by Isabella May
Heather bundled wool and needles in her bag, went home to get ready for her kundalini yoga class, and left him to his thoughts.
He poured himself a Pisco Sour. It was fast becoming his favourite feature of the menu, but he made a mental note to add just a hint more brandy on his next attempt. A couple of sips and soon his memories were flickering once again like fire licking at kindling, this time carrying him back to Mexico.
The final gig had been perfection; one of those seamless sets that flowed with synchronicity: song, rapturous applause, song, rapturous applause. Okay, he couldn’t pretend the way the crowd held their lighters aloft like a flock of sheep didn’t nark him right off. Alicia Keays and her ode to New York had a lot to answer for when it came to that tragic mainstream nod at enlightenment. But other than that, the gruelling weeks touring Latin America had ended on a high; a high that, try as he might, River couldn’t quite seem to find a cocktail in the city to match.
Next morning he’d pulled back the curtains to reveal a Guadalajara sunrise which further revealed Avalonia’s band members strewn across the penthouse suite of the hotel; a domino rally that had gone badly wrong. Alex, the guitarist, had evidently pulled again. River rubbed his eyes so he could focus on the local beauty whose naked thigh entrapped his Egyptian cotton-cocooned friend. Alex’s height never seemed to restrict his magnetism when it came to the ladies; it was as if his guitar was the musical equivalent to the Mercedes SLK, driven by many a pint-sized male. And just behind this aftermath of lust lay Bear (or Edward to his parents). He definitely hadn’t been as lucky. His light snores brushed over the top of the empty bottle of Jack Daniels balancing in the palm of his right hand, creating something almost Peruvian as a backdrop to the scene. Still, it made a somewhat refreshing change to see he’d traded drugs for liqueur last night. For some reason he’d never matured past chemical experimentation, unlike the others. River was finding it increasingly hard to wrap his head around that – and the fact that nobody else shared his passion for a fine cocktail.
This snapshot in time, minus Alice, who’d taken on a penthouse suite of her own as per usual, wasn’t all that different to every other session of partying after a final show. But for some reason this morning it looked more desperate than ever. In six years they’d practically be forty for crying out loud. At some point life had to get more sophisticated, reveal some kind of meaning.
He showered and dressed then beachcombed the squalor amidst the luxury for his wallet, and made for the streets, even though they were the last place he wanted to be. Mexico’s fourth largest city was strangely cleansing. True, it was a Sunday which accounted for less bodies but something else was different out here too. He felt he had a journey to take. The breeze seemed to whisper it, but coffee first.
River followed a group of locals to a café opposite the train station. Small chirpy birds covered one of the few remaining empty tables, pecking at crumbs on a thoroughly unwashed surface until he interrupted them by pulling out a chair. But he was too entranced by the conversation he was already eavesdropping in on to care.
“A que hora sale el tren por Tequila?” a voice from the neighbouring table asked of somebody in its group.
Of course, Guadalajara was practically down the road from Tequila.
Tequila!
How could he not catch the next train there and take up the opportunity for a quick mooch around? He’d buy some interesting varieties, ask the locals if they’d be happy to impart their wisdom on all things mixology, maybe visit a smallholding and get to do a bit of tasting straight from source.
“Sale a las dos,” came the reply.
Two o’clock, too late.
The waitress came and went with his order, swiftly followed by a strong shot of coffee, not a dash of milk in sight. The oozing cheese of his breakfast burrito cut through the bitterness and as he sank his teeth into a most surprisingly hot jalapeño, forcing the words “leche por favor” somewhat embarrassingly into the air, he found last night’s dream sailing back to him in a strange mosaic he couldn’t piece together: a child with long, dark braids finished off with bright red bows, a row of gleaming blue and green bottles, and a small, sky blue hut.
He shook his head, unable to fathom it out, wrapped the remnants of the burrito in a napkin, stuffed it into his backpack, visited the toilets – holding his breath, pinching his nose – and then headed out of the city towards the two-lane highway.
He decided to walk to Tequila instead. It was only thirty miles away, he’d hitch a lift; the heat wasn’t so intense at this time of year. And if he couldn’t catch a ride with someone, well, he’d walk fast – and he’d spend the night there too. The band weren’t flying back to London for another couple of days. He’d earned his down time.
Two hours later and he’d barely made a dent in his journey. The sun was relentless too; something he’d grossly underestimated the power of. He resorted to sticking his thumb out and resigning himself to a very long wait. But within minutes a pickup truck had stopped. A vaquero, sombrero-clad, leaned out of the window and asked him where he was headed.
“Tequila, hombre… por favor,” River replied.
The driver nodded in agreement and opened the door to provide relief to River’s aching limbs. They drove in silence broken only by the interruption of the can of beer which he tossed to his right. River gratefully caught it and began to sip, taking in the sights of the landscape as the dark shape of the volcano on the horizon loomed ever closer.
“Vale, tienes que irte aqui, yo voy a la izquierda.” said the driver some fifteen minutes later as he pulled over into a layby.
Say what? Surely his Spanish wasn’t that bad. Had he only imagined he’d asked to be driven to Tequila? This was the middle of nowhere. The driver could have told him he’d be turning off left and couldn’t take him all the way to town.
“Gracias,” said River, depositing himself and his bag back onto concrete before his reflexes could think to question the driver, “por nada,” he added as the truck sped off down a dirt track as opposed to straight on to the home of the agave plant.
“Great. Now what?”
Emboldened by the dregs of his beer, he continued his dusty walk, passing cacti and bottle-shaped signs of intoxicating goodness, teasing him. So close yet so far away. He stuck out his thumb again in the hope of somebody being good enough to complete his journey. He sensed his despondency glowing around him like the child in the Ready Brek adverts all those years ago, warning people away from his strange red-rimmed silhouette.
After what felt like an eternity, in the very far distance on the left hand side of the road, River could just about make out a choza. As he approached, he saw the shack was sky blue and corrugated, its undulations rippling and reflecting the late afternoon sun.
He clambered ungracefully over the fence and into the bluish grey of the agave field, careful to keep his tread between the spikey rows, whose musky barrels he could almost smell on the air, if only he could get to a distillery by nightfall. But then something else caught his eye. A row of bottles glistened at the base of the shack and moments later a small child appeared. She stopped for a moment to take in his presence and then a giant beam took over her face and she beckoned to him excitedly with her arms open wide, as if he were her papa – or some long lost uncle who’d returned from his travels around the world.
It was at this precise moment that River’s blood ran cold. She was the girl from his dream.
Without thinking he marched forward; the sparkle of the bottles rendering him moth-like. He watched as the braided child disappeared inside the small hut, overcome with a curiosity he couldn’t put words to. Moments later as he walked closer still, an elderly woman emerged from the entrance; her hand shielding the sun from her eyes as she took in River’s form, wending its way to her abode.
“It was written in the air,” she said, as he stood before her with his hand instinctively reaching out to shake hers. He was too dazed to reply but assumed this would be a c
ulturally acceptable greeting.
“No need to carry on to Tequila. Your journey ends,” she smiled to reveal two rows of crooked teeth, “and begins right here. Come inside and let me explain.”
His head told him now was the time to do a runner, not that there was exactly anywhere to hide. His heart somehow warmed in an instant to this apparition of a female and her child.
“How do you speak such perfect English?” he said, stunned at his ability to enter into routine chitchat as he also bent to enter the tiny doorway, immediately hit by the pungent smell of ribs, chili and oregano, simmering on a tiny stove.
“Everything is connected,” said the woman.
“But, you live here in deepest Mexico. Or did you go to school, college?”
“I’m surrounded by infinite intelligence, why would I ever need to do that?”
She sat on a colourful stool, picked up a bowl and began to peel lima beans, a task she’d evidently made little progress with.
“Okaaay, this is starting to freak me out now.”
“You’re welcome to stay for supper before you head back to the city.” She ignored his confusion.
“I um… I really wanted to check out Tequila actually.”
She stopped her peeling for a few seconds, studied his face and then carried on with the job in hand.
“It’s just that, well,” he turned to look for a seat and she pointed at a similarly Aztec painted stool in the corner of the room, which he tentatively perched on, “I’ve uh… I’ve been collecting cocktail recipes from locals on my travels for a few years now, got a book full of them, and as soon as the plane touches down in London in a few days’ time – I’m uh… I’m here with my band and we played at the VFG arena last night – that’s it, man, I’m outta the music industry, time to move on to ventures new.”
He paused briefly to take in the knowing nods of the woman now standing before him. “I’ve put in a sealed bid for a rundown pub, in the town that I grew up in back home,” he continued, encouraged by her approval, “gonna refurbish it, make it pretty, turn it into a cocktail bar as it happens. Bring my inspiration back to Glastonbury, give her a new lease of life and the locals a hangout to put a smile on their faces.”
“All of this I know,” she said. “Although, I hope you have never been fooled into believing in the legend of Princess Xoctl of Mexico.” She giggled a little then paused, her finger and thumb pinching together in the air, as if plucking an invisible idea that had just flown past her. “It was the cola de gallo that really leant the cocktail its current name.”
River knew the former hearsay probably was just that: hearsay. The theories as to the provenance of a cocktail had piled up thick and fast over the years, only adding to the drink’s intrigue. But his ears pricked up now as the old woman bread crumbed yet another possible story of the cocktail’s origins.
“You probably know it already, of course, but it was the sailors arriving on the Yucatan peninsula, hundreds of years ago, here in my country… it was they who inadvertently gave your future bar its name,” she wagged her finger as if to autocorrect any other ideas that had formed in his mind over time. “One day,” she patted at her apron for effect, “a certain sailor asked for his usual drac in a bar, but the bartender couldn’t find his trusty wooden spoon to mix the liquor up with – and it had to be mixed slowly, precisely,” she took to wagging her finger again, “that was of utmost importance… so he improvised, used the root of the plant instead. And from that day forward, every sailor coming to shore would visit a bar and ask for a cola de gallo, which I’m sure I don’t need to tell you translates as ‘tail of the cock’, cocktail,” she finished with a wink.
“But how can you possibly know this? That’s insane.” (River was no longer referring to the folklore but his future plans.) “I mean, I had a kind of premonition last night, a dream about a place just like this, and the glass bottles, a girl who looked just like your… your granddaughter?”
“That she is. You interpret my age well. And yes, the wind sent that intuition your way.”
“Ah, man, I mean lady. Will you stop talking in these riddles, please? It’s messing with my head. I’m as open-minded as it gets, it goes with the territory where I come from. But none of this makes a scrap of sense.” River’s upturned palms flew to shoulder height as if to demonstrate his confusion. “Am I like stuck in a weird parallel universe or something? What do you want from me? Why did you lead me here?”
“My name is Mercedes,” the woman finally introduced herself. “And you… you were chosen long, long ago to be a Messenger. There are many who have passed this way taking a bottle to their corners of the Earth, River. Your desire is so strong that destiny, the path you have been carving out, has come to fruition, brought you to this point. The spiritual nature of your hometown, your musical calling, your love of liqueur has made you a connoisseur. And now you are ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“For this.” She picked up her bowl and set it down on her stool, walked over to a wooden shelf and then handed him a bottle containing a clear liquid.
“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 my choza 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 this trio 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 stor
y, “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 easy nuez to 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 her duende at 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.