'Try bumping the base a bit first,' I suggested.
Tommy tried that with the next one, and avoided getting a nostril full of foam. The hiss of gas was still very short, though. He smiled ruefully and reached for another container.
'Where did you get all these, anyway?' I asked him.
'I've got a pal works in Presto's; he's been stashing the odd can from the boxes as they come through, ye know? Got them out tae me today cos of the Christmas rush, 'nat.' He snorted from another can, then put it down too. He giggled, experimentally, then looked at me as though waiting for a reaction. I shrugged.
'Anything?' I asked.
'Nup. Don't think so.' Tommy started taking the containers out two at a time, bashing them on the carpet- covered stone floor and snorting from both at once. He went through about twelve of the cans that way, then sat back, breathing hard and looking a little odd. He tried giggling again.
'Now?' I asked him.
'Bit light-headed,' he said.
'Oxygen high,' I told him.
'Is that what ye get from them?' Tommy looked at another can. 'Well, Ah dinnae feel smashed.'
'No, you still look glazed.'
Tommy looked at me, then giggled again, then started laughing. I sat back with my vodka for a moment or two, decided it hadn't been that funny and reached for a couple of the cans.
The truth is, I don't know if the damn cans worked or not. Wee Tommy and I sat there, telling each other jokes and laughing and giggling, but for all I know it was just suggestion, and the minuscule amounts of gas in the canisters had little or no effect. We laughed because we thought we ought to.
I've seen people fooled into thinking Capstan Full Strength cigarettes were joints, accept speed and paracetamol as cocaine, and not notice that their drinks have been watered down until they're practically alcohol- free. It all depends what you're expecting, what you've been told to believe in.
Tommy left to go and sign on, leaving me with a shopping trolley full of dud whipped-cream cans. I guess the folly, with its bulky stacks of Comecon produce, seemed like an appropriate resting place for the massed containers. Full of 'product'. That's what the cans say. They're full of whipped 'product'. Not 'cream' or 'milk-derived froth', or even 'tacky white gunge bearing a vague resemblance to something that might actually have come from a cow', but 'product'.
Product. Jeez, the buzzword of the century. Everything's 'product'. Music is 'product'; product produced by producers for the industry to sell to the consumers. I don't think anyone has quite had the nerve yet to refer to paintings as 'product' yet (except as a put-down, perhaps), but it must be on the way. They'll quote the works of dead painters on the stock exchange. Picasso's blue-chip period. Gilt-edged frames. We put a value on what we treasure, and so cheapen it.
I felt like sitting there, amongst all my Eastern Bloc goods, feet up on my CRM chair, the space heater filling the folly with throaty white noise and the comforting trace-smell of paraffin, and finishing off the bottle of Stolichnaya by myself... but instead I went down to the crypt and footered about with some of my appallingly expensive musical equipment, tinkering with ideas that would probably end up as advertising jingles, or themes to movies that were never quite as good as their trailers promised.
I met McCann in the Griffin. We always meet there on a Saturday night; we Go Out, we Do The Town. We even dress up; I have been known to wear a tie, and what would pass for a suit. For some reason, I wore just those things on this occasion.
I had no idea this would lead to disaster .
'You're lookin smart, Jimmy.'
'Appearances can be deceptive,' I told McCann.
'Whit dae ye want?'
'A half and a half,' I said, and suddenly wondered why a half-pint of heavy and a whisky isn't just called a 'One', or a 'Whole'. Maybe they are, somewhere. McCann returned through the crowd with the drinks; the Griffin was busy and noisy. I brushed some sleet and snowflakes off my coat.
'This you gettin yerself tarted up fur this man comin ta morrow?'
I looked at McCann over my beer glass. I had almost forgotten that Rick Tumber was coming tomorrow; working on music for any length of time has that sort of effect on me. I shook my head. 'No,' I said.
'Oh. Where are we goin tae go then?'
I thought. McCann looked moderately presentable himself. I was in a sort of restless, challenging mood that made me want to do something I wouldn't normally do, go somewhere I wouldn't normally go. 'Somewhere different.'
McCann looked thoughtful. 'Ma boay,' he said, referring to his son, who is about twenty and has earned his father's undying scorn by joining the army, 'wiz tellin me aboot one of they fancy nightclubs, last time he wiz here. Place called Monty's. Just aff Buchanan Street.' McCann looked at my battered but still echoingly stylish handmade Italian boots, and my newly cleaned greatcoat, then pulled one slightly frayed shirt-cuff down from under his jacket sleeve. 'They might let us in.'
'A nightclub?' I said, grimacing. I've never liked these places; they're better up here than they are down in London, where they tend to be full of noisy, mannered, ill-mannered, over-privileged people I'd normally pay a great deal of money just to avoid, but even in Glasgow I object to paying outrageous amounts of money to drink suspiciously bland cocktails in the sort of place where people go to be seen.
'Just fur a look,' McCann said. 'The boay wiz sayin that wan o the wa's is glass; like an aquarium; there's a big tank full a fush behind it, an a mermaid swims aroon inside.'
'Oh, good grief.'
'Or we could do the clockwork orange pub crawl.'
'What?' I glared at McCann. The Glasgow underground runs in a circle. The trains used to be red and have leather upholstery and wooden interiors; they creaked a lot and had a smell you never forgot; nowadays they're wee plastic-looking bright orange things, and they've been nicknamed the clockwork orange. The associated pub crawl involves travelling right round the tube circuit, stopping at each of the fifteen stations and walking to the nearest pub for a pint and a whisky (or a half and a half, if you're some sort of cissy). McCann and I have been going to do this for at least a year, but we haven't got around to it yet. 'This is hardly the weather for it,' I said.
'You decide then,' McCann said, shrugging.
The mermaid in the room-sized tank looked vaguely familiar, but if I had ever seen the girl before, I couldn't place her.
A young blond waiter brought our drinks. This was a relief; I'd been afraid that the mermaid in the wall-tank would be just the beginning, and the whole club would be planned around some agonisingly literally worked-out theme based on mermaids and mermen, or the sea, or something equally awful.
It wasn't; it was just a posh bar with an atmosphere somewhere between a private library and a lively gentlemen's club; shelves full of books, a deep carpet, rather nice wooden tables with leather tops, and a surprisingly young clientele (or maybe I'm just getting old). The ceiling fans, whirling gently under a black roof, were something of an affectation, especially in December, but I'd seen a lot worse.
Not a laser or a fog-bank of dry ice or a flashing light in sight. The drinks were only breathtakingly expensive, not coronary-inducingly dear, and McCann seemed pleased we had a table where we could see the mermaid, who had long black hair and large breasts. The aquarium filled most of one wall of the club, and teemed with bright fish swimming between pillars of rock and coral; tall green fronds waved above a floor of golden sand.
'That's a bonny lassie,' McCann said, watching the tank avidly.
'I hope she's not the only reason you wanted to come here,' I said, drinking what certainly tasted like a full- strength Manhattan. McCann had been going to ask for A Long Sloe Comfortable Screw Up Against The Wall, but changed his mind when he saw we were getting a waiter rather than a waitress, and got a Killer Zombie instead.
'Not at all.' McCann looked disgusted with me. 'Ye don't think Ah wanted tae come here just tae ogle some
