“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 impressed. You have class. And I’m at a loose end right now. You should know that 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.”
Wednesday grinned. His smiles were strange things, Shadow decided. They contained no shred of humor, no happiness, no mirth. Wednesday looked like he had learned to smile from a manual.
“Very good,” he said. “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 for another half-minute, and then he let go.
“Good,” he said. “Good. Very good.” He smiled, a brief flash, and Shadow wondered if there had been real humor in that smile, actual pleasure. “So, one last glass of evil, vile fucking 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 a glass from the table, a glass that had once held mead, and he tipped the ice-cubes into the ashtray. 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 throughout the impromptu performance, put his head on one side. “We have to talk about that,” he said. “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 about 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.” He picked up his half-finished Southern Comfort and Coke, looked at it, and put it down on the table.
Wednesday stared at both of them as if he had just discovered new and previously unimagined life forms. Then he 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?” he asked, without enthusiasm.
“Yes, 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, drunken 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 cold-blooded, 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.”