The Immortalists

By Gabriel David

He was a hedonist and a misogynist, a cynic and a narcissist. But that all changed when, on a seemingly regular day, in a seemingly normal tone, his “uncle” told him that he was immortal. The Immortalists is a story of one man’s life and his transformation from materialism to spiritualism. It is an enlightening tale that shows how one man, against seemingly insurmountable odds, can make a difference in the lives of millions. Follow along on a journey that will illuminate the beauty and power of human compassion and morality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gabriel David
• Release date: Feb 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781105330384

Gabriel David

Gabriel David lives in New England. He is married and has two adult children. The Immortalists is his first novel. David enjoys reading fiction, listening to classic rock, watching movies/shows, playing Internet speed chess, and breaking bread with friends and family. He is currently working on the sequel to The Immortalists.

Book preview

The History of Izzy and Uncle Jack

Chapter One

2003, Three Years Ago

The ray of light perfectly bisected Izzy’s 100 percent Japanese silk floral curtains hitting the exterior of his eyes like a precise medical laser that produced the color magenta on his inner eyelids. Izzy, a thirty-five-year-old single accountant simultaneously stretched and yawned, and then took in a deep breath, the smell reminding him of the sex just hours earlier. He chuckled as he recalled the post-coital queefe or two from his guest. His lay was a real estate agent who he had picked up the night before at a downtown lounge, State. She had left a couple of hours earlier, some mumbling about an open house. The sex was good, not great. Izzy was content.

And then the buzzer buzzed. The guy at the downstairs desk—the concierge, they change all the time so Izzy didn’t know his name—was letting him know a Fed Ex package had arrived. It was now just after two in the afternoon. Izzy hadn’t been up long, and he was already settled into his normal routine: sleep in from Friday night partying, eat a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios with banana slices and skim milk, read the morning local paper, the New York Times, Barron’s, drink a cappuccino from the Krups, and try to figure out what to do with the rest of the day, night, and Sunday. His condo was on the fifteenth floor of a forty-story, new residential building, The Paramount, in Providence, Rhode Island. The building was high enough to have nice views but low enough to survive an errant plane or chopper hit. His windows were floor to ceiling on all exterior walls, and he had all the amenities—Sub-Zero refrigerator, Viking stove, Miele appliances, Toto toilet with bidet, shiny hardwood floors, wine cooler, and, of course, state-of-the-art Bose sound system and Mitsubishi flat screen TVs in all the rooms, even the bathrooms. Izzy was living large, all his needs being attended to. A knock at the door interrupted Izzy’s admiration of his condo. He opened it to see the runner, a kid, probably eighteen or nineteen, bright and bushy tailed, wearing the Paramount-logoed, fuchsia shirt. The kid handed him the Fed Ex package and pivoted back to the elevators before Izzy could get out a thanks.

Izzy plopped down onto his too expensive fleur-de-lis fabrique couch, stretched his hairy legs on top of the cloudy glass coffee table, and pulled the cardboard tab across the top of the package. He looked in to discover a sealed envelope, an antiquated dark chocolate leather bible, and an audiotape. The mustard-colored envelope, Gulden’s not French’s, was blank. He pulled it out, tore it open to discover a letter addressed, Dear Izzy. He glanced down at the end of the letter to see, Good Luck! Love, Uncle Jack. Izzy’s immediate thought was, Jesus fucking Christ. As his heart skipped a beat and his eyes shockingly widened, Izzy had the most amazing and thorough flashback of his life.

Chapter Two

Jacob Bronzeman

I’m immortal. He said it just like that…no introduction, no preamble, no are you ready, no are you sitting down?

It was thirteen years ago, and they were outside the Starbucks on Angell Street in Providence. They were sitting at the table underneath one of those pine green cloth umbrellas that shield the sun. It was July—hot but not humid. The sky was cobalt blue with a few of those cottony cumulus clouds drifting from east to west due to a lazy breeze off the bay. They were as comfortable as one could possibly be considering that the chairs were those black, metal, cushionless types that businesses typically offer to patrons for outside seating—the kind, where if you happen to be wearing shorts and are vertically challenged—both Izzy and Jack are just five foot three—leave tell-tale indentures on the back of thighs. Izzy was loafing around because this summer was his gift or free summer in between finishing college and starting a real job. Uncle Jack had called and asked how his chess game was and if he liked iced, flavored coffee drinks. He also had said that he had something to tell him. Izzy loved chess, Starbucks, and Uncle Jack, so it was a slam dunk. This particular Starbucks, catering to the students, had great classic rock radio playing overhead. Izzy didn’t know if it was a corporate mandate or that the Starbucks manager just happened to have great taste in music.

Lily Belle,

Your hair is golden brown,

I’ve seen your black man comin’ round,

Swear by God I’m gonna cut him down,

I heard screaming and bull whips cracking,

How long? How long?

They were sitting parallel to the street, which was parallel to the Starbucks entrance, with no one’s back to the action in order to be able to view the sites. The sites were, of course, the bodacious tatas of the coeds. Young women from Brown University (the one-and-only Ivy League school—the I don’t care, I’m Ivy League, and you’re not look), the Rhode Island School of Design or RISD (the arsty-goth look), and many high schools, both public and private (the grunge and/or preppy look) often hung out in Providence’s East Side.

They were playing chess on Izzy’s set and wearing Boston University caps (Izzy’s alma mater) and Ray-Ban shades and drinking iced vanilla decaf lattes, when he said, I’m immortal. Just like that. He sounded as normal and monotone as if he said, I gotta piss or I gotta take a dump. I’ll be right back.

He was Jacob Bronzeman, short and thin with gray balding hair, huge oversized glasses, hairy Robin Williams’s arms, and a face like Jack Benny. For those who can remember, he was loving but scary at the same time and Izzy’s uncle, although no blood relation. He was the best friend of Izzy’s grandfather—so intertwined with the family that Izzy was taught to call him Uncle Jack. As far back as Izzy could remember his grandparents, he could remember Uncle Jack. He was the only family Izzy has after losing his parents and grandparents, and having no siblings. In response to Jack’s declaration, Izzy blurted out, What the fuck! and moved his rook to King’s Rook 7. Izzy was old school, none of that alpha-numeric business for him, no Ra7.

Did you hear me? Jack asked.

Yes, immortal. What the fuck? Izzy said.

Good, Jack said, I want to tell you a story.

Instead of clearing his throat in the universal sign of preparing to tell a story, Jack slurped his remaining latte through the green Starbucks straw in that other universal sign that lets everyone in a five-block radius know that you’ve just finished your drink. Just sit back, play chess, and listen, he said. He then proceeded to tell Izzy about his life for the next three hours that day and for the next dozen or so times they met at Starbucks for chess through late August of that year. I’m eighty-five years old, but I’ve lived for about twenty-one hundred years. Jack said.

What the fuck are you talking about, are you nuts? Izzy asked the old man, Give me a fucking break. But Jack calmly moved his Queen to Bishop 5 and continued as the Who played in the background.

No one knows what it’s like,

To be the bad man,

To be the sad man,

Behind blue eyes

I was born in Israel several generations after King Solomon, Jack said. I, too, like you, lost my family by the time I turned twenty. I was good with numbers and worked for the government. Believe it or not, I counted shekels. I spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. Just then a guy with red spiky hair, wearing hemp sandals, ripped jean shorts, and sleeveless purple tie-dyed T-shirt went into the Starbucks. The kid had more visible piercings than Izzy had ever seen in his life; he was clearly a RISD student.

That’s when I lost my wife, Uncle Jack said, while castling kingside. Izzy had known, from his grandfather, that Jack had been married and had lost his wife and baby during childbirth. But that was a long time ago, fifty or sixty years ago, and not two thousand years ago. Izzy’s grandfather had said that Jack’s wife’s name was Miriam Shosha—beautiful, kind, generous, patient, smart, and the love of Jack’s life.

Nonetheless, Jack’s oversized, cyan eyes garnished with long jet-black lashes glistened with tears. Izzy, from a very young age, when playing chess or gin with Uncle Jack, had taken note of the fact that his eyes and Uncle Jack’s eyes were very similar, even though they weren’t related. They both seemed to have a couple of extra colored rings around their outer irises compared to the one ring that most people had. Furthermore, the three colored rings circling their cyan irises gave a very rainbow-like appearance.

I gotta pee, Izzy said, not being too good with the sad, emotional stuff, and proceeded to the men’s room. When Izzy returned, Jack’s eyes were back to normal, and he moved his Queen’s Bishop Pawn to Bishop 4.

OK, go. said Izzy.

I just did, Jack said.

No, Uncle Jack, with your crazy story, Izzy responded.

Oh yeah, Jack said while a classic Queen song came through the speakers. So, I’m alone, I have no family, and before you know it I’m eighty-five years old. By that time I was working for a landowner, you know, the rich of those days. I was like a financial adviser, still working with numbers.

We are the champions, my friends,

And we’ll keep on fighting, ‘till the end,

We are the champions,

We are the champions,

No time for losers,

Cause we are the champions, of the world.

But I stopped getting old, stopped aging…time would pass and I would stay the same, Jack said, continuing his story. Now before you ask, no, I didn’t have any signs or clues up until that point. I was just like everyone else. I had been cut and needed stitches, and I had fallen and broken a bone that needed setting. I had had stomach issues, fevers, and headaches. Sometimes I slept like a baby, and sometimes I slept restlessly. I lived an absolutely normal life. So, I’m eighty-five, not aging anymore, and I finally noticed something different. I don’t yearn for women—you know, the lust guys have, that feel, the tingle in your dick as the first drops of blood reach it after you’ve seen a woman or thought of something sexual. Nothing, zero, nada—it’s all gone. Of course, back then, I attributed it to being eighty-five, to aging, or even to the non-aging that was happening to me. I shared my non-aging with no one, nobody. Remember, they were burning so-called witches at the stake in Salem, Massachusetts, only three hundred and fifty years ago. Can you imagine if I told somebody that I wasn’t getting any older more than two thousand years ago.

Not much chess was getting played, and in between a curious moment or two from Jack’s story telling, Izzy was thinking that his best friend had lost it, had sudden dementia or Alzheimer’s, or was high on something—or even maybe that his Venti latte was actually caffeinated.

So when people at work and in the community began complimenting me on my good health, my looks, and my spryness for such an old person, and then as my contemporaries, both older and younger, started dying, I knew it was time for me to am-scray, Jack said.

Look to your right, Izzy said in a quiet voice, not quite in a whisper, with his eyes averted downward focusing on the board. Three made-up, halter-topped, pony-tailed, back-packed girls with perky tits walked through the Starbucks door wearing short shorts and sandals. Three of six tits had erect nipples arching the one hundred percent cotton or poly-blend of their bra-like tops in that pointy pop-tent way only hard nipples can.

The AC must be on Eskimo inside, Izzy thought, as his left pinky went fishing for wax in his left ear. Of course, Izzy had already forgotten that Mr. Bronzeman here had already notified him that stuff like that didn’t change the blood flow to his dick anymore. But Izzy was pleasantly surprised, pleased as punch as a matter of fact, that his dick gave a twang of recognition, but of course, he was only twenty-two years old that summer.

Neil Young’s voice came over the speakers:

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,

We’re finally on our own,

This summer I hear the drumming,

Four dead in Ohio.

Okay, so I had to go someplace else before the locals caught on and believed that I was an evil spirit, an abomination or the Satan, and either stoned me to death, had me beheaded, or handed me over to be crucified by the Romans, Jack said. "And that reminds me…beheading. Where else do we find immortal stories? First, the Highlander movies and TV series and then, of course, with our friends, the vampires, with a thank-you very much and a tip of the hat to Bram Stoker and Anne Rice.

First, our good friend Connor McCloud, the Highlander, Jack continued. "Okay, these so-called immortals are divided into good guys and bad guys. The good guys are mostly Scottish and come from the highlands of Scotland, and everyone else is pretty much a bad guy and comes from anywhere else. They have many wives and/or significant others over their long lives, but they can’t have children. They live their lives in between battles to the death with other immortals