Page 10 of The Cocktail Bar
“What is this? Mezcal?”
“Para todo mal, Mezcal, y para todo bien, tambien,” she said and started laughing as if enjoying a private joke with herself. “This is no kind of Tequila, River. It’s a very special tonic… a tonic without a name.”
“Woah there, let’s back up a minute. Are you saying… are you honestly saying… you want me to take this back to my bar and serve it up to… to paying customers, without any idea of its composition? Do you think I’ve totally lost the plot? I can’t do that.”
“Then that is your choice and I respect you for it. However, think for a minute, my child: why did you wake up with such a longing and pull to trek this very road this morning? Why did you hitch a lift which just happened to appear the moment you required a set of wheels… wheels which took you as far as mychoza pequeña? The universe delivered you to me. This was always meant to be. And now, if you decide to accept the mission, if you decide to commit, then the lives of three people will change, for the better, forever. And that’s just in your first bar.”
“Okay. You’ve lost me completely now. How’s that going to change the world?”
“Never underestimate the power of three. It’s a magic number. The ripples of joy this chosen trio will generate is going to envelope your town – and beyond – in something never seen before. Magic catches like that, it’s wildfire,” her eyes became lanterns, as if to convince him, “breathing new life into the saddest and darkest of corners.”
“Can’t I have a glass of this… this whatever-it-is… or a shot of something, anything? Maybe that will stop me feeling like I’m having an out of body experience.”
River couldn’t believe he was even half going along with this claptrap. It was as if his actual self was watching a duplicated version of him from afar on one of those old-fashioned film projectors, powerless to intervene and talk some sense.
“Well of course, my child, you had only to ask. But it will have no effect on you,” she tutted at the very idea, “why you are just The Messenger, remember.”
“All the same, if you’re expecting me to even contemplate serving it to thistrio of customers, as you put it… a mixologist does have ethics, you know.”
“You’ve heard of the genie in the bottle, no?” said Mercedes as she fulfilled his request, pouring a trickle of the clear liquid into a shot glass, as well as a small measure of local Tequila in another.
“From Aladdin you mean?”
“Yes, the genie from the fairy tale.”
“Keep talking.”
“Well, just ten drops of this will have the same effect.”
River questioned his sanity again as he cautiously brought the thimble to his lips, swirled it, sniffed it and poured a little onto the tip of his tongue.
“But it’s completely tasteless.”
“Except unlike the genie granting only three wishes,” Mercedes continued with her story, “this magic potion will grant three people endless wishes. But only wishes for good; therein lies the beauty. The genie couldn’t say no to anything… a bit like The Law of Attraction that everybody is raving about these days, even though it’s as ancient as gravity,” her chuckle spoke a thousand words, all leaning toward the naivety of ninety-nine per cent of humanity. “This liquid on the other hand, is discerning; blessed by a deity during the time of the Toltex Indians. Its composition has remained a secret, even to me.” She raised her brow and the deep furrows of her wrinkles became the crests of ragged waves.
“Right,” River screwed up his face as if trying to wake himself from a nightmare. “Okay,” he opened his eyes again to see that it hadn’t worked, and Mercedes was once again tending to her beans. “So, I have never met you before… and I am supposed to just go with this legend, burying my head in the sand that actually, it might be a bottle of poison with which you are really intending to wipe out the UK’s population?”
“Oh, River, you really aren’t an easynuezto crack,” Mercedes almost spat out her words as she abandoned her beans once again, putting him in mind of a Flamenco dancer about to take to the stage to display herduendeat the unnecessary struggle he was inflicting upon her.
She picked up the bottle and returned it to him as if it were now his responsibility regardless, and walked out of the hut clutching an intricately patterned fan which she flapped fiercely, unable to hide her exasperation.
The child eyed River curiously.
“What?” he said. “Que? What am I supposed to make of all of this? It’s a bit far-fetched, grant me that much.”
She smiled and continued to play with her spinning top.
He slammed back his Tequila, basking in its purity, negating the need for salt and a lime wedge to temper the burn; a tick in the box as far as helping to convince him the mystery bottle might be kosher after all, and stood to join Mercedes outside in the field, the elixir tucked under his arm.
“It’s hard for me, you know,” she said with her back to him as he stepped outside the hut. She continued staring off into the mountainous hinterland and he slowly joined her, two strangers they may have been, yet he was already beginning to feel as if he’d somehow known her a lifetime – perhaps just a very different lifetime. “I never asked to be entrusted with this. But that’s what my family signed up for all those centuries ago. We have our supply, we pass it down the generations, and when the time is right, we set the intention; we call in a Messenger and off goes a bottle to another part of the world. Today it’s you. Tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, it’s another. It’s just the design. Slowly but surely,” she turned now to face him, her face pure and somehow loving, “when humanity has reached a certain level of understanding, evil will be wiped out, non-existent, leaving only good. Until then, a few people here, a few people there will have the ability to scatter non-stop joy.”
“And what’s in all of this for me, if I’m not one of the three?”
“You will return to find the missing pieces to your own puzzle.”
“But nothing’s missing from my life,” he said, kicking lightly at the dusty ground. “I’ve already decided to take a new direction with the bar…the one bar… I’m not sure why you’re referring to it as ‘my first’ as if I’m the Donald bloody Trump of the brewery industry.” He waved his hands like that might help reassure her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to use the expletive there, but don’t presume to know more about me than I do about myself.”
“Take the bottle… and this,” she clung to her convictions, handing him a pale brown envelope which he hadn’t previously noticed folded into her apron strings, “but don’t open it until you are much closer to your home and you’ve made your final decision.” She held her arms out wide to embrace him firmly. “Felix, my nephew, is waiting. He will take you back to the city now.”
