I'd been to the James Street Tavern once before, well before I'd ever had any bright ideas about going ice climbing in Canada. This was when I was a counselor at a Lutheran summer camp, teaching Bible studies and conflict management skills to kids. The first time I'd been to James Street, I was leading a group on an urban service mission; helping in soup kitchens, babysitting kids of drug-addicted parents, etc. And no, the kids were not there illegally; the place was just as much of a restaurant as it was a bar.
This was when I was all gung-ho about helping people. This was when my biggest concern was staying out of the pants of sixteen-year-old girls. This was when my life was relatively normal.
The story changes, I suppose.
But not for the James Street Tavern. The place was exactly the way it was when I was there for the first time, seven or eight years prior. The sign on the front wall was the same dim, almost-but-not-quite neon red. The lights inside were just as dim, and had a subtle red tint, as well. The smoke hanging in the air could well have been the very same smoke from all those years ago, for all I know. Even the band was the same (Five Guys Named Moe, although there were only four guys in the band, and none, to my knowledge, were named Moe), playing the same covers of Coltrane and Davis. I was instantly sorry I hadn't made a point to hang out in this place more often.
You could feel the air in this place. As you walked, the sounds of jazz and the smells of various tobacco smokes and expensive French cuisine filled your wake as though you were walking through water.
I found the smoking section easily, as there was no non-smoking section, and I found Synchek just as easily. He was, as he'd promised, the only one-armed man in the place, and was easily seen as such because of the folded sleeve at his left shoulder. He would have been easy to spot even without his little disability; the man was gigantic. In every way, he was gigantic. Fat, tall, wide. There would have been no way to miss this man, which I found a little disappointing, actually. I'd half-hoped I wouldn't have been able to find him, and would have been able to go back to Dave and Adam and say he wasn't there, but at least I went to check it out. Turns out Adam wasn't the only pussy in our little group.
I thought about turning around, walking out, and lying to my friends about it, but I thought about it for too long. He turned his head around, maybe looking for the waitress, and spotted me. His right arm shot up, and he began waving me over, calling, way too loudly, "Mr. Eliot! Mr. Eliot!"
So I went over to him. What else could I have done, right?
He stood up, way up, and had to tilt his head down significantly to look into my eyes as he spoke. "So good to see you, Mr. Eliot. I was beginning to think you weren't interested in meeting me."
"Well, here I am." I didn't bother to make it sound like I was excited.
He offered his right hand and, by the sad state of that handshake, I gathered that he must have been left-handed.
"Have a seat, Mr. Eliot." He watched as I sat, and then he flagged down the waitress. "I'll take a Grey Goose martini, up and dirty. And for my friend, here..."
"Woodford Reserve on the rocks, please."
"I'm sorry, but we don't carry the Reserve." She wasn't sorry. You could tell.
"Knob Creek, then?"
She nodded and walked away, and I was certain she'd be returning with a glass of Jim Beam, or, if I was lucky, Maker’s Mark.
Synchek sat down with a big old grin on his face. I couldn't tell if it was genuine or if he was selling me something. "So good to meet you, Mr. Eliot."
I was already annoyed with myself for coming to meet this man. One should be wary of any man who says your name more than twice in two minutes. Of course, I didn't have that rule in place when I met him; he's the reason for its inception.
"So, what's this about?" I suppose I should have been a little more polite, but I was so angry with myself that I just didn't have it in me.
He paused. I don't think he wanted the conversation to go this way. What was supposed to happen was, he was going to bullshit a little while, break the ice, establish a good rapport, sucker me in the way a telemarketer would. Or maybe a good cult leader.
"Well, Travis – do you mind if I call you Travis? Well, Travis, as I said in my letter, I would like to invite you to be a guest speaker at the next meeting of an organization of which I am the acting president."
I wondered if he always spoke this way, with grammar that was uncertain at best, and forced. I wondered if anyone in the world could speak to him for more than five minutes without wanting to smack him square in the mouth and scream, "God dammit! Speak like a human being!" I gathered not.
I asked him what, exactly, this group was.
He straightened up. "We are an organization of folks who have had experiences similar to your own. We've been following your story with great interest and feel that you may have a lot to offer to our ranks."
"Excuse me?"
He looked puzzled, like he didn't understand what I couldn't grasp. "We feel that we could take quite a bit from your tale, that you have a lot to offer to those who have been in similar circumstances, and that we may have a good bit to offer you in return."
This was a painful conversation. "What, like a support group? Thanks, but I'm finished with therapy."
"No, no, Travis. Not at all like therapy. We're not a support group. We're merely a small group of people who have this one relatively odd thing in common. I was involved in an accident, too, you see." He rolled his left shoulder, his stump in tiny circles. "So have many of the others."
"So this is like a club? What, like survivors of ungodly accidents?"
"Exactly like a club." He nodded to the waitress as she placed our drinks on the table.
I took a large swallow of my bourbon and was pleased to find that it was, indeed, what I'd ordered. "So, what? You guys have ice cream socials and everything? You get group rates on Kennywood and Pirate tickets?"
"Nothing like that, Travis. We just get together and talk about our experiences. Well, sometimes we have events that somewhat resemble ice cream socials. We're just a group of people with similar interests. It just so happens that our interests are a little more unique than those of most people."
"So, you just want me to come and talk about what happened, huh?"
"That's what we want, Travis. And, while you're there, perhaps you'll meet a few people and think about becoming a member. We don't like to pressure anyone into joining; most discover for themselves that they enjoy our meetings and events, and they become members with very little encouragement." He sipped his martini as punctuation.
I sipped my Knob Creek and thought about it. "I don't know..."
He smiled. "We can pay you five-thousand dollars."