Alix is the Hotel Ritz bartender who, along with the head barman, Paul, links Charlie Wales to his wild Paris life in the days before the stock market crash of 1929. As the story begins, he is filling Charlie in on the grim fates of Charlie's former Paris compatriots - Mr. Campbell, George Hardt, "the Snow Bird," Duncan Schaeffer, and Claude Fessenden. One is ill, another has returned to the United States after losing everything in the crash, and a third has been banned from the Ritz for trying to pass a bad check.
Alix is the first and last of several characters in the story who test Charlie's resolve to remain an ex-alcoholic. He offers Charlie a drink in the story's opening scene and another in the story's conclusion. Charlie declines both.
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