Fire on the Mountain

Sunday, November 3, 2001:
10:30pm.

The bar is empty. The television is blaring; stuck on ANN (the Anthrax News Network), and I’m leaning on the counter, ruminating over the peculiar, post 9/11 times we're living in. I need a cocktail.

I turn to the liquor shelves of the back bar -- Ahh, what to drink today?

The three greatest moments of bartender’s life are, in no particular order: 1) counting your tips at the end of the night. 2) scoring digits from the babe at the end of the bar. And 3) gazing wide-eyed at the top shelf, deciding what it is -- in this wide, wonderful, alcoholic amusement park -- that you feel like drinking today.

I know in an instant. Peculiar times call for peculiar spirits: tequila.

The bar stocks three brands: Patron Silver, Hornitos, and Cuervo Gold. But which? Cuervo is a cruel tequila. When Cuervo goes down, it gouges your fillings and scorches the walls of your esophagus. Patron Silver is just the opposite, so smooth you can barely tell that it’s tequila at all -- which is why it sucks. A tequila drinker yearns the burn.

Hornitos is just right. It has a respectable esopho-burn, but doesn't jackhammer your tooth enamel into powder. I pour three fingers of Hornitos and drain the glass.

As it goes with the cactus, that’s when the night gets weird...

At the stroke of midnight, the door opens and Satan steps inside. Satan is dressed in Armani black. He has slicked-back, black hair, and shiny black shoes and slacks. He chooses a stool, retrieves a cigarette from a dark leather case, strikes a match off the bottom of his shoe, lights his branch, takes a drag, exhales an ebony cloud, and says, "What kind of tequila do you have?"

"Cuervo, Patron, and Hornitos," I reply.

"I’ll take a Perfect Margarita, rocks, with Patron," says the Prince of Blackness.

"Patron, eh?" I say, pinching a lime around the rim of the glass. "Are you sure?"

He nods, so I prepare and present the drink.

Skratch sips the beverage. "Delicious," he murmurs, and takes another draw. "You know," he says, "Hell could use a bartender like you."

Skratch produces a golden mixing tin and a diamond-studded strainer. "I bet this shaker of gold against your soul that I can make a better margarita then you," he says.

Now I know a mixing tin isn’t really fair collateral against my immortal soul. . . but this bet is a gimme! Satan obviously doesn’t know shit about margaritas. "It’s a deal," I say.

Skratch smiles and snaps his fingers and a panel of ten demon judges appears. There's Adolph Hitler, Lizzie Borden, Caligula, Jeffrey Dahmer, Joseph Stalin, Queen "Bloody" Mary, Bon Scott, Marvin Gaye Sr., and Mohammed Atta.

"I will pour first," says the Old Horney, and sets the golden shaker and a margarita glass on the bar mat. He salts the glass and snaps his fingers and we are all instantly transported to Mt. McKinley. With the wind and snow whipping our faces, Skratch kneels and shaves tiny shards of 2000-year-old glacial ice with his razory fingernails. He drops the shavings into the shaker and snaps us back to the bar. He fills the shaker with sweet and sour Triple Sec, pours Patron into the shaker and delivers the potable to the judges.

The judges pass the margarita around and the demon panel applauds the superb drink-making proficiency of His Grand Exalter of Excruciations.

Smiling and proud of himself, Satan points a spiny index finger and says, "Your turn, boy."

"Satan," I respond, "you can snap your fingers and do all your fancy tricks, but you can’t make a truly great margarita with Patron. Patron is much too mild for margaritas. How the Hell is the burn going to cut through all that lime and sugar?"

With that I grab the Cuervo and pour five fingers into the shaker. I add single dashes each of Gran Marnier, lime, sugar; shake it, pour, and hand it to Bloody Mary.

Fire on the mountain run boys run. ...

Mary cautiously sips and hemorrhages profusely from her ears and anus. Lizzie Borden drinks and her head cleaves off and falls to the floor. One by one, they sip and pass it on. Stalin explodes into a thousand shimmering sparks. Dahmer eats the sparks and explodes too.

The Devil’s in the house of the rising sun...

The bar fills with the howls of cacodaemons. Caligula samples the beverage and his belly slices open. Hitler sips and shouts, "It is verboten!!" as he wets his pants. Marvin Gaye Sr. falls to his knees, sobbing, "My son, my son -- I’m so sorry," as cactus needles sprout from his eyeballs. Bon Scott shivers and says (with a thick Australian accent), "Spunky maggy, mate!"

The last one to drink is Mohammed Atta. He is standing, holding the drink, shaking and praying.

Satan and I simultaneously snicker, "Pussy."

Atta drains the glass. Suddenly there is a great rumble and his head bursts into a fireball. As Atta’s scalp smokes and burns, brain cells leap out of his cranium to escape the conflagration. As Cuervo runs through his veins like searing jet fuel, his head collapses inward and his body crumbles to the floor in an enormous cloud of dust and Atta-shrapnel.

Old Skratch turns to me, mouth agape. "Pretty impressive, boy," he says, handing over the diamond-studded tin.

"Devil," I said, "you just come on back if you ever want to try again. I done told you once, you sonovabitch -- I’m the best that’s ever been."

EJD 11/01