Sunday Archive VII: Saturday in July

I think this one made it onto the front page at one point.  Or, at least, a version of it.  “James” is based on my friend from Sri Lanka and was featured frequently on GS a few years ago.  I wrote tons of never published articles with James that usually ended up being cannibalized to create the published stuff.  A few of those discarded articles are sitting in my email for some reason…

From July, 2005.  The title of the email is “Saturday in July.”

My old college buddy James.  Definition:  Lush.  File under:  Surprising ability to seduce married women.  Married women.  Definition:  Lonely.  Abandoned.  Prey.

Predator.  Definition:  Lush.

The call came at 9pm.  It was fairly early for a James evening, so I registered surprise when I heard his voice.  By registering surprise I, of course, mean that only you and I know that I was taken off guard.  Long ago, as a survival technique, I had learned not to show surprise ina  way that James could detect.  This, of course, was difficult.

Behind him, creeping through his cell phone, a familiar soundtrack played.  The screams of women, the burbles of their dates, Brown-Eyed Girl.  James was at a wedding.  I’ve worked weddings, both as manager and caterer, for 15 years,  I know them, I can taste them, I can feel them in my frail, vodka-addled bones.  I didn’t say anything.  I had to piss, so I had nothing to say.  As soon as I knew it was James, I put everything he was about to say out of my mind and became consumed by the age-old question:  Could I piss while I was talking to him?

“Nach?”

I didn’t reply.

“Fucking Nach, Nach?”  James screeched, then said something under his breath.  I heard ice clinking, the tell-tale sounds of his cellphone scrunching between head and shoulder, a shaker blasting away.  Ice and vodka.  The pour.  A martini.  I hesitated.  James was making a martini for….someone else.  Was he at a party?  And, if so, why was he making the drinks.  Mystery deepened so, instead of playing my usual silent game, I brought myself back to earth.

“James, what are you doing?”

“You have got to get here,”  he hissed into the phone.

“I – “

“Please, god, please, just write this down.”  He rambled off a set of directions that barely clutched at my mind.  Fortunately, I knew the final destination.  James hung up, I blinked twice, then I grabbed my keys and ran.  Something was different and, thank all the gods mankind has created, thank all the visions of utopia, thank everyone on Christmas morning, something was different.  Something was, indeed, different.  Something –

The Acura gave me trouble.  That wasn’t very different.  I had to hit the wheel before it started, which was a new thing, then I watched the temperature gauge slam to the right side, back to the left, then normalize.  That was different.  It would have been funny if, you know, I had been a passenger.

I power-geared out to where James was.  (Power-geared.  That’s something my grandfather says whenever he uses the Acura.  “I power-geared to Giant and got power-bars!”  This was chief amongst my thoughts when I realized that I didn’t have a third gear anymore.)

James was at an old mansion in Chevy Chase, Maryland.  Sitting peacefully on a 40 acre, wooded lot, the house was frequently rented out to wedding parties and other similar events.  Saturday night at 9pm, the house was full of lights and rocking like the foundation had got its freak on.  A Spanish song that had been played a million times at the Cadiz feria in May of 2001 poured out of windows and doors and, seemingly, from the rocks and trees themselves.  I had spent many hours on the dirt floor of various sherry freakout huts at the Cadiz feria, my Spanish friends dragging me from tent to tent, stuffing me full of sherry and 7-Up and, when the Feria closed each night at about 500 o’clock AM, I had been dragged in a cloud of Spanish-language lunatics to scotch bars in the bad part of Cadiz.

Flashback:  May, 2001.  I sat in the car for a few minutes, living every moment of my feria hangover.  I remember that Cadiz is in Spain, and my passport says I was in Spain for a month, but I don’t remember any of it.  My stomach, however, is somewhere in a back alley close to the sea.

I locked up and leapt out, hitting speed dial 10 and getting James.

“Round back,” he said, hanging up.

I circled the house and saw three dozen wedding freaks dancing on the lawn, feria-crazed, and James in a penguin power suit mixing exotic drinks.  A magic man whipping lime and vodka and whole grapefruits and badgers and weasels and various unmarked bottles into tiny, blue glasses that appeared to have no stems.

Stepping up to the bar, I leaned close to whisper something harsh and disapproving, but he saw me first.

“Nach!”

“James, what the – “

“I’m tending bar for Ridgewells.”  He leaned close to my head and whispered,  “You’re a wedding crasher!  Like in that movie neither of us will watch.”

“Tending bar?”

“Yep.  Thought you’d appreciate a few free – “  He poured a viscous, green fluid into a martini glass made of crystal and air, then handed it to me.  “Whatevers…”

I took a sip and the world dipped.  I took another sip and a black haired girl from New York City appeared at my elbow.

“Hi.”  I said.

“You shouldn’t drink these,” she warned me, her hand fluttering up and down my arm.”

“He’s Nacho Sasha,” James said.  “He’s mellowed in the new decade but, really, he can drink these.”

“Funny name.” she whispered, her eyes glazed and zombie like as James filled her glass what a Whatever.  She looked down and mumbled, “Funny…name.”

“What the fuck are you tending bar for?” I asked.

“I need the extra cash,”

“James, you make a 150 grand a year!”

“I have a mortgage man!  Have mercy for the little man!”  He refilled my glass.  It seems I had finished it at some point.  I noticed a bottle on the bar.

“Johnny Walker Green?”

“It’s between black and blue.”

“Black and blue,” the New York girl said.

“Who are you?” I asked her.

“I’m from New York City.”

“No, who are you?”

“I’m from – “

“Forget it,” James said.  “So Johnny Walker Green was illegal in the US.”

“What?”

“Seriously.  Now it’s legal.  It’s right below Blue label and – “

“What!  The substandard label was illegal?  You could buy the best but you couldn’t buy the second best?”

James cleared his throat,  “I don’t know.  This is what some spic told me.”

“Well, I’ve never had the Green.”

James poured two glasses, looked at wobbling New York, shrugged, then poured her a glass.  We three held them up, inspected, then James clinked our glasses.  “For science!”  We knocked back the Green.  James said: Woof.  I said:  Grrr.  New York said: Bark.

I stepped aside with New York when customers came up, violently demanding Whatevers.  James mixed them up and, from behind him, I noticed that he was pouring what appeared to be windshield washer fluid into the glasses.  I went to stop him, but New York grabbed my arm.

“Are you…” She had trouble, slurring the words, dribbling spit.  She blinked, shook her head, sucked in a breath, cleared her mind.  “Are you here with…?”

“No, I’m crashing the fucking wedding.”

“Like in the movie?”

“I’m boycotting the movie because I belong to a religious cult.”

“Do you want to see my tits?”

“Yes.”

We ran up a grand staircase, giggling like school kids, and slammed our way into a bathroom.  She worked very hard to close and lock the door, as her hands seemed to have floated away.  She was better with my belt buckle.  I had no problem with the zipper down her back.  Her tits were fantastic, and as I moved to grasp them in my hands she passed out in my arms.  After a brief rape or abandon moment, I decided to remove her clothes, lean her back on the toilet, then take off, leaving the door open.  I returned to James’ side.

“What?  A five minute fuck?”

“You killed her.”

“The power of the Whatever!”

An elderly woman hit the table, asking for a Dirt Coke.

“Good evening,” I said, “your bartender’s shitfaced!”

She gasped and scurried off.

James grabbed my arm and shook me powerfully, “That’s why I invited you, babe!  You hurt the sick, young and elderly.  You’re like a hyena.  Hyena Sasha!”  For a moment, I was worried he’d vault the bar and attack someone.  He restrained himself, though.  Whatevers.  Definition:  Unknown.  Science:  Hypothesis, experimentation, debate.

We drank Whatevers and caused problems.  Then the groom came up to us.  He came to James first, whispering to him.  James couldn’t stop laughing, so then the groom moved over to me.

“Dude,” he said, “I don’t know you.”

“I’m with your drunken bartender.”

“I need help.  You’re the only person I don’t know here.”

“Want me to take your wife for a test run?  See if she’s up to snuff?