I spotted him beyond the pool table as a hazy light shined over his gardener’s jacket, his shoulders hunched over his drink, his back shaped like a question mark. The guitar riffs to Pink Floyd’s Run Like Hell played at that exact moment. I smiled and approached with the oncoming of the chorus:
Run, run, run. . .
“It’s often the opposite, isn’t it?” I said, leaning on the bar. “You think it’s saying ‘run,’ but really it’s saying ‘go.’”
Mr. Yellow turned just slightly, and I gasped in shock. All the lines became blurred and swirled into chaos. In his breast pocket was a sunflower. Was Vincent Van Gogh an agent?
“Where are we going? What are we? Where do we come from?” Mr. Yellow responded to the air in front of his beer.
He lifted his pint to his ashen ginger beard and took a long draw from the well, smiling at me from the corner of his eyes as he did so.
I ordered a Tsingtao, trying my best to keep cool.
“Isn’t that backwards?” I ventured to the air between us as the beer is placed in front of me. I dug in and sat one barstool away from him.
“The sun rose in the east, but it will set in the west,” Mr. Yellow spoke cryptically.
His accent was untraceably European, the voice of a nomad. His head was shaved, his age a mystery. He could have been anywhere between 40 and 240 years old. A master who sought only to perfect his skills, renouncing all, like a Buddhist monk, secretly operating as a vessel of knowledge and intel to agents, often with unclear allegiances.
“Where can I see the best sunset?” I replied thus in code.
“If you want to see the sunset,” Mr. Yellow said, giving me an odd look, “watch from the highest place. You must go west, to the Himalayas.”
“To Ti—”
The name was sniped on my lips in an instant with a glare from Mr. Yellow. “Damn fool,” I could see him thinking. Doubt and hesitation clouded his blue eyes. He returned his gaze to his half-empty pint. I suddenly became very thirsty.
“We don’t say that name here,” Mr. Yellow said softly, staring into the amber. “I was there a long time ago, a long time ago with a friend. We were in the mountains a week and had run out of jerky and water and were on the brink of death in the tundra. After many days, a few mud huts appeared built into the side of the rocky foothills in the distance. As we approached, hungry and exhausted, a pack of giant dogs attacked us with hellish ferocity.”
“Mastiffs?” I asked, gripping the perspiring bottle. “What happened?”
“One of us lived. Ha! You see, this one carried stones in his pockets. You must carry stones in your pockets to survive in the Himalayas.”
Mr. Yellow finished his drink, and then said in absolute solemnity, “Always carry stones in your pockets.”
As he got up to leave, I noticed a part of his left ear was missing, possibly eaten by dogs.
“Wait. You’re leaving?” I almost pleaded, suddenly wanting to tell him everything.
I’m not who you think I am. I’m not me. I’m someone else.
Mr. Yellow looked at me with consideration for a moment and said, “Here, take this.”
He pulled something out of his gardener’s jacket and placed it on the bar with a clear, definitive thud. It was a round white stone.
I stared at him dumbfounded.
“From the banks of the Li River, Yangshuo. You may find the sun sets there as well.”
“I’m in your debt,” I whispered, and closed my fingers around the stone, putting it in my pocket.
I watched as Mr. Yellow disappeared into the men’s room, never to reemerge.