Gin Glass Quotes

This was a dream. A very bad, bad dream, brought on by liver poisoning from too many gin and tonics. Here it was, a deal with the devil. At what price my soul? He watched me expectantly and threateningly all at the same time. If I said no, I knew what would happen. Save the glass, waitress, I’m drinking from the bottle! Happy hour, with my neck on tap. If I said yes, I’d be agreeing to a partnership with pure evil.

Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!

When he was done adding sloe gin and grenadine, Danny shoved the glass across the counter to Drew. "Try that and tell me what it needs." Drew took a sip, then coughed and set the glass down. "That's awful." Danny scowled and tossed a dripping tablespoon at him. "You're awful. I'm looking for constructive feedback, asshole. What does it need?" Drew threw the tablespoon back. "It needs to be taken out and shot." "Make your own damn drink, Mr. Mixology.

I strolled into a downtown parking garage, wearing a black pantsuit and matching heels. I’d pulled my dark, chocolate-brown hair up into a high, sleek ponytail, while black glasses with clear lenses covered my cold gray eyes. I looked like just another corporate office drone, right down to the enormous black handbag I carried.

Father Pierre, why did you stay on in this colonial Campari-land, where the clink of glasses mingles with the murmur of a million mosquitoes, where waterfalls and whiskey wash away the worries of a world-weary whicker, where gin and tonics jingle in a gyroscopic jubilee of something beginning with J?

Gin. No glass, just the bottle,” I said bluntly.

Here at the age of thirty-nine I began to be old. I felt stiff and weary in the evenings and reluctant to go out of camp; I developed proprietary claims to certain chairs and newspapers; I regularly drank three glasses of gin before dinner, never more or less, and went to bed immediately after the nine o’clock news. I was always awake and fretful an hour before reveille. Here my last love died.

Had he drunk a dozen bottles of claret, the old spinster could have pardoned him. Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan drank claret. Gentlemen drank claret. But eighteen glasses of gin consumed among boxers in an ignoble pot-house - it was an odious crime, and not to be pardoned readily.

Sometimes when life gives you lemons, you need to fill your glass with more gin.

How many bright angels can dance on a pin? How many hopes drown in a bottle of gin? Did the thought ever come that your glass was a gun and one day you’d wonder, God, what have I done?

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; A shining gloss that vadeth suddenly; A flower that dies when first it 'gins to bud; A brittle that's broken presently; A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour. And as goods lost are seld or never found, As vaded gloss no rubbing will refresh, As flowers dead lie withered on the ground, As broken glass no cement can redress; So beauty blemished once, for ever lost, In spite of physic, painting, pain and cost.

Ordering drinks always floored me. I didn't know whisky from gin and never managed to get anything I really liked the taste of. Buddy Willard and the other college boys I knew were usually too poor to buy hard liquor or they scorned drinking altogether. It's amazing how many college boys don't drink or smoke. I seemed to know them all. The farthest Buddy Willard ever went was buying us a bottle of Dubonnet, which he only did because he was trying to prove he could be aesthetic in spite of being a medical student. "I'll have a vodka," I said. The man looked at me more closely. "With anything?" "Just plain," I said. "I always have it plain." I thought I might make a fool of myself by saying I'd have it with ice or gin or anything. I'd seen a vodka ad once, just a glass full of vodka standing in the middle of a snowdrift in a blue light, and the vodka looked clear and pure as water, so I thought having vodka plain must be all right. My dream was someday ordering a drink and finding out it tasted wonderful.

She stayed up late most nights, dressed in a housecoat in the library until all hours, wearing reading glasses not unlike the professor’s wire spectacles, drinking licorice tea laced with gin—she didn’t know that I knew—and staring out the window at the city lights.

I took a breath. Pictured the bed waiting for me upstairs. Then retreated to the lobby bar alone and ordered an ice-cold gin martini, a small signal to myself that my work was done. I held the glass, its inverted construction an insult to gravity and the order of things. Just like our Movement, from the outside the balance of power seems all wrong. But hold a martini glass in your hand and you know instinctively that it is just right.

Twilight never lasts long in India, but its advent was like opening time at the pubs our rulers had left behind. The shadows fell and spirits rose; the sharp odour of quinine tonic, invented by lonely planters to drown and justify their solitary gins, mingled with the scent of frangipani from their leafy, insect-ridden gardens, and the soothing clink of ice against glass was only disturbed by the occasional slap of a frustrated palm against a reddening spot just vacated by an anglovorous mosquito.

You know what they say, ‘Nothing makes a Southern story better than a stretch of time and a few glasses of gin.

Carl just needed to hear the clink of glasses, the glug of a drink being poured. I picked up the phone, shaking a tumbler of ice near the receiver so Carl could imagine his gin.

sense trying to make him feel bad about it. She tilted back her glass and went past the gin for a second time. She

Nothing makes a Southern story better than a stretch of time and a few glasses of gin.

The two women sat by the fire, tilting their glasses and drinking in small peaceful sips. The lamplight shone upon the tidy room and the polished table, lighting topaz in the dandelion wine, spilling pools of crimson through the flanks of the bottle of plum gin. It shone on the contented drinkers, and threw their large, close-at-hand shadows upon the wall. When Mrs Leak smoothed her apron the shadow solemnified the gesture as though she were moulding an universe. Laura's nose and chin were defined as sharply as the peaks peaks on a holly leaf.

I gather from Audrius that that concoction contains ten different ingredients. In addition to vodka, rum, brandy, and grenadine, it boasts an extraction of rose, a dash of bitters, and a melted lollipop. But a cocktail is not meant to be a mélange. It is not a potpourri or an Easter parade. At its best, a cocktail should be crisp, elegant, sincere—and limited to two ingredients.” “Just two?” “Yes. But they must be two ingredients that complement each other; that laugh at each other’s jokes and make allowances for each other’s faults; and that never shout over each other in conversation. Like gin and tonic,” he said, pointing to his drink. “Or bourbon and water . . . Or whiskey and soda . . .” Shaking his head, he raised his glass and drank from it. “Excuse me for expounding.

Gin and whiskey are chemistry, carefully formulated and distilled to create a single repeatable experiment in intoxication, the same precise flavor and effect across the brand, bottle after bottle, glass after glass. Wine, on the other hand, is like religion: it’s mysterious, sometimes literally opaque, and there are too many kinds of it. You never really know if a particular wine is good or bad; you just have to take it on faith from some judgy wine priest, an initiate to its mysteries. And wine is also like religion because the people who really get into it tend to be fucking unbearable.

Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty glass. Now and again he glanced up at a vast face which eyed him from the opposite wall. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said. Unbidden, a waiter came and filled his glass up with Victory Gin, shaking into it a few drops from another bottle with a quill through the cork. It was saccharine flavoured with cloves, the speciality of the café.

Many people, particularly children, have had poison ivy very often, very badly. They speak of it. They do not forget it. But there is an outer limit, a kind that passes any question of degree. Those who have utterly had it instantly recognize each other—like the Jews and homosexuals in Proust. It has no dignity whatever. There are no poison-ivy heroes… There are other such cabals, reverse elites of outer limit, junkies, sufferers from migraines, the truly seasick, soldiers’ fear in wartime, certain cramps.Many people suffer from cramps severely, turn quite silent, green, and shaky. Someone offers them a glass of gin. But there are cramps of an entirely other order, when even hardened doctors—knowing it is not important, only temporary, just a matter of hours—reach for the Demerol and the needle. It must be so in each lonely degrading thing from which one comes back having learned nothing whatever. There are no conclusions to be drawn from it. Lonely people see double entendres everywhere.

I wasn’t sure whether he was a grad student, poet, actor, stripper, or brilliant combination of all those things. But the man knew Lord Byron, and he knew words. He knew the rise and fall of sentences, the way to pause, the moment to look up, catch our gazes, smile. He knew emphasis and speed, pacing and clarity. He was a prince of poetry, and he had us mesmerized. Champagne was uncorked and dunked into gleaming silver chalices of ice, then poured into tall, thin glasses while we listened, legs crossed and perched forward in our chairs. “Is it better if we’re objectifying his body and his brain?” Margot asked, lifting the thin straw in her gin and tonic for a sip. “I don’t much care,” Mallory said. “He gives good word.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Still, hell or no hell, it was satisfactory, it was even exciting in those early days to know that one was doing something bad and wrong. But there is in debauchery something so intrinsically dull, something so absolutely and hopelessly dismal, that it is only the rarest beings, gifted with much less than the usual amount of intelligence and much more than the usual intensity of appetite, who can go on actively enjoying a regular course of vice or continue actively to believe in its wickedness. Most habitual debauchees are debauchees not because they enjoy debauchery, but because they are uncomfortable when deprived of it. Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities. The man who has formed a habit of women or gin, of opium-smoking or flagellation, finds it as difficult to live without his vice as to live without bread and water, even though the actual practice of the vice may have become in itself as unexciting as eating a crust or drinking a glass from the kitchen tap. Habit is as fatal to a sense of wrong-doing as to active enjoyment. After a few years the converted or sceptical Jew, the Westernized Hindu, can eat their pork and beef with an equanimity which to their still-believing brothers seems brutally cynical. It is the same with the habitual debauchee. Actions which at first seemed thrilling in their intrinsic wickedness become after a certain number of repetitions morally neutral. A little disgusting, perhaps; for the practice of most vices is followed by depressing physiological reactions; but no longer wicked, because so ordinary. It is difficult for a routine to seem wicked.

Lucy preferred gin and tonics during the summer and switched over to whiskey sours in the winter. At dinner, a sit-down affair with the family, Lucy drank whatever the Temerlins drank, including expensive French wines. "She never gets obnoxious, even when smashed to the brink of unconsciousness," wrote Maurice, revealing more about the chimp's alcoholism than perhaps he intended. At one point, he tried to wean Lucy off the good stuff and onto Boone's Farm apple wine. Assuming she would delight in the fruity swill, he purchased a case and filled her glass one night at dinner. Lucy took a sip of the apple wine, noticed her parents were drinking something else, and put her glass down. She then graabbed Maurice's glass of Chablis and polished it off. She finished Jane's next. Not another sip of Boone's farm ever touched her lips.

Over two days, the remaining superheroic population of the Earth had heeded the call--by ship, teleport, magical portal, elemental transduction...the H-Man, Pangolin the Protector, Glass Tambourine, Omega-Mur, Hammer and Sickle, Jackdaw, the Infinite Wisdom, Doctor Mandragora, Czar and Tzar and Star, Kalamari Karl, Lightening Dancer, Doctor Chlorophyll, Jack Viking, Monomaniac, the Gin Fairy, the Holy Ghanta, the Bandolier, the Nuclear Atom, the Mysterious Flame, Moonstalker, Cataclysm and Inferno, the Skyguard II, Your Imaginary Pal, Dark Storm, the Hate Witch, Psychofire, Rabid, Riot, Fox and Hound, Hydrolad, Captain Fuji, Captain Cape Town, Captain Australia, Captain...Jeannie lost count, one uniform and one costume blurring into another.

The Work of Art. When I watch the audience at a concert or the crowd in the picture gallery I ask myself sometimes what exactly is their reaction towards the work of art. It is plain that often they feel deeply, but I do not see that their feeling has any effect, and if it has no effect its value is slender. Art to them is only a recreation or a refuge. It rests them from the work which they consider the justification of their existence or consoles them in their disappointment with reality. It is the glass of beer which the labourer drinks when he pauses in his toil or the peg of gin which the harlot takes to snatch a moment's oblivion from the pain of life. Art for art's sake means no more than gin for gin's sake. The dilettante who cherishes the sterile emotions which he receives from the contemplation of works of art has little reason to rate himself higher than the toper. His is the attitude of the pessimist. Life is a struggle or a weariness and in art he seeks repose or forgetfulness. The pessimist refuses reality, but the artist accepts it. The emotion caused by a work of art has value only if it has an effect on character and so results in action. Whoever is so affected is himself an artist. The artist's response to the work of art is direct and reasonable, for in him the emotion is translated into ideas which are pertinent to his own purposes, and to him ideas are but another form of action. But I do not mean that it is only painters, poets and musicians who can respond profitably to the work of art; the value of art would be much diminished; among artists I include the practitioners of the most subtle, the most neglected and the most significant of all the arts, the art of life.

The first time Olly's dad gets afternoon drunk--violent drunk... He'd been home all day, arguing with financial news shows on television. One of the anchors mentioned the name of his old company, and he raged. He poured whiskey into a tall glass and then added vodka and gin. He mixed them together... until the mixture was no longer the pale amber color of whiskey and looked like water instead. Olly watched the color fade in the glass and remembered the day his dad got fired and how he'd been too afraid to comfort him. What if he had--would things be different now? What if? He remembered how his dad had said that one thing doesn't always lead to another. He remembered sitting at the breakfast bar and stirring the milk and chocolate together. How the chocolate turned white, and the milk turned brown, and how sometimes you can't unmix things no matter how much you might want to.

He works fast," Alan commented as he lifted his wine. "David?" Shelby sent him a puzzled look. "Actually his fastest sped is crawl unless he's got a guitar in his hands." "Really?" Alan's eyes met hers as he sipped, but she didn't understand the amusement in them. "You only stood him up tonight, and already he's planning his wedding to someone else." "Stood him-" she began on a laugh, then remembered. "Oh." Torn between annoyance and her own sense of te ridiculous, Shelby toyed with the stem of her glass. "Men are fickle creatures," she decided. "Apparently." Reaching over, he lifted her chin with a fingertip. "You're holding up well." "I don't like to wear my heart on my sleeve" Exasperated, amused, she muffled a laugh. "Dammit, he would have to pick tonight to show up here." "Of all the gin joints in all the towns..." This time the laugh escaped fully. "Well done," Shelby told him. "I should've thought of that line myself; I heard the movie not long ago." "Heard it?" "Mmm-hmmm. Well..." She lifted her glass in a toast. "To broken hearts?" "Or foolish lies?" Alan countered. Shelby wrinkled her nose as she tapped her glass against his. "I usually tell very good ones. Besides, I did date David.Once.Tree years ago." She finished off her wine. "Maybe four.You can stop grinning in that smug, masculine way any time, Senator." "Was I?" Rising, he offered Shelby her damp jacket. "How rude of me." "It would've been more polite not to acknowledge that you'd caught me in a lie," she commented as they worked their way through the crowd and back into the rain. "Which you wouldn't have done if you hadn't made me so mad that I couldn't think of a handier name to give you in the first place." "If I work my way through the morass of that sentence it seems to be my fault." Alan slipped an arm around her shoulders in so casually friendly a manner she didn't protest. "Suppose I apologize for not giving you time to think of a lie that would hold up?" "It seems fair.

BEE’S KNEES COCKTAIL ½ ounce honey simple syrup (recipe follows) 1 ounce lemon juice (about ½ medium lemon) 2 ounces gin Lemon peel Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add ingredients (except peel) and shake; strain into a martini glass. Twist the lemon peel and set inside glass. HONEY SIMPLE SYRUP In a small saucepan combine ⅓ cup honey and ⅓ cup water. Over low heat stir the mixture until honey starts to dissolve. Let cool and pour into a squeeze bottle or glass container. Will keep for several weeks.

The knives and forks jingled on the tables as we sped through the darkness; the little circle of gin and vermouth in the glasses lengthened to oval, contracted again, with the sway of the carriage, touched the lip, lapped back again, never spilt; I was leaving the day behind me. Julia pulled off her hat and tossed it into the rack above her, and shook her night-dark hair with a little sigh of ease—a sigh fit for the pillow, the sinking firelight, and a bedroom window open to the stars and the whisper of bare trees.

I have strict ideas, you know, about how a martini should be made. Controversially, I prefer vodka, not gin. It must be ice-cold, and extremely dry. Vermouth originated in Milan; and Noël Coward once famously quipped that the nearest a martini should ever get to vermouth was a wave of the glass in the general direction of Italy. I agree, and I was careful to add only a drop or two, for the merest whisper of vermouth. This was an excellent vermouth, fortunately—French, not Italian—and kept chilled in the fridge, as it should be.

Bond ordered a double gin and tonic and one whole green lime. When the drink came he cut the lime in half, dropped the two squeezed halves into the long glass, almost filled the glass with ice cubes and then poured in the tonic. He took the drink out on to the balcony, and sat and looked out across the spectacular view. He thought how wonderful it was to be away from headquarters, and from London, and from hospitals, and to be here, at this moment, doing what he was doing and knowing, as all his senses told him, that he was on a good tough case again.

Suzanne said. “And then she goes in the kitchen and makes herself a martini in an iced-tea glass and she thinks I don’t know. She eats the olives on the side. By the handful.” “Whenever you see her eating olives,” Carrie said, “you can be about one hundred percent positive that there’s gin in her glass.” “What happens when the gin runs low?” I asked. “And the vermouth and olives?” “Well, I go to the liquor store, of course!” Suzanne said. “We just don’t discuss it.” “No! Of course not!” I said. Weren’t they merely doing their part to live up to our hard-earned reputation as eccentric southerners? And of course, the more wine we consumed, the more we revealed about ourselves. Going through Kathryn’s clothes, papers, and books had once again been profoundly unnerving. We were all just wrung out. “You know what was really strange?” Carrie said. “What?” Suzanne said. “Seeing what she read,” Carrie said. “I’d bet you a tooth that I’ve read all the same fiction authors that she did. Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler, Anne Rivers Siddons, Anna Quindlen—all the Anns. But we never talked about books. Not even once.” “Well, she played her cards close,” Suzanne said. “But she read lots of people. She always had a book with her.” “Didn’t

Jeff and Amy were part of this, though never in the sense that the natives were. They were not indigenous: they were outlanders, ‘foreigners,’ distinguished by a sort of upcountry cosmopolitan glaze which permitted them to mingle but not merge. Even their drinking habits set them apart. Deltans drank only corn and Coca-Cola; gin was perfume, scotch had a burnt-stick taste. They would watch with wry expressions while Amy blended her weird concoctions, pink ladies and Collinses and whiskey sours, and those who tried one, finally persuaded, would sip and shudder and set the glass aside: “Thanks”—mildly outraged, smirking—“I’ll stick to burrbon.

She watched as he put a few ice cubes in a heavy glass, then expertly curled a strip of grapefruit rind from one of the fruits in a bowl on the bar top. "This must be a favorite," she commented, nodding at the supply of grapefruit nestled in the bowl along with the usual lemons and limes. He poured a generous measure from the black bottle and handed it to her with a cocktail napkin. "See for yourself." Gemma wasn't in the habit of drinking gin neat, so she sniffed, then took a tentative sip. The flavors exploded in her mouth- coriander and juniper and lime and... grapefruit. "Oh, wow," she said, when her eyes stopped watering. "That is amazing. I'm converted.

Lauren had hoped to make him notice her as a woman, and he was certainly noticing her. Now she rather hoped he would say something nice. But he didn't. Without a word he turned on his heel, strode over to the bar and dumped the ocntents of one of the glasses into the stainless steel bar sink. "What are you doing?" Lauren asked. His voice was filled with amused irony. "Adding some gin to your tonic." Lauren burst out laughing, and he glanced over his shoulder at her, a wry smile twisting his lips. "Just out of curiosity, how old are you?" "Twenty-three." "And you were applying for a secretarial position at Sinco-before you threw yourself at our feet tonight?" he prompted, adding a modest amount of gin to her tonic.

Strikes me that one-half or maybe two-thirds of the American people are the best fellows on earth--the friendliest and the most interested in everything and the jolliest. And I guess the remaining third are just about the worst crabs, the worst Meddlesome Matties, the most ignorant and pretentious fools, that God ever made. Male AND female! I'd be tickled to death to live in America IF. If we got rid of Prohibition, so a man could get a glass of beer instead of being compelled to drink gin and hootch. If we got rid of taking seriously a lot of self-advertising, half-educated preachers and editors and politicians, so that folks would develop a little real thinking instead of being pushed along by a lot of mental and moral policemen.

Who knew it was in my power to make anyone so happy? Or that I could ever be so happy myself? My moods were a slingshot; after being locked-down and anesthetized for years my heart was zinging and slamming itself around like a bee under a glass, everything bright, sharp, confusing, wrong - but it was a clean pain as opposed to the dull misery that had plagued me for years under the drugs like a rotten tooth, the sick dirty ache of something spoiled. The clarity was exhilarating; it was as if I'd removed a pair of smudged-up glasses that fuzzed everything I saw. All summer long I had been practically delirious: tingling, daffy, energized, running on gin and shrimp cocktail and the invigorating whock of tennis balls. And all I could think was Kitsey, Kitsey, Kitsey!

Of the Poet’s Youth" When the man behind the counter said, “You pay by the orifice,” what could we do but purchase them all? Ah, Sandy, vou were clearly the deluxe doll, modish and pert in your plastic nurse whites, official hostess to our halcyon days, where you bobbed in the doorway of our dishabille apartment, a block downwind from the stockyards. Holding court on the corroded balcony, K. and I passed hash brownies, collecting change for the building’s monthly pool to predict which balcony would fall off next. That’s when K. was fucking M. and M. was fucking J., and even B. and I threw down once on the glass-speckled lawn, adrift in the headlights of his El Camino. Those were immortal times, Sandy! Coke wasn’t addictive yet, condoms prevented herpes and men were only a form of practice for the Russian novel we foolishly hoped our lives would become. Now it’s a Friday night, sixteen years from there. Don’t the best characters know better than to live too long? My estranged husband house-sits for a spoiled cockatoo while saving to buy his own place. My lover’s gone back to his gin and the farm-team fiancée he keeps in New York. What else to do but read Frank O’Hara to my tired three-year-old? When I put him to bed, he mutters “more sorry” as he turns into sleep. Tonight, I find you in a box I once marked “The Past.” Well, therapy’s good for some things, Sandy, but who’d want to forgive a girl like that? Frank says Destroy yourself if you don’t know! Deflated, you’re simply the smile that surrounds a hole. I don’t know anything.

The bartender put a couple of fistfuls of ice chunks into a big, thick mixing glass and then proceeded to make a Tom Collins that had so much gin in it that the other people at the bar started to laugh. He served the drink to the Babe just as it was made, right in the mixing glass. Ruth said something about how heavens to Betsy hot he was, and then he picked up the glass and opened his mouth, and there went everything. In one shot he swallowed the drink, the orange slice and the rest of the garbage, and the ice chunks too. He stopped for nothing. There is not a single man I have ever seen in a saloon who does not bring his teeth together a little bit and stop those ice chunks from going in. A man has to have a pipe the size of a trombone to take ice in one shot. But I saw Ruth do it, and whenever somebody tells me about how the Babe used to drink and eat when he was playing ball, I believe every word of it.

BEE’S KNEES COCKTAIL ½ ounce honey simple syrup (recipe follows) 1 ounce lemon juice (about ½ medium lemon) 2 ounces gin Lemon peel Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add ingredients (except peel) and shake; strain into a martini glass. Twist the lemon peel and set inside glass. HONEY SIMPLE SYRUP In a small saucepan combine ⅓ cup honey and ⅓ cup water. Over low heat stir the mixture until honey starts to dissolve. Let cool and pour into a squeeze bottle or glass container. Will keep for several weeks. PORK WITH HONEY-LIME MARINADE (Serves 4) Juice of two limes ¼ cup honey ¼ cup olive oil 1 garlic clove, grated 1 teaspoon hot sauce (you can use red pepper flakes for less heat) Pork tenderloin, trimmed (1 pound) Whisk first five ingredients together. Pour half of marinade into a ziplock bag and add pork tenderloin. Marinate for at least 1 hour. Preheat gas or charcoal grill for indirect grilling. Brush grate with canola or vegetable oil. Cook pork indirectly 4 to 6 minutes per side until a meat thermometer registers 145 degrees. Remove from grill and brush with remaining marinade. Let meat rest for 10 minutes before slicing.

We made quite a stir as we entered, thanks mainly to Cora's outfit. It was one of those one-piece overall-type jump suits such as are worn by garage mechanics and fashionable women, all the rage just then in New York. I wouldn't run the garment down by any means. They are eminently practical and I'm sure comfortable, and Cora's was an all-white silk and lace number in which she looked stunning to say the least, but it gives you something of a start to see your hostess greet you at the door looking like your friendly Mobil dealer. All she needed was her name in script across the breast pocket. "Fill 'er up," I said at one point during cocktails, handing her my empty gin-and-tonic glass for replenishment. Nobody laughed, especially Cora. Except for my escort.

tiny piney This one’s named after the restaurant because it’s made with fresh rosemary, which gives it a bit of a piney taste . . . in a good way. Cocchi Americano is an Italian apéritif, which means its sweetness offsets the earthiness of the rosemary beautifully. Overall, the mix makes for a potentially too-drinkable drink, so bartender, beware. TIME: 5 MINUTES SERVES: 1 1 sprig rosemary, plus a short sprig for garnish 1½ ounces gin ½ ounce Cocchi Americano 1 ounce fresh lemon juice ¾ ounce Simple Syrup 1 ounce soda water 4 shakes cardamom bitters Strip of lemon peel, for garnish Fill an old-fashioned glass with ice and set aside. Combine the rosemary sprig, gin, Cocchi Americano, lemon juice, and simple syrup with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously. Strain into the ice-filled glass. Top with the soda water and add the bitters. Position the rosemary sprig and lemon peel vertically in the glass. Serve and enjoy.

Through the ceiling comes the rain to cool my lover and me. The lime carpeting darkens, and when we cross to retrieve our glasses of gin from the mantle, our feet sink as into drifts of leaves. We have a deep thirst, for it is the end of April, and we know that a great heat is coming soon to deaden these passions.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you this story, since it just rolled into my gourd while I was into that 1950 Lighthouse shot. I never told you about the Legend of the Gigantic Fart, did I?” “Put the beer in a paper bag. Let’s get it on the road.” “No, man, this story became a legend and is still told in the high schools around the county. You see, it was at the junior prom, a very big deal with hoop dresses and everybody drinking sloe gin and R.C. Cola outside in the cars. Now, this is strictly a class occasion if you live in a shitkicker town. Anyway, we’d been slopping down the beer all afternoon and eating pinto-bean salad and these greasy fried fish before we got to the dance. So it was the third number, and I took Betty Hoggenback out on the floor and was doing wonderful, tilting her back like Fred Astaire doing Ginger Rogers. Then I felt this wet fart start to grow inside me. It was like a brown rat trying to get outside. I tried to leak it off one shot at a time and keep dancing away from it, but I must have left a cloud behind that would take the varnish off the gym floor. Then one guy says, ‘Man, I don’t believe it!’ People were walking off the floor, holding their noses and saying, ‘Pew, who cut it?’ Then the saxophone player on the bandstand threw up into the piano. Later, guys were shaking my hand and buying me drinks, and a guy on the varsity came up and said that was the greatest fart he’d ever seen. It destroyed the whole prom. The saxophone player had urp all over his summer tux, and they must have had to burn the smell out of that piano with a blowtorch.” Buddy was laughing so hard at his own story that tears ran down his cheeks. He caught his breath, drank out of the beer glass, then started laughing again. The woman behind the bar was looking at him as though a lunatic had just walked into the normalcy of her life.

Al is the upside down man. Back home, you work all day and night to learn how to paint, learn linseed and cadmium and badger-hair and perspective, which is just math in art-school drag, you know? And maybe you still can't do anything worth phoning the Met over. But hey, getting a boy to fuck you is just the easiest thing since Sunday naps. Up top, getting drunk at a party is what you do when you're all out of art. But in...Canada? Are we calling it Canada now? Ok! Al's the King of Canada and he says: fuck that for a lark! The world feels like being a bastard-and-a-half this decade, let's play nine-pins on its grave. Down here it's all the same! Kiss a boy and books come out! Ralph up Parthenons into the upstairs toilet! Dance poems, shit showtunes! Art is easy! Pick up genius at the corner shop! Sell your soul and half your shoes for a glass of gin!' He looks up at Zelda Fair and his poor goblin face goes all twisted up and desperate. 'It's all fucked anyway, you see? The end of the world already happened. It's happening all the time. It's gonna happen again. And again after that. Just when you think it's done falling on its face, the world picks itself up and throws itself off a roof. Boom. Pavement. The world's ending forever and ever and we're not even allowed to toast at her funeral. So we gotta do something else or she won't know we ever loved her.

She was a harridan, Kimberly. Wasn’t it obvious? She was one of those women who numb their bitter resentment with alcohol and make everyone close to them pay for all the lives they failed to lead, all the goals they failed to achieve. She’s a cold-blooded killer.” “You sound like you have issues, V.” “I know the type,” I said, and as I said it I remembered those gin bottles, lined up like doomed soldiers standing at attention in their ranks. But something bugged me about those bottles, something different from the bouquets of glass I used to find around the house when my mother still lived at home. “Is that it?” Kimberly said, pointing out her window. My mind snapped back

Sell your soul and half your shoes for a glass of gin.

First he goes to work and he takes some pineapple syrup and he puts it in a glass, and then he puts in just a liddle, lid-dle bit of that juice off them bottles full of red cherries, and then he puts in the gin and the ginger ale, and then he gets him a big, long piece of pineapple and he lays that in, and then when he gets the orange in and puts that old red cherry on top—well! That’s the way Horace does when he fixes a mint julep.” The

Here,” said Dumbledore, waving his wand once as he passed her the piece of paper, “I think this will make everything clear.” Mrs. Cole’s eyes slid out of focus and back again as she gazed intently at the blank paper for a moment. “That seems perfectly in order,” she said placidly, handing it back. Then her eyes fell upon a bottle of gin and two glasses that had certainly not been present a few seconds before.

If your crackling is not crisp enough when the meat is ready to serve, don’t worry. Simply cut the crackling away, return it to the oven and cook it for a further 15 minutes, while you have a gin and tonic to begin your meal. After this extra oven time, your crackling will be sure to crack like glass.

When we finally step back and Isolde helps me find my clothes and my belt, I see what was next to me all along—the spray of shattered glass from Mark’s flung gin. That’s why he kept kicking my foot. He didn’t want me to step on the glass and cut myself. As we leave, I dare one last glance back at the shards on the ground. They sparkle against the cum that I spilled all over them, a scatter of diamonds and pearls in the night.

A martini in France is a glass of Martini-Rossi, the sweet red vermouth from Italy. With a dash of gin on top, it is called a Martini-gin. Paul used bourbon instead of gin and added a twist of lemon, calling it a reverse Manhattan. It was one of the best drinks I’d ever had.

Oscar Goodman’s three terms were as bombastic and controversial as his arguments in court. His policy proposals included setting up brothels in Las Vegas, legalizing all street drugs to collect enough revenue to pay teachers six-figure salaries, and cutting the thumbs off people convicted of graffiti while broadcasting the punishment on television. Not surprising, none of his libertarian ideas were enacted into city ordinance.(60) Goodman’s administration was unlike any in the country. He was the first Las Vegas mayor to have his face on casino chips. He photographed a model for a topless pictorial for the Playboy website. Bombay Sapphire gin recruited him as its spokesman because he was never far from a gin martini, which he garnished with sliced jalapeno peppers and a glass of ice on the side. Oscar Goodman donated the gin endorsement honorarium to charity. In 2005, however, he faced nationwide controversy when fourth graders at a local elementary school asked him the one thing he would want with him if he was stranded on a desert island. “A bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin,” Mayor Goodman responded, adding that one of his main hobbies was drinking. He later apologized if anyone was offended

What the house kept us, we kept. The buttonhooks, the cotton gin advertisement, the letters, the filthy lady's glove, gnarled and frozen in a claw, all of it were framed under glass, in shadow boxes, displayed in the parlor by the guest book. We even managed to save the silvery gilt of wallpaper and the peacock frieze we found like a gift under the brown and orange daisy paper in the hallway. Lost objects in a house are like memories tucked in the gray folds of our brains. They will resurface. Eventually, they will come back.

Somewhere between his racing thoughts, the last of his gin, too many glasses of Louis Latour, and his read of The Thorn Birds, his plans for date night went south. A book I’d entertained far too long that I thought resembled my life and our relationship. But he’s right, it’s not our story, and for the first time since he showed back up, I open my needy heart to the possibility that we may be able to write a better one.

Well, anyways, you’re a good actress but I wrote my thesis in college on your parents’ career, I’ve seen nearly every piece your family has created, and I really feel that your strongest work, when you were doing the most unexpected and emotionally resonant acting, was in those art pieces.” “When I was nine years old,” Annie said. She felt like she was going to be sick. This magazine writer was expressing her worst fears, what she’d convinced herself was not at all true, that being a Fang, the conduit for her parents’ vision, was perhaps the only worthwhile thing she had ever accomplished. “I’m going to get a drink,” she said, and pushed away from the table. It was two in the afternoon, but it was the afternoon, and evening followed the afternoon, and she was going to drink. She was going to drink well into the evening, she believed. She asked for and received a glass of gin, no ice, no mixers, no olive. She brought it back to the table and took a get-to-know-you sip that got the ball rolling.

Other colors blurred and ran together, as though the light was a glass of gin poured over the watercolor painting of the world.

In the middle of my wood, I found myself in a dark life. The day was going toward the narrow place the blank. No matter how many glasses of gin it will get dark on this platform of earth.

Can you describe for me the tastes that you experienced as you said those words?" "Certainly. Mashed peas, dried apples, wine gum, weak tea, butter unsalted, Walkers crisps..."Mr. Roland replied. What I was experiencing at that moment wasn't an out-of-body experience. It was an in-another-body experience. Everything but this man and me had faded into darkness. He and I were at the two ends of a brightly lit tunnel. We were point A and point B. The tunnel was the most direct, straight-line route between the two points. I had never experienced recognition in this pure, undiluted form. It was a mirroring. It was a fact. It was a cord pulled taut between us. Most of all, it was no longer a secret. I don't remember getting up, but I must have. I do remember kneeling in front of the TV. I touched the image of Mr. Roland's face as his words jumped, swerved, coalesced, attacked, and revealed. As the interview continued, he became more comfortable with the interviewer, and his facial tics and rapid blinking lessened. He masked what he couldn't control by taking long sips from a glass of water (or perhaps the clear liquid was gin). He also turned his head slightly and coughed into his left hand, which provided him with a second or two of privacy. It soon became clear to Mr. Roland and to me that the interviewer wanted him to perform for the camera. After each question-and-answer exchange, the interviewer would ask him for the tastes of her words and then his. Mr. Roland was oddly obliging, much more so than I would have been in his position. I soon realized that his pool of experiential flavors, in other words his actual food intake, was very British and that he didn't venture far from home for his gastronomical needs. "Curry fries" was the most unusual taste that this piano tuner from Manchester listed. The word "employment" triggered it, he told the interviewer. I said "employment" aloud and tasted olives from a can, which meant I tasted more can than olives. I felt more than a tinge of envy.

Embury was the first true cocktailian of the modern age, and he took time to analyze the components of a cocktail, breaking them down into a base (usually a spirit, it must be at least 50 percent of the drink); a modifying, smoothing, or aromatizing agent, such as vermouth, bitters, fruit juice, sugar, cream, or eggs; and “additional special flavoring and coloring ingredients,” which he defined as liqueurs and nonalcoholic fruit syrups. Embury taught us that the Ramos Gin Fizz must be shaken for at least five minutes in order to achieve the proper silky consistency, suggested that Peychaud’s bitters be used in the Rob Roy, and noted that “for cocktails, such as the Side Car, a three-star cognac is entirely adequate, although a ten-year-old cognac will produce a better drink.” In the second edition of his book, Embury mentioned that he had been criticized for omitting two drinks from his original work: the Bloody Mary, which he described as “strictly vile,” and the Moscow Mule, as “merely mediocre.” On the subject of Martinis, he explained that although most cocktail books call for the drink to be made with one-third to one-half vermouth, “quite recently, in violent protest of this wishy-washy type of cocktail, there has sprung up the vermouth-rinse method of making Martinis.” He describes a drink made from chilled gin in a cocktail glass coated in vermouth. Embury didn’t approve of either version, and went on to say that a ratio of seven parts gin to one part vermouth was his personal favorite. While Embury was taking his drinking seriously, many Americans were quaffing Martinis by the pitcher, and Playboy magazine commissioned cocktail maven Thomas Mario and, later, Emanuel Greenberg to deliver cocktail news to a nation of people who drank for fun, and did it on a regular basis. Esquire magazine issued its Handbook for Hosts as early as 1949, detailing drinks such as the Sloe Gin Fizz, the Pan American, the “I Died Game, Boys” Mixture, and the Ginsicle—gin with fruit juice or simple syrup poured over chipped ice in a champagne glass. A cartoon in the book depicts a frustrated bartender mopping his fevered brow and exclaiming, “She ordered it because it had a cute name.” The world of cocktails was tilting slightly on its axis, and liquor companies lobbied long and hard to get into the act. In the fifties, Southern Comfort convinced us to make Comfort Manhattans and Comfort Old-Fashioneds by issuing a booklet: How to Make the 32 Most Popular Drinks. By the seventies, when the Comfort Manhattan had become the Improved Manhattan, they were bringing us Happy Hour Mixology Plus a Primer of Happy Hour Astrology, presumably so we would have something to talk about at bars: “Oh, you’re a Virgo—discriminating, keenly analytical, exacting, and often a perfectionist. Wanna drink?

The recent enormous popularity of gin means there has been a parallel surge in delicious high-end tonics. Try Fentimans, Fever Tree and good old Schweppes Indian Tonic. One of those with a slice of lime looks just like a G&T and is delicious. • I used to say brunch isn’t brunch without a Bloody Mary. Now, unless it’s a special occasion, I go for a just-as-delicious and way-more-virtuous Virgin Mary. Just make sure they don’t scrimp on the Tabasco so that you get that kick. • Bitters are great for solving the issue of so many alcohol-free drinks being sickly sweet (I mean, what’s the point of not drinking if you’re going to feel like throwing up in the taxi home anyway?). A soda water with a dash of Angostura bitters hits the spot. • Kombucha is made with ‘live’ fermented tea, so it’s packed with nutrients and great for your gut. Search out craft kombucha brewers like Equinox, Love, Jarr, or Profusion, whose kombucha is available from Ocado. • If a bar has a cocktail list, it will almost certainly have an alcohol-free section. If not, just ask. Mixologists love showing off, so they’ll relish the challenge of creating something bespoke. • For widely available botanically brewed deliciousness, try Folkington’s, Belvoir, Luscombe and Peter Spanton. • A bitter lemon is a great option, assuming you don’t mind (or perhaps you quite enjoy) the slight vibe of Dot and Ethel in the Queen Vic. Personally, I love a bit of 1970s kitsch, and a bitter lemon is usually served on ice in a low-ball glass, so it is perfect for evenings when you don’t want to make a big deal of not drinking, because it looks like a ‘proper’ drink.

In order for the companies to supply tea and sugar, imperial power was necessary, in India and China principally for tea, and in the Caribbean for sugar. Britain had dominion over both regions. Religion also played a part, with the Temperance movement and the Protestant work ethic driving beer and gin out of the workplace.19 And, for the working poor, tea held an important advantage over a cold glass of beer: ‘Two ounces of tea a week … made many a cold supper seem like a hot meal.

Mrs Marsh looked immobile, Lovat thought, as though she never left the chair let alone the house. Better to be dead, he considered, than to live her life. He and Edwin stood in the middle of the tiny room. They had to. There were no other chairs. They had had to wait a moment or two for their eyes to get used to the dark. The window was too small and grimy to admit very much light. A pathetic fire smoked in the grate. Mrs Marsh puffed on a cigarette, knocking the ash every now and again into an ashtray on the arm of the chair. A near empty bottle of gin stood on the floor at her feet. There was no glass.

Are you Russian?” “To the core.” “Well then, let me say at the outset that I am positively enamored with your country. I love your funny alphabet and those little pastries stuffed with meat. But your nation’s notion of a cocktail is rather unnerving. . . .” “How so?” The captain pointed discreetly down the bar to where a bushy-eyebrowed apparatchik was chatting with a young brunette. Both of them were holding drinks in a striking shade of magenta. “I gather from Audrius that that concoction contains ten different ingredients. In addition to vodka, rum, brandy, and grenadine, it boasts an extraction of rose, a dash of bitters, and a melted lollipop. But a cocktail is not meant to be a mélange. It is not a potpourri or an Easter parade. At its best, a cocktail should be crisp, elegant, sincere—and limited to two ingredients.” “Just two?” “Yes. But they must be two ingredients that complement each other; that laugh at each other’s jokes and make allowances for each other’s faults; and that never shout over each other in conversation. Like gin and tonic,” he said, pointing to his drink. “Or bourbon and water . . . Or whiskey and soda . . .” Shaking his head, he raised his glass and drank from it. “Excuse me for expounding.” “That’s quite all right.” The

Growing up outside of Philadelphia, I never wanted for diner food, whether it was from Bob's Diner in Roxborough or the Trolley Car Diner in Mount Airy. The food wasn't anything special- eggs and toast, meat loaf and gravy, the omnipresent glass case of pies- but I always found the food comforting and satisfying, served as it was in those old-fashioned, prefabricated stainless steel trolley cars. Whenever we would visit my mom's parents in Canterbury, New Jersey, we'd stop at the Claremont Diner in East Windsor on the way home, and I'd order a fat, fluffy slice of coconut cream pie, which I'd nibble on the whole car ride back to Philly. I'm not sure why I've always found diner food so comforting. Maybe it's the abundance of grease or the utter lack of pretense. Diner food is basic, stick-to-your-ribs fare- carbs, eggs, and meat, all cooked up in plenty of hot fat- served up in an environment dripping with kitsch and nostalgia. Where else are a jug of syrup and a bottomless cup of coffee de rigueur? The point of diner cuisine isn't to astound or impress; it's to fill you up cheaply with basic, down-home food. My menu, however, should astound and impress, which is why I've decided to take up some of the diner foods I remember from my youth and put my own twist on them. So far, this is what I've come up with: Sloe gin fizz cocktails/chocolate egg creams Grilled cheese squares: grappa-soaked grapes and Taleggio/ Asian pears and smoked Gouda "Eggs, Bacon, and Toast": crostini topped with wilted spinach, pancetta, poached egg, and chive pesto Smoky meat loaf with slow-roasted onions and prune ketchup Whipped celery root puree Braised green beans with fire-roasted tomatoes Mini root beer floats Triple coconut cream pie

Misty again today. A freakish mist lies over the land. My clothes are out on the clothesline, and they have been there for two days and they've started to get that wet-too-long smell. Now, if I were a nineteenth-century poet, I would say that the freakish mist lay 'o'er' the land. And that's one of those words, 'o'er,' that makes a modern reader feel ill. So what I do, to make the old poems feel true again - the good old poems - is very simple. This is another little tip for you, so get ready. I just pronounce 'o'er' as 'over,' but I do it very fast, so you're gliding o'er the V, not really adding another syllable. Because that's what it was, I think: it was a crude, printed representation of a subtle spoken elision that might well have had some of the vocal ghost of the V left in it. There are rare times when it's absolutely necessary to say 'o'er' without any V - as when, say, Macaulay rhymes it with 'yore.' But a lot of the time you can fudge it. This trick will also work for ''tis' and 'ne'er' - the other painful bits of poetic diction. When I'm reading a poem to myself, I just mentally change all the instances of ''tis' to 'it's.' And I give 'ne'er' the 'o'er' treatment - I just barely graze my teeth with my lower lip, while thinking V. It's like waving the vermouth bottle over the glass of gin. Try it, it may work for you. After all, we don't want some mere convention of spelling to block our connection with the oldies. We want to hear them now as if they're being said now. And that tailcoated diction can really get in the way. It's bad. Not to mention the exclamation points everywhere. Lo! Great God! Just ignore them. If you say the poem aloud, they disappear.

Important Bridesmaids notes: Harrison only allowed one beer before the service and one whisky for courage before the speech. When drunk has a tendency to a)Ramble b)Do the robot dance c) Take off his shoes and swing them around his head by the laces. Michelle only allowed one glass of champagne before the service and one gin and tonic for courage before her speech a) Slur b) burst into a spontaneous rap c) Prank call her boss pretending to be Kermit the Frog

I am drinking again I'm on my seventh cold glass of gin Life is a tribute to you And so is dying And drinking in this way To die is what I'm trying I am drinking again I'm on my ninth cold glass of gin

A Reclusive Invitation by Stewart Stafford In a mansion crouched at the forest's edge, Gargoyles perched on a Jericho hedge, Lived Samuel Keane, with millions at least, Welcomed the locals to his Christmas feast. Self-imposed exile of wealth's solitary scene, On that evening, time for connection pristine, An alabaster white suit in a chessboard hall; Legions of armour and battle scars to recall. "Come, gather round, let camaraderie ignite! On Christmas Eve, a dream-come-true night!" Perkins, the grey butler, in reluctant festive red, Gestured them toward Keane's banquet spread. Their gracious host took his place at the end, A throne chair helped into place with a bend, Beaming, he clapped and food was brought in, To gasps and applause at the goblets of gin. A succulent feast at a baronial ball; Roasted goose, boar, a tall glass highball, Stories grew taller, just like each drink, Songs and jests sent them over the brink. Enjoyment and melody's atmosphere bright, Fleeting warmth shared in lush candlelight. Dawn looms, Les Misérables adore company: "Why does hangover guilt crave chablis?" A Father Christmas event once a year, Guests departed, a loud triple cheer, A fading smile of a host so grand, Adrift, nothing elaborate planned. The fireworks faded, the last ember died, Keane shut his mansion with secrets inside. A portcullis closed slowly on a seasonal high, A gothic arch door shut 'neath morning star sky. © 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.

guessed that he had a lot of mahogany and cherry furniture, a tantalus, crystal glasses, dog-and-hunting prints, potted palms, and a marble hall. He radiated comfort, resignation, kindness, longing, and the Anglo-Saxon ability to be mildly intoxicated throughout the day, starting at just after noon. She liked him, and was tempted by his aura of relaxed oblivion, excellent tailoring, and lots of gin.