Drinks List

But first, Jack wanted us to share a drink. This was nothing new. Every new position I’d been offered been cemented with a drinking session. Sometimes it was a single antique brandy. Sometimes it was a full, lock in drinking session. More often than not, it ended with me shovelling some overweight manager in a bad fitting suit into the back of a taxi back to his big house, bored wife and resentful children whilst he advised me to get out while I was still young; the alcohol breaking his ability to hide the truth in the jest.

This, however, was new. Jack didn’t want to visit a pub, nor a bar. He wanted to go to a member’s club, with me as his guest. He said it was a standing appointment he had there. Every Friday, without fail.

At that point in my career, little could humble me.

So here I was, living the cliché. The room was a sea of dark mahogany, dimly lit by a high chandelier and an open fireplace. The walls were polished panels, upon which hung several paintings. Nothing of note; a portrait of some Elizabethan figure and a landscape of some generic Scottish highland. They were undoubtedly valuable, and someone with a keener eye for the period would be able to tell you why. I was not yet part of the old boys club, where money made itself while I sat around learning interesting facts about the particular shade of brown used by some dead loser who chose a career that only pays out when you die. My eye was drawn to the crystal decanter on the small table between our three chairs, filled with a dark liquid of surely equal rarity and price. I toyed with the idea of taking a sniff, just to see if I could make out the vintage, but Jack, somehow sensing my intentions, placed an affirmative hand on my wrist.  

“We’re expecting company”

“Who?”

“The manager”

“Of the club?”

Jack simply chuckled softly, and with that he was silent, and I followed suit.

An otherwise nondescript wood panel slid back, and another man entered the room. To the uneducated eye, he and Jack were equals. Friends, even. But it was the little things that showed that these were no two equals. Everything this new man did dripped dominance. Jack’s shoulders visibly fell in his presence. He took Jack’s hand in his and shook it vigorously, before patting him on the shoulder to signal him to sit down.

“Good to see you, Jack. So this is the protégé?”

“Yes, Sir” said Jack.

“Do you fellas have a drink yet?”

Before we could point out we didn’t, a butler entered and handed us two drink lists.

I looked over mine, a luxuriously thick paper embossed with ornate cursive stuck to a thin, leather bound wood sheet, but saw a handful of bog-standard, common, supermarket beers. Fosters. Carling. Budweiser. A strangely pedestrian list for the setting.

I cast a look over at Jack’s list, just to see if I could second-guess his choice. But, his list was entirely different to mine. His was a long list of obscure real ales. Small breweries and craft ales I’d never heard of with names like Farmer’s Ruin, and the Honeyed Bishop. The fuck is this? A test? There’s no denying that herringbone-suited executives serve each other urban legends on the rocks like anyone else. Like the rookie executive taken for lunch by a prospective boss and loses the promotion for salting his steak before tasting it, or the IBM interview punctuated by the interviewee having a cup of water thrown at them. They’re no different to any other scary stories, really. The monsters may be better dressed, but you still lose everything on a whim.

Was this a test? What was the right answer?

I opened my mouth to protest, but our new host simply smiled at me. In the dim light of the room, his pupils seemed inhumanly dilate.