The bearded man lit his cigarette. “I’m a leprechaun,” he said, with a grin.
Shadow did not smile. “Really?” he said. “Shouldn’t you be drinking Guinness?”
“Stereotypes. You have to learn to think outside the box,” said the bearded man. “There’s a lot more to Ireland than Guinness.”
“You don’t have an Irish accent.”
“I’ve been over here too fucken long.”
“So you are originally from Ireland?”
“I told you. I’m a leprechaun. We don’t come from fucken Moscow.”
“I guess not.”
Wednesday returned to the table, three drinks held easily in his pawlike hands. “Southern Comfort and Coke for you, Mad Sweeney m’man, and a Jack Daniel’s for me. And this is for you, Shadow.”
“What is it?”
“Taste it.”
The drink was a tawny golden color. Shadow took a sip, tasting an odd blend of sour and sweet on his tongue. He could taste the alcohol underneath, and a strange blend of flavors. It reminded him a little of prison hooch, brewed in a garbage bag from rotten fruit and bread and sugar and water, but it was sweeter, and far stranger.
“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.”