"Okay," said Shadow. "I tasted it. What was it?"
"Mead," said Wednesday. "Honey wine. The drink of heroes. The drink of the gods."
Shadow took another tentative sip. Yes, he could taste the honey, he decided. That was one of the tastes. "Tastes kinda like pickle juice," he said. "Sweet pickle-juice wine."
"Tastes like a drunken diabetic's piss," agreed Wednesday. "I hate the stuff."
"Then why did you bring it for me?" asked Shadow, reasonably.
Wednesday stared at Shadow with his mismatched eyes. One of them, Shadow decided, was a glass eye, but he could not decide which one. "I brought you mead to drink because it's traditional. And right now we need all the tradition we can get. It seals our bargain."
"We haven't made a bargain."
"Sure we have. You work for me now. You protect me. You transport me from place to place. You run errands. In an emergency, but only in an emergency, you hurt people who need to be hurt. In the unlikely event of my death, you will hold my vigil. And in return I shall make sure that your needs are adequately taken care of."
"He's hustling you," said Mad Sweeney, rubbing his bristly ginger beard. "He's a hustler."
"Damn straight I'm a hustler," said Wednesday. "That's why I need someone to look out for my best interests."
The song on the jukebox ended, and for a moment, the bar fell quiet, every conversation at a lull.
"Someone once told me that you only get those everybody-shuts-up-at-once moments at twenty past or twenty to the hour," said Shadow.
Sweeney pointed to the clock above the bar, held in the massive and indifferent jaws of a stuffed alligator head. The time was 11:20.
"There," said Shadow. "Damned if I know why that happens."
"I know why," said Wednesday. "Drink your mead."
Shadow knocked the rest of the mead back in one long gulp. "It might be better over ice," he said.
"Or it might not," said Wednesday. "It's terrible stuff."
"That it is," agreed Mad Sweeney. "You'll excuse me for a moment, gentlemen, but I find myself in deep and urgent need of a lengthy piss." He stood up and walked away, an impossibly tall man. He had to be almost seven feet tall, decided Shadow.
A waitress wiped a cloth across the table and took their empty plates. Wednesday told her to bring the same again for everyone, although this time Shadow's mead was to be on the rocks.
"Anyway," said Wednesday, "that's what I need of you."
"Would you like to know what I want?" asked Shadow.
"Nothing could make me happier."
The waitress brought the drink. Shadow sipped his mead on the rocks. The ice did not help-if anything it sharpened the sourness, and made the taste linger in the mouth after the mead was swallowed. However, Shadow consoled himself, it did not taste particularly alcoholic. He was not ready to be drunk. Not yet.
He took a deep breath.
"Okay," said Shadow. "My life, which for three years has been a long way from being the greatest life there has ever been, just took a distinct and sudden turn for the worse. Now there are a few things I need to do. I want to go to Laura's funeral. I want to say goodbye. I should wind up her stuff. If you still need me, I want to start at five hundred dollars a week." The figure was a stab in the dark. Wednesday's eyes revealed nothing. "If we're happy working together, in six months' time you raise it to a thousand a week."
He paused. It was the longest speech he'd made in years. "You say you may need people to be hurt. Well, I'll hurt people if they're trying to hurt you. But I don't hurt people for fun or for profit. I won't go back to prison. Once was enough."
"You won't have to," said Wednesday.
"No," said Shadow. "I won't." He finished the last of the mead. He wondered, suddenly, somewhere in the back of his head, whether the mead was responsible for loosening his tongue. But the words were coming out of him like the water spraying from a broken fire hydrant in summer, and he could not have stopped them if he had tried. "I don't like you, Mister Wednesday, or whatever your real name may be. We are not friends. I don't know how you got off that plane without me seeing you, or how you trailed me here. But I'm at a loose end right now. When we're done, I'll be gone. And if you piss me off, I'll be gone too. Until then, I'll work for you."
"Very good," said Wednesday. "Then we have a compact. And we are agreed."
"What the hell," said Shadow. Across the room, Mad Sweeney was feeding quarters into the jukebox. Wednesday spat in his hand and extended it. Shadow shrugged. He spat in his own palm. They clasped hands. Wednesday began to squeeze. Shadow squeezed back. After a few seconds his hand began to hurt. Wednesday held the grip a little longer, and then he let go.
"Good," he said. "Good. Very good. So, one last glass of evil, vile f**king mead to seal our deal, and then we are done."
"It'll be a Southern Comfort and Coke for me," said Sweeney, lurching back from the jukebox.
The jukebox began to play the Velvet Underground's "Who Loves the Sun?" Shadow thought it a strange song to find on a jukebox. It seemed very unlikely. But then, this whole evening had become increasingly unlikely.
Shadow took the quarter he had used for the coin toss from the table, enjoying the sensation of a freshly milled coin against his fingers, producing it in his right hand between forefinger and thumb. He appeared to take it into his left hand in one smooth movement, while casually finger-palming it. He closed his left hand on the imaginary quarter. Then he took a second quarter in his right hand, between finger and thumb, and, as he pretended to drop that coin into the left hand, he let the palmed quarter fall into his right hand, striking the quarter he held there on the way. The chink confirmed the illusion that both coins were in his left hand, while they were now both held safely in his right.
"Coin tricks is it?" asked Sweeney, his chin raising, his scruffy beard bristling. "Why, if it's coin tricks we're doing, watch this."
He took an empty glass from the table. Then he reached out and took a large coin, golden and shining, from the air. He dropped it into the glass. He took another gold coin from the air and tossed it into the glass, where it clinked against the first. He took a coin from the candle flame of a candle on the wall, another from his beard, a third from Shadow's empty left hand, and dropped them, one by one, into the glass. Then he curled his fingers over the glass, and blew hard, and several more golden coins dropped into the glass from his hand. He tipped the glass of sticky coins into his jacket pocket, and then tapped the pocket to show, unmistakably, that it was empty.
"There," he said. "That's a coin trick for you."
Shadow, who had been watching closely, put his head on one side. "I need to know how you did it."
"I did it," said Sweeney, with the air of one confiding a huge secret, "with panache and style. That's how I did it." He laughed, silently, rocking on his heels, his gappy teeth bared.
"Yes," said Shadow. "That is how you did it. You've got to teach me. All the ways of doing the Miser's Dream that I've read, you'd be hiding the coins in the hand that holds the glass, and dropping them in while you produce and vanish the coin in your right hand."
"Sounds like a hell of a lot of work to me," said Mad Sweeney. "It's easier just to pick them out of the air."
Wednesday said, "Mead for you, Shadow. I'll stick with Mister Jack Daniel's, and for the freeloading Irishman…?"
"A bottled beer, something dark for preference," said Sweeney. "Freeloader, is it?" He picked up what was left of his drink, and raised it to Wednesday in a toast. "May the storm pass over us, and leave us hale and unharmed," he said, and knocked the drink back.
"A fine toast," said Wednesday. "But it won't."
Another mead was placed in front of Shadow.
"Do I have to drink this?"
"I'm afraid you do. It seals our deal. Third time's the charm, eh?"
"Shit," said Shadow. He swallowed the mead in two large gulps. The pickled-honey taste filled his mouth.
"There," said Mr. Wednesday. "You're my man, now."
"So," said Sweeney, "you want to know the trick of how it's done?"
"Yes," said Shadow. "Were you loading them in your sleeve?"
"They were never in my sleeve," said Sweeney. He chortled to himself, rocking and bouncing as if he were a lanky, bearded volcano preparing to erupt with delight at his own brilliance. "It's the simplest trick in the world. I'll fight you for it."
Shadow shook his head. "I'll pass."
"Now there's a fine thing," said Sweeney to the room. "Old Wednesday gets himself a bodyguard, and the feller's too scared to put up his fists, even."
"I won't fight you," agreed Shadow.
Sweeney swayed and sweated. He fiddled with the peak of his baseball cap. Then he pulled one of his coins out of the air and placed it on the table. "Real gold, if you were wondering," said Sweeney. "Win or lose-and you'll lose-it's yours if you fight me. A big fellow like you-who'd'a thought you'd be a fucken coward?"
"He's already said he won't fight you," said Wednesday. "Go away, Mad Sweeney. Take your beer and leave us in peace."
Sweeney took a step closer to Wednesday. "Call me a freeloader, will you, you doomed old creature? You coldblooded, heartless old tree-hanger." His face was turning a deep, angry red.
Wednesday put out his hands, palms up, pacific. "Foolishness, Sweeney. Watch where you put your words."
Sweeney glared at him. Then he said, with the gravity of the very drunk, "You've hired a coward. What would he do if I hurt you, do you think?"
Wednesday turned to Shadow. "I've had enough of this," he said. "Deal with it."
Shadow got to his feet and looked up into Mad Sweeney's face: how tall was the man? he wondered. "You're bothering us," he said. "You're drunk. I think you ought to leave now."
A slow smile spread over Sweeney's face. "There, now," he said. He swung a huge fist at Shadow. Shadow jerked back: Sweeney's hand caught him beneath the right eye. He saw blotches of light, and felt pain.
And with that, the fight began.
Sweeney fought without style, without science, with nothing but enthusiasm for the fight itself: huge, barreling roundhouse blows that missed as often as they connected.
Shadow fought defensively, carefully, blocking Sweeney's blows or avoiding them. He became very aware of the audience around them. Tables were pulled out of the way with protesting groans, making a space for the men to spar. Shadow was aware at all times of Wednesday's eyes upon him, of Wednesday's humorless grin. It was a test, that was obvious, but what kind of a test?
In prison Shadow had learned there were two kinds of fights: don't f**k with me fights, where you made it as showy and impressive as you could, and private fights, real fights, which were fast and hard and nasty, and always over in seconds.
"Hey, Sweeney," said Shadow, breathless, "why are we fighting?"