My old college buddy James.  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 in a way that James could detect.

"Nach?"

I didn't reply.

"Fucking Nach, Nach?"  James screeched, then he cursed under his breath.  I heard ice clinking, 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?  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 about  the night.

The Acura gave me trouble.  That wasn't very different.  I had to hit the wheel a few times before it started, 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 drunk 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, dragging me 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.  My stomach is still 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 James.

"I need the extra cash,"

"James, you make 150 grand a year!"

"I have a mortgage man!  Have mercy for the little man!"  He refilled my glass.  It seems I had finished my drink 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 wistfully.

"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, 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 on the latter and removed her clothes, leaned her back on the toilet, then took off, leaving the door open.  I returned to James' side.

"What?  A five minute fuck?"

"You killed her."

He grinned.  "The power of the Whatever!"

An elderly woman hit the table, asking for a Diet 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.  Whatevers.  Definition:  Unknown.  Science:  Hypothesis, experimentation, debate.

We drank Whatevers and discussed ways we could cause problems.  It was pretty clear that James wasn't going to make it ten feet from the bar and, in fact, I had been called to drive him home.  That moment was fast upon me as James slumped to his knees, scattering glasses, and poured a fistful of pearl onions into his palm.  "I love these fucking little things," he growled, filling his mouth.

Gibsons.  Cary Grant drank those in North by Northwest.  I had a sudden, lurching desire to order one so I could be cool and fuck little boys like Cary, but James was sucking the last of the pearl onions off of the filthy bar.

I pulled him away and we stumbled away from the house and into the night just as the girl from New York City screamed and a ripple of silence moved through the wedding.

James spun, pulled out a handgun, screamed and fired into the air.  The silence became chaos and my scream matched the pitch, intensity and desperation of New York.  I flailed against James and we both lost our balance, falling over a low retaining wall and dropping about ten feet into a shallow creek.  For me, chaos lapsed into panic as I took stock of every bone in my body.  James was up on his feet, though, spreading mud across his face. 

"Shut up, Eight Ball, Victor Charles will get you.  Those goddamned slope bastards breathe with the night, they are in the trees, I can feel their rice breath slipping down the back of my neck."  He stood up, aimed the gun, released a volley of shots, then bolted into darkness.

Times like this, I think James has too much time on his hands.

I chose the opposite direction, crawling through woods and getting to the Acura just as a convoy of police cars arrived.  I sank down into the backseat and pulled a blanket over me.  Roll on dawn, roll on.

From moon and stars to sun and summer heat.  The car felt like it had been bricked up, but I kept the blanket over me until a light tapping whisked across the exterior.  Cautiously peeking out from under my nest, I saw the top of James' head and one bloodshot eye peering in my window.  Sucking in stale air, I clambered into the driver's seat, popped the locks and tried to look everywhere at once as he climbed in, moaning and hungover.

I glared at him, numb and a little out of my mind.

"Dude," his voice scratched, dark and painful, "Thanks for coming when I called.  God knows what I would have done otherwise."