panicked and leant forward putting arms around you over the table asking you what had happened.  When the screams had stopped and the murmuring had subsided being took arms away, smelling of an ordinary perfume, and blushed.  You opened the bar-hinge and let being through and you both stood behind.  Almost as on a tube, the insiders stood shaking, some of them with there face in their hands, others looking like they’ve locked themselves out.  And in front there were empty tables, neatly aligned with just a few chairs upset, and a few drinks over the floor, broken glass lying close by.  You couldn’t see the friendly projectile, probably just a pebble and yet it caused so much emotion.  A few must have thought it the end.  And you wonder whether I’m cold not to react in their way.  What happened to your emotions?  They’re ruling me, the right ones, the deep-downers.  Drink and look tough or they’ll scream.  Maybe it’s past that now, maybe they’re starting to come to terms with the real emotion, especially when you see a boy cry, leaning against a radiator, not bothering about a cigarette, just standing with his hands in his eyes, not caring anymore how other people judge his actions.  Arms around, you must look like a statue, you can bear all of the stones that come your way.  The bobbies are putting up some sort of flimsy wire netting to protect the precious windows on the world.
Remember, the candles, no wonder it was darker.  So it wasn’t the stray pebble that led the eyes to feel the darkness enlarge.  The owner, desperately worried, by now, goes and re-lights them, and the room brightens a little until the others smile at you, with your arms locked and your eyes locked on the candles.  The radio stopped some time ago, and you expect they’ve got the radio-station.  Oh how I remember the piteous Oxford Street rushes on a Saturday.  Fooled and fools.  Seven across again, Forward—Reg’s pros !  An anagram that’s probably far too obvious and one that you’d have replaced.  “I have to phone my partner,” was a funny remark from your companion.  You could smell the scent and feel the smoothness of being’s hands, and your white-shirt was like a lip.  The phone wouldn’t work, of course.  You wondered whether this was all in the historical scheme of things, it seemed that way, if you squinted some more through the smoky haze, lit by a dozen candles and looked further through the windows, listening to the noise of the police.  You thought being was lying.  But you say it’ll be alright and the arm returns, and the lips move as if being knows that both of you won’t ever see the Seine by moonlight or feel the velour of a cinema seat or watch the ripples in St.  James’ Park.  In fact the decision is all about her, these are your last hours, and you almost wish and know they are.