“Hi, are you ready to order?”
“I’ll wait, thanks,” I said. “I’m meeting someone.” I removed my gloves and stuffed them into a pocket of my coat behind me.
She whizzed away, then, and after I saw that she was safely in the backroom I got up and ordered myself a pitcher of Heidrun directly from the bartender. Perhaps I was being paranoid, but it was better than being unprepared. I returned to my seat before I poured the first honey-blond pint.
The bustle here tonight pleased me. The mass of people would make it harder for anyone to try anything, if my paranoia proved well-founded. Students and townies alike crowded in for food, fire, and alcohol to ward away the cold; chatter in the background instead of music; waitresses billowing out of swinging doors, bearing with them whiffs of the fries and shepherd’s pies that they carried upon their platters… Not quite authentic Nordic cuisine, but the aroma blended well with the general smell of spilt beer.
I was watching two blond busboys on the stage next to me setting up the microphone, video monitor, and song-machine—their musculature was of the wrong tone for Refurserkir—when the waitress returned and eyed my pitcher with a look of slight puzzlement.
“Still waiting?” she asked.
“Indeed,” I said.
As she rushed away again, I took a little sip of my beer. It tasted normal enough. So a long swallow, then. Inoculation against the cold, and when I set the glass back down I’d drained a full third of it. I had to pour myself another only a few moments later.
I focused on the crispness of the beer’s flavor, the bubbles rising up in it and the way that they caught the light and carried it to the snowy head.
I was dribbling the last suds out of the pitcher when Angus O’Malvins was just there, suddenly. Standing across the table and grinning down at me, one hand gripping the top rung of his chair while the other slipped his trademark Meerschaum pipe into an interior coat pocket.
“Hullo! An ah wis surtain ah’d be the first ane here,” he said, his burr sounding thicker than ever.
“And I thought I’d have the place to myself for a while longer. But sit down, Mr. O’Malvins… I was just about to order another round.”
“Ach, ye knae better than thah, poppet; yir ainly tae caw me Angus.” He pulled the chair out and fussed his way down into it.
A few years had passed, now, since I’d seen any more of him than a picture on a Christmas card, but he looked almost exactly the same as when I’d first met him. A bushy white beard covered most of his face, and the rest was red, his cheeks pushing up to force his eyes into a permanent squint.
“You made it here rather quickly,” I said. “Quite a trip from the Orkneys, isn’t it?”
“Aye, well, luckily ah wis in London when ah heard, sae ah wis able tae get a quick flight.”
“I see. So, who else did you say was coming?” I asked, trying not to meet his eye.
“Ach, whae isnae coming? E’en auld Magnus promised thah he’d pop in, though he somehoo seemed a bit reluctant.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me. I don’t think he’s ever been here, even though he lives just around the block. Too popular for his taste, I’d imagine.”
“Hmm, aye, he can act the part of the elitist, noo… But sae, then, there’s alsae ‘Mutt’ Sanders, whae ah dinnae believe ye knae… an Philip Leshio, the auld bore, whae, ah believe, ye unfortunately dae knae. Dr. Albertine, alsae, an… Ach, Michael Lorenz, whae—as ye can or cannae know—is a visiting professor this semester at yir ain university.”
“Actually, I met him earlier today. He seemed… interesting. But I didn’t know that he knew you or Shirley.”
“Michael? Well, we’ve a few acquaintances in common, but—”
The waitress finally returned.
“Ready for a refill?” she asked, picking up the empty pitcher.
“Please. And a glass for my friend.”
“On its way.” And off she went again.
“But jist whit sort ay shenanigans have ye been up tae yirself thir past few years?” Angus asked. “Done any scribbling tae mention?”
“Oh… I haven’t been up to much. All I’ve written recently are academic articles. Shirley was working on a few things, though. In fact, I thought she might actually get something published soon.”
I watched his face for a reaction, but he remained squinteyed and smiling.
“Truly?” he asked. “Ah hadnae any idea.”
“Yeah, well, it’s interesting, actually—”
“And here you go.” The waitress poured a glass for Angus and then set the second pitcher on the table. “Are you still waiting for more people before you order?”
“We are, thank ye,” Angus replied.
When she walked away again, he lifted the pitcher to freshen my glass.
“Sae, Shirley’s impending publication,” he said, pouring directly into the glass’s bottom, and half the beer bubbled into head. “Ah suppose thah yir referring tae thah faux-Shakespearean idea she had, then?”
I didn’t immediately respond. Stageward motion had caught my eye as he spoke, and I turned to watch; the busboys were finished setting up, and Roger Harrod—the owner of Hrothgar’s—was getting ready to speak.
“Have you ever been here for a karaoke night before?” I asked, turning back to Angus. “Looks like it’s about to start. I think you’ll like it.”
“Karaoke? It isnae really ma—”
“Hrothgar’s puts a unique spin on things,” I said, cutting him off. “They call it skaldic karaoke.”
“An whit the divil is thah?”
“Well, basically it means that all of the songs are heroic ballads, as opposed to your usual pop hits. It’s almost eight o’clock, though. Where’s everybody else? They’ll miss all the fun.”
“Ach, dinnae worry. Ah’m sure they’ll be here shortly.”
“Okay, everybody… Here we go,” Roger said from the stage, swirling pieces of paper around in a bowl with his fingertips before closing his eyes and drawing one out. “It looks like the first skald of this evening, folks… is going to be… Mr. Jim Bliss! And he’ll be singing the ballad of Liutbold the Kind. Come on up here, Jim, and show us what you’re made of!”
A lanky, bespectacled fellow in a brown suit and matching bow tie stood measuredly from his seat across the room and proceeded to bump and pardon his way stageward.
“Sorry,” he said as he passed our table, though he didn’t seem to touch either one of us. Ignoring the stairs at either stage-end, he clambered directly up the front, his brown trousers gaining gray swathes of dirt across the knees as he did so.
Roger patted him on the back and whispered something in his ear before taking a quick bow and hopping from the stage.
“Hello,” the man mumbled in a strange accent; his voice was hardly audible though he bobbed his head toward the microphone as he spoke. “Er… Well, I suppose you can start the music now.”
After a moment of quiet static crackle, a 2/4 drumbeat began to pulse from hidden speakers while the synthetic approximation of a plucked string instrument arpeggiated over it, back and forth between the dominant and tonic of some minor key. A faint trace of bass lingered thumping in the background, too, and—following a few introductory bars—the man joined his voice to it all in a startlingly strong tenor. Thus was Liutbold the Kind launched on his long journey through a day of strange synchronicities and personal revelations. Not the standard set of heroic deeds, but eccentricity was probably the ballad’s greatest strength. Angus sat listening with cocked head and hanging jaw.
“It’s wonderful,” he whispered after a few reverent seconds.