The angelic bartender
At the Vine, the narrator describes his favorite bartender as a heavenly creature who nurtures him when he feels lonely and depressed: “She poured doubles like an angel, right up to the lip of a cocktail glass, no measuring.“ When he sees her much later, he compares her to his mother in a nostalgic vision: “I'll never forget you. Your husband will beat you with an extension cord and the bus will pull away leaving you standing there in tears, but you were my mother.”
A shady place
Trying to find the house of the mute man, the narrator’s group reaches an apparently abandoned place: “I thought I could make out designs all over the floor like the chalk outlines of victims or markings for strange rituals.” This simile makes the house appear like a crime scene and illustrates that the group is becoming increasingly anxious, suggesting that the mute man may have connections to the criminal world.
Alcoholics
Describing his AA meetings in an Episcopal church's basement, the narrator says, “We sat around collapsible tables looking very much like people stuck in a swamp—slapping at invisible things, shifting, squirming, scratching, rubbing the flesh of our arms and our necks.” Apart from the disturbing image that the simile paints, it also illustrates that it is almost impossible for alcoholics to escape this metaphorical swamp and overcome their addiction.
The Vine
The narrator compares his favorite bar, the Vine, with a “train car that wasn't going anywhere.” Later in the book, he says it is “like a railroad club car that had somehow run itself off the tracks into a swamp of time where it awaited the blows of the wrecking ball.” This simile illustrates that the bar is a refuge for people who lost their way in life and are stuck with no future.
The effect of drugs
Having taken drugs from his coworker Georgie, the narrator describes the mental state of seemingly floating through an alternate reality: “Georgie's pills were making me feel like a giant helium-filled balloon.”
