Immortal

If you’ve ever hung out long enough in a Starbucks you know this isn’t a terribly uncommon experience, especially when all the other tables are taken. Usually people bother to ask first if the chair is being saved, but… Anyway, I tried to act nonchalant and flipped ahead to the crossword puzzle to look busy.

“Hello,” my tablemate said. I looked up briefly. He was dressed in a sports coat and a white shirt, no tie. He had a couple of gold chains around his neck with symbols hanging from them that he probably couldn’t identify the meaning of at gunpoint. He was white-skinned, stocky in build, and looked to have some Norwegian ancestry in him. I was singularly disinterested in having a conversation, so I pretended to be a foreigner. Which I sort of am.

“I don’t speak any English,” I said in German. Middle-high German, which nobody speaks any more. I didn’t feel like running the risk that he was fluent in the modern form. Most of the time when someone hears a foreign language they don’t probe. And they almost never ask what language it is, just so long as it sounds like an actual language. This doesn’t always work. I once spent a half hour trying to get rid of an inquisitive elderly wino in a bar in Ontario while speaking Sanskrit. Sometimes people just can’t take a hint.

This appeared to be one of those times. He smiled as if I had responded in the King’s English and said, “I’m fine, thanks.”

I nodded and tried to go back to my paper. Five letter word for draining aid. Sieve?

“How about this weather?” he added.

“You are ugly and smell like pig dung,” I suggested helpfully.

“Yeah, it looks like snow to me, too.”

This would have been amusing, if it weren’t so very annoying.

“Look,” he whispered, leaning forward conspiratorially, “I know you speak English. You’re reading the fucking paper. Okay?”

“Your mother eats raw salmon,” I offered. Was this guy slow?

He snatched the paper from my hand. Now we were past the “invasion of personal space” phase and fast approaching “punch you in the nose” phase.

He slapped the paper down on the table and pointed to the artistic rendition of my face, circa two days ago.

“I know who you are. Now let’s talk in the same language for a bit.”

For the first time, I noticed that the coffee shop was half empty. There were four other empty tables he could have chosen from. I should have been paying better attention.

I snatched the paper off the table. “I am the god of cabbage,” I declared angrily. With any luck somebody would step up and ask him why he was bothering the foreign guy.

“All right, all right,” he said. “Do me a favor. Look under the table. I have a gun pointed at your balls right now.”

Well now, that was obviously a trick, right? If I peek under the table, I clearly understand English. And for all I know he’s got his penis out or something. The correct response was to ignore him. Except I knew as soon as he said it that he wasn’t kidding. So, I peeked. He wasn’t kidding. I sat up again.

“What is that, a .22?” I asked.

“It’s a .38. Makes a little ‘pop’ when you pull the trigger, sounds like a wine bottle uncorking.”

“That’s nice. What do you want?”

“I want you,” he said, smiling.

“I’m charmed. Are you a policeman?”

He laughed. “Hardly.”

“Well then. If you’re not a member of law enforcement, why should I go anywhere with you?”

“Because I’ve still got a gun pointed at your balls?”

“It would look terribly silly if I got up and we walked out together with you holding a gun to my groin, don’t you think? One almost never sees that sort of thing.”

“You could give me your word that you’ll leave quietly,” he suggested.

“Supposing my word isn’t worth anything?”

“I think it is.”

“That’s mighty trusting of you.”

He leaned forward and grinned. “Here’s what I know. I know you’re old enough to remember a time when there were no words.”

He was wrong, I think. I don’t remember any fully preliterate societies. But close enough. Who the hell was this guy? Did he work for the people who sent me the message in the paper? Was he the guy who sent it?

“Do I have your attention now?” he asked.

“Sure. What do you want?”

“I want you to sit right there for a second.” He pulled a black case out of his jacket and slid it across the table. “Open it.”

I popped it open and found a syringe.

“We just met and we’re already doing heroin?” I said. “Seems sudden.”

He leaned forward and whispered, “Keep your goddamn voice down. Now I want you to take that and inject yourself with it.”

“Um, no?”

“You want to spend the rest of your very long life without your balls?” he asked.

I was amazed that our dialogue had gone unnoticed. You’d think this was far enough off the conversational beaten path to send up a signal or two to somebody. But everyone was stubbornly minding their own business.

I picked up the syringe and examined it. “What’s in it?” I asked. Not that I had anything to fear regardless. Nobody had invented anything yet that could poison me.

“It’s the only way I have to verify your identity. It’s concentrated botulinum toxin. It’ll kill a man in about fifteen seconds. If you are who you’re supposed to be, it won’t do anything to you.”

“I never claimed to be anyone special,” I pointed out. “That’s all you. And you seem convinced already.”

“I am convinced. But if I don’t test you I don’t get paid.”

I laid the syringe on the table and examined it. “How’s it work?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never used one.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. I wasn’t kidding. I really had never used a syringe before.

“Find a vein,” he said. “Your wrist is fine.”

I laid my hand flat and palm-up on the table and looked at it. “Like that one?” I asked, pointing to the largest vein I could see.

“Yes, fine.” He was getting impatient. All except for the gun under the table, I was sort of enjoying this.

“Okay,” he said. “Insert the pointy end into the vein at an angle, and then push the plunger down. And don’t do anything stupid like sticking me with it. You kill me, I kill you.”

And so, at gunpoint, I gave myself my very first intravenous injection. It was a little painful. I don’t think I have a future ahead of me as a junkie.

When I was finished and the fifteen seconds wherein I continued to be alive passed uneventfully, he said, “Good, now put it back in the case and slide it over to me.”

I did as I was told. He returned the case to his inside pocket.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Get up. I’m parked about two blocks down the street.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’ll get to that later. Do you know how to drive?”

“No.” He tapped the gun barrel against the bottom of the table. “Yes.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

He stood. I stood. He was much taller than he had looked when sitting in the chair. A full head-and- shoulders taller than me. I remember when I used to be the tallest guy on an entire continent. At this rate, in another century or two, I’ll be the shortest.