Martini Time Quotes

Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky." "She's drunk," Joe Bell informed me. "Moderately," Holly confessed....Holly lifted her martini. "Let's wish the Doc luck, too," she said, touching her glass against mine. "Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc -- it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.

How?" I demanded. "How could you have screwed this one up?" "When I got in, they said the manager was on the phone and would be a few minutes. So, I sat down and ordered a drink." This time, I did lean my forehead against the steering wheel. "What did you order?" "A martini." "A martini." I lifted my head. "You ordered a martini before a job interview." "It's a bar, Sage. I figured they'd be cool with it.

Seth rolled his eyes. “Because you’re such a ladies man.” “I can be. I just have standards, is all. I’m very selective about who I choose to spend time with, whereas you’ll fuck anything that moves. And several things that don’t.

Lawyers are alright, I guess — but it doesn't appeal to me", I said. "I mean they're alright if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn't.

See you just don’t understand women the way I do J.D. They want it all: a career apple martinis financial independence great shoes but at the same time—and this they’ll never admit—they are drawn to patriarchal men who are dominant and controlling. That’s the essence of the Darcy complex. He may be an asshole but he’s an asshole that gets the girl in the end.

Kitty, do you have the bottle?" "In my purse. Which is in my room. Not that I think I can find my room from here." "I'll get it," Martini said. He stood up and disappeared. Ten seconds later he was back, bottle in hand. "What kept you?" "That purse gets worse every time I look inside.

At forty-five, I feel grateful almost daily to be the adult I wished I could be when I was seventeen. I work on my arm strength at the gym; I've become pretty good with tools. At the same time, almost daily, I lose battles with the seventeen-year-old who's still inside me. I eat half a box of Oreos for lunch, I binge on TV, I make sweeping moral judgments. I run around in torn jeans, I drink martinis on a Tuesday night, I stare at beer-commercial cleavage. I define as uncool any group to which I can't belong. I feel the urge to key Range Rovers and slash their tires; I pretend I'm never going to die. You never stop waiting for the real story to start, because the only real story, in the end, is that you die.

Rachel and I, we’d been raised to do what we wanted to do, and we had; we’d been successful, and we’d shown everyone. We didn’t need to wear apocryphal T-shirts because we already knew the secret, which was this: that when you did succeed, when you did outearn and outpace, when you did exceed all expectations, nothing around you really shifted. You still had to tiptoe around the fragility of a man, which was okay for the women who got to shop and drink martinis all day—this was their compensation; they had done their own negotiations—but was absolutely intolerable for anyone who was out there working and getting respect and becoming the person that others had to tiptoe around. That these men could be so delicate, that they could lack any inkling of self-examination when it came time to try to figure out why their women didn’t seem to be batshit enthusiastic over another night of bolstering and patting and fellating every insecurity out of them—this was the thing we’d find intolerable.

You think you’re being difficult, my little sausage? Have I ever told you about the time I drank eight vodka martinis, took all my clothes off in front of a film crew and then broke my manager’s nose?

I've never had a coconut chilli Martini before,' I tell him. 'That's the thing with getting older. You run out of new things to try.' 'Oh, I don't know,' he says, still the optimist. 'I have lived beside one ocean or another most of my life and I have yet to see the same wave twice. It's the mana, you see. It's everywhere. It's never still. It keeps the world new. The whole planet is a coconut chilli Martini.

Dear Jim." The writing grew suddenly blurred and misty. And she had lost him again--had lost him again! At the sight of the familiar childish nickname all the hopelessness of her bereavement came over her afresh, and she put out her hands in blind desperation, as though the weight of the earth-clods that lay above him were pressing on her heart. Presently she took up the paper again and went on reading: "I am to be shot at sunrise to-morrow. So if I am to keep at all my promise to tell you everything, I must keep it now. But, after all, there is not much need of explanations between you and me. We always understood each other without many words, even when we were little things. "And so, you see, my dear, you had no need to break your heart over that old story of the blow. It was a hard hit, of course; but I have had plenty of others as hard, and yet I have managed to get over them,--even to pay back a few of them,--and here I am still, like the mackerel in our nursery-book (I forget its name), 'Alive and kicking, oh!' This is my last kick, though; and then, tomorrow morning, and--'Finita la Commedia!' You and I will translate that: 'The variety show is over'; and will give thanks to the gods that they have had, at least, so much mercy on us. It is not much, but it is something; and for this and all other blessings may we be truly thankful! "About that same tomorrow morning, I want both you and Martini to understand clearly that I am quite happy and satisfied, and could ask no better thing of Fate. Tell that to Martini as a message from me; he is a good fellow and a good comrade, and he will understand. You see, dear, I know that the stick-in-the-mud people are doing us a good turn and themselves a bad one by going back to secret trials and executions so soon, and I know that if you who are left stand together steadily and hit hard, you will see great things. As for me, I shall go out into the courtyard with as light a heart as any child starting home for the holidays. I have done my share of the work, and this death-sentence is the proof that I have done it thoroughly. They kill me because they are afraid of me; and what more can any man's heart desire? "It desires just one thing more, though. A man who is going to die has a right to a personal fancy, and mine is that you should see why I have always been such a sulky brute to you, and so slow to forget old scores. Of course, though, you understand why, and I tell you only for the pleasure of writing the words. I loved you, Gemma, when you were an ugly little girl in a gingham frock, with a scratchy tucker and your hair in a pig-tail down your back; and I love you still. Do you remember that day when I kissed your hand, and when you so piteously begged me 'never to do that again'? It was a scoundrelly trick to play, I know; but you must forgive that; and now I kiss the paper where I have written your name. So I have kissed you twice, and both times without your consent. "That is all. Good-bye, my dear" Then am I A happy fly, If I live Or if I die

She walks into my life legs first, a long drink of water in the desert of my thirties. Her shoes are red; her eyes are green. She's an Italian flag in occupied territory, and I fall for her like Paris. She mixes my metaphors like a martini and serves up my heart tartare. They all do. Every time. They have to. It's that kind of story.

A proper drink at the right time—one mixed with care and skill and served in a true spirit of hospitality—is better than any other made thing at giving us the illusion, at least, that we’re getting what we want from life. A cat can gaze upon a king, as the proverb goes, and after a Dry Martini or a Sazerac Cocktail or two, we’re all cats.

The hand that mixes the Georgetown martini,” Henry Kissinger observed, “is time and again the hand that guides the destiny of the Western world.

And yet it was true: the responsibility was huge, but there is nothing about being a father that I don’t love. I even found the toddler tantrums weirdly charming. You think you’re being difficult, my little sausage? Have I ever told you about the time I drank eight vodka martinis, took all my clothes off in front of a film crew and then broke my manager’s nose?

Soul, love, joy and natural beauty shines first from within. Make time for quiet reflective moments. Be still and know there is more than just Botox and pink martinis for women over 40.

I guess she felt as I: that the weakness was not Government but Man, one at a time, that men were never as strong as their ideas and that ideas were governments turned into men; and so it began on a couch with a spilled martini and it ended in the bedroom: desire, revolution, nonsense ended, and the shades rattled in the wind, rattled like sabres, cracked like cannon, and 30 dogs, 20 men on 20 horses chased one fox across the fields under the sun

I guess she felt as I: that the weakness was not Government but Man, one at a time, that men were never as strong as their ideas and that ideas were governments turned into men; and so it began on a couch with a spilled martini and it ended in the bedroom: desire, revolution, nonsense ended, and the shades rattled in the wind, rattled like sabres, cracked like cannon, and 30 dogs, 20 men on 20 horses chased one fox across the fields under the sun

When she says margarita she means daiquiri. When she says quixotic she means mercurial. And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again," she means, "Put your arms around me from behind as I stand disconsolate at the window." He's supposed to know that. When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading, or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he is raking leaves in Ithaca or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate at the window overlooking the bay where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels drinking lemonade and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed where she remains asleep and very warm. When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks. When she says, "We're talking about me now," he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says, "Did somebody die?" When a woman loves a man, they have gone to swim naked in the stream on a glorious July day with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle of water rushing over smooth rocks, and there is nothing alien in the universe. Ripe apples fall about them. What else can they do but eat? When he says, "Ours is a transitional era," "that's very original of you," she replies, dry as the martini he is sipping. They fight all the time It's fun What do I owe you? Let's start with an apology Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead. A sign is held up saying "Laughter." It's a silent picture. "I've been fucked without a kiss," she says, "and you can quote me on that," which sounds great in an English accent. One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it another nine times. When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the airport in a foreign country with a jeep. When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that she's two hours late and there's nothing in the refrigerator. When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake. She's like a child crying at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end. When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking: as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved. A thousand fireflies wink at him. The frogs sound like the string section of the orchestra warming up. The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.

I don’t have a lot of time for men in my life right now. Maybe I will when I’m older. Like 61. "Scared Hitless

Bonnie made a joke now as she served him his martini. She made the same joke every time she served anybody a martini. “Breakfast of Champions,” she said.

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” Marie Curie

Then Frank said, ‘Have you ever heard that when five o’clock comes, it’s martini time? We could be right in the middle of a scene, but it’s over for me, because it’s martini time. Did you ever hear that?

If I weren't so screwed up, I would've sold my soul a long time ago for a handsome man who made me feel pretty or who could at least treat me to a Millionaire's Martini. Instead I lingered over a watered down Sparkling Apple and felt sorry about what I was about to do to the blue-eyed bartender standing in front of me. Although I shouldn’t, after all, I am a bail recovery agent. It's my job to get my skip, no matter the cost.If I weren't so screwed up, I would've sold my soul a long time ago for a handsome man who made me feel pretty or who could at least treat me to a Millionaire's Martini. Instead I lingered over a watered down Sparkling Apple and felt sorry about what I was about to do to the blue-eyed bartender standing in front of me. Although I shouldn't, after all, I am a bail recovery agent. It's my job to get my skip, no matter the cost. Yet, I had been wondering lately. What was this job costing me? Yet, I had been wondering lately. What was this job costing me?

R-E-M-O-R-S-E! Those dry Martinis did the work for me; Last night at twelve I felt intense, Today I feel like thirty cents. My eyes are bleared, my coopers hot, I'll try to eat, but I cannot. It is no time for mirth and laughter, The cold, gray dawn the morning after.

We live in a time where increasingly our national leaders are more like dons of crime than statesmen, where notions of plausible deniability replace truth, and claims that politicians never knew of evil done in their own names by others are commonplace. It is the age of unbridled arrogance and video showmanship, where the challenge ' prove what I knew and when I knew it ' has become a national motto.

Do not make your child your only hobby or you will end up waiting by the telephone in a cheery room covered in brittle, yellowed crayon drawings, regaling those few friends that are left with stale anecdotes about your youngster's accomplishments. Your little baby will be off in college, or backpacking in the Amazon, or on the other side of the country trying to get as far away from home as possible, and you will begin collecting porcelain frogs and feeding stray cats. So now is the time to start getting that life to fall back on. You know what you must do. Do it for your child. Do it for me, and for everyone out there who has to deal with your child for the rest of your child's life. And do it for yourself.

What Harry means is, he has a taste for “felonious voyeurism.” It happens. Lawyers, judges, cops, and jurors all find themselves titillated from time to time by the stories of violence, drugs, and sex. The criminal side of the law provides a window on the dark side of life that exists nowhere else.

She had slowly encroached on every inch of my being, and occupied a lot of space on my mind. Her jet black hair that fell in wisps across her cheeks, the murky eyes that find my soul every time, her long fingers that threaded with mine and the way she held my hand till our fingertips every time I had to leave… Preethi was on my mind, here to stay.

Bran asked his father , Can a man be brave if he is afraid? Thst is the only time a man can be brave replied his father.

Any time, any place, any where. He's not called Doctor Martini, is he?

Worrying about parents is a waste of time. It’s your life. Let’s have a martini.

Done is better than perfect. Time for a martini.

It dawned on me that no person is as poetically homesick as someone who has come to New York for the first time and glimpsed a small vestige of her home state.

Perhaps the sadness here is that Plath and Sexton somehow could not quite gather the strength to truly believe in their self-worth, and in the end neither gave themselves time to.

It occurred to me, not exactly for the first time, that psychogeography didn't have much to do with the actual experience of walking. It was a nice idea, a clever idea, an art project, a conceit, but it had very little to do with any real walking, with any real experience of walking. And it confirmed for me what I'd really known all along, that walking isn't much good as a theoretical experience. You can dress it up any way you like, but walking remains resolutely simple, basic, analog. That's why I love it and love doing it. And in that respect--stay with me on this--it's not entirely unlike a martini. Sure you can add things to martinis, like chocolate or an olive stuffed with blue cheese or, God forbid, cotton candy, and similarly you can add things to your walks--constraints, shapes, notions of the mapping of utopian spaces--but you don't need to. And really, why would you? Why spoil a good drink? Why spoil a good walk?

Benefits Now—Costs Later We have seen that predictable problems arise when people must make decisions that test their capacity for self-control. Many choices in life, such as whether to wear a blue shirt or a white one, lack important self-control elements. Self-control issues are most likely to arise when choices and their consequences are separated in time. At one extreme are what might be called investment goods, such as exercise, flossing, and dieting. For these goods the costs are borne immediately, but the benefits are delayed. For investment goods, most people err on the side of doing too little. Although there are some exercise nuts and flossing freaks, it seems safe to say that not many people are resolving on New Year’s Eve to floss less next year and to stop using the exercise bike so much. At the other extreme are what might be called sinful goods: smoking, alcohol, and jumbo chocolate doughnuts are in this category. We get the pleasure now and suffer the consequences later. Again we can use the New Year’s resolution test: how many people vow to smoke more cigarettes, drink more martinis, or have more chocolate donuts in the morning next year? Both investment goods and sinful goods are prime candidates for nudges. Most (nonanorexic) people do not need any special encouragement to eat another brownie, but they could use some help exercising more.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” ~Albert Schweitzer

Some car had hit it after all, because it hadn’t had the courage to honor its own correct instinct. And I began to cry because I had this thought about people, that they do this all the time, deny the wise voice inside them telling them the right thing to do because it is different. I remembered once seeing a tea party some little girls had set up outside, mismatched china, decorations of a plucked pansy blossom and a seashell and a shiny penny and a small circle of red berries and a fern, pressed wetly into the wooden table, the damp outline around it a beautiful bonus. They didn’t consult the Martha Stewart guide for entertainment and gulp a martini before their guests arrived. They pulled ideas from their hearts and minds about the things that gave them pleasure, and they laid out an offering with loving intent. It was a small Garden of Eden, the occupants making something out of what they saw was theirs. Out of what they truly saw.

Our house is so difficult to find that people always arrive late, which means that by the time we go into dinner, I've had so many dry Martinis I'm practically under the piano, and it no longer seems to matter that I haven't put the potatoes on.

The power of the presidency is so vast that is probably a good thing, in retrospect, that only a few people in this country understood the gravity of Richard Nixon's mental condition during his last year in the White House. There were moments in that year when even his closest friends and advisers were convinced that the President of the United States was so crazy with rage and booze and suicidal despair that he was only two martinis away from losing his grip entirely and suddenly locking himself in his office long enough to make that single telephone call that would have launched enough missiles and bombers to blow the whole world off its axis or at least kill 100 million people.

I was supposed to be having the time of my life. I was supposed to be the envy of thousands of other college girls jut like me all over America who wanted nothing more than to be tripping bout in those same size seven patent leather shoes I'd bought in Bloomingdale's one lunch hour with a black patent leather belt and black patent leather pocket-book to match. And when my picture came out in the magazine the twelve of us were working on - drinking martinis in a skimpy, imitation silver-lamé bodice stuck on to a big, fat cloud of white tulle, on some Starlight Roof, in the company of several anonymous young men with all-American bone structures hired or loaned for the occasion - everybody would think I must be having a real whirl

If I had three lives, I’d marry you in two. And the other? That life over there at Starbucks, sitting alone, writing — a memoir, maybe a novel or this poem. No kids, probably, a small apartment with a view of the river, and books — lots of books and time to read. Friends to laugh with; a man sometimes, for a weekend, to remember what skin feels like when it’s alive. I’m thinner in that life, vegan, practice yoga. I go to art films, farmers markets, drink martinis in swingy skirts and big jewelry. I vacation on the Maine coast and wear a flannel shirt weekend guy left behind, loving the smell of sweat and aftershave more than I do him. I walk the beach at sunrise, find perfect shell spirals and study pockmarks water makes in sand. And I wonder sometimes if I’ll ever find you.

immediately, how any task other than keeping Toby safe, keeping Toby healthy, seemed like a diversion, or an interruption. She understood with some remorse that if one of her childless friends insisted on coming over during bedtime for martinis and conversation, it wouldn’t feel exactly unwelcome, but it would feel a little irrelevant. Like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the mountain but then stopping for tea. She realized that her old friends had not abandoned her, or at least had not done so in any volitional way; it was just that their attention had been seized, their love redirected, the purpose of each day reoriented, unavoidably and involuntarily. She finally comprehended parenthood’s strange paradox: that it was deeply annihilating while at the same time also somehow deeply comforting. It was both soul-devouring and soul-filling.

She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d re­ally cho­sen. We weren’t in each other’s lives be­cause of any obli­ga­tion to the past or con­ve­nience of the present. We had no shared his­tory and we had no rea­son to spend all our time to­ gether. But we did. Our friend­ship in­ten­si­fied as all our friends had chil­dren – she, like me, was un­con­vinced about hav­ing kids. And she, like me, found her­self in a re­la­tion­ship in her early thir­ties where they weren’t specif­i­cally work­ing to­wards start­ing a fam­ily. By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Ev­ery time there was an­other preg­nancy an­nounce­ment from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And an­other one!’ and she’d know what I meant. She be­came the per­son I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, be­cause she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink with­out plan­ning it a month in ad­vance. Our friend­ship made me feel lib­er­ated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sym­pa­thy or con­cern for her. If I could ad­mire her de­ci­sion to re­main child-free, I felt en­cour­aged to ad­mire my own. She made me feel nor­mal. As long as I had our friend­ship, I wasn’t alone and I had rea­son to be­lieve I was on the right track. We ar­ranged to meet for din­ner in Soho af­ter work on a Fri­day. The waiter took our drinks or­der and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Mar­ti­nis. ‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling wa­ter, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ab­sti­nence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m preg­nant.’ I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imag­ine the ex­pres­sion on my face was par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­as­tic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an un­war­ranted but in­tense sense of be­trayal. In a de­layed re­ac­tion, I stood up and went to her side of the ta­ble to hug her, un­able to find words of con­grat­u­la­tions. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in va­garies about it ‘just be­ing the right time’ and wouldn’t elab­o­rate any fur­ther and give me an an­swer. And I needed an an­swer. I needed an an­swer more than any­thing that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a re­al­iza­tion that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it. When I woke up the next day, I re­al­ized the feel­ing I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing was not anger or jeal­ousy or bit­ter­ness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t re­ally gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had dis­ap­peared and there was noth­ing they could do to change that. Un­less I joined them in their spa­ces, on their sched­ules, with their fam­i­lies, I would barely see them. And I started dream­ing of an­other life, one com­pletely re­moved from all of it. No more chil­dren’s birth­day par­ties, no more chris­ten­ings, no more bar­be­cues in the sub­urbs. A life I hadn’t ever se­ri­ously con­tem­plated be­fore. I started dream­ing of what it would be like to start all over again. Be­cause as long as I was here in the only Lon­don I knew – mid­dle-class Lon­don, cor­po­rate Lon­don, mid-thir­ties Lon­don, mar­ried Lon­don – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.

Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had—not unlike Isaiah Berlin—often felt himself ungainly and ill-favored and awkward in bearing. He had always seemed to me quite the reverse: a touch dandyish perhaps but—as the saying goes—perfectly secure in his masculinity. On one occasion, after lunch in Georgetown, he took me with him to a renowned local tobacconist and asked to do something I had never witnessed before: 'try on' a pipe. In case you ever wish to do this, here is the form: a solemn assistant produces a plastic envelope and fits it over the amber or ivory mouthpiece. You then clamp your teeth down to feel if the 'fit' and weight are easy to your jaw. If not, then repeat with various stems until your browsing is complete. In those days I could have inhaled ten cigarettes and drunk three Tanqueray martinis in the time spent on such flaneur flippancy, but I admired the commitment to smoking nonetheless. Taking coffee with him once in a shopping mall in Stanford, I saw him suddenly register something over my shoulder. It was a ladies' dress shop. He excused himself and dashed in, to emerge soon after with some fashionable and costly looking bags. 'Mariam,' he said as if by way of explanation, 'has never worn anything that I have not bought for her.' On another occasion in Manhattan, after acting as a magnificent, encyclopedic guide around the gorgeous Andalusia (Al-Andalus) exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, he was giving lunch to Carol and to me when she noticed that her purse had been lost or stolen. At once, he was at her service, not only suggesting shops in the vicinity where a replacement might be found, but also offering to be her guide and advisor until she had selected a suitable new sac à main. I could no more have proposed myself for such an expedition than suggested myself as a cosmonaut, so what this says about my own heterosexual confidence I leave to others.

Rachel and I, we’d been raised to do what we wanted to do, and we had; we’d been successful, and we’d shown everyone. We didn’t need to wear apocryphal T-shirts because we already knew the secret, which was this: that when you did succeed, when you did outearn and outpace, when you did exceed all expectations, nothing around you really shifted. You still had to tiptoe around the fragility of a man, which was okay for the women who got to shop and drink martinis all day—this was their compensation; they had done their own negotiations—but was absolutely intolerable for anyone who was out there working and getting respect and becoming the person that others had to tiptoe around. That these men could be so delicate, that they could lack any inkling of self-examination when it came time to try to figure out why their women didn’t seem to be batshit enthusiastic over another night of bolstering and patting and fellating every insecurity out of them—this was the thing we’d find intolerable. I

There were mornings when Jack would stumble into their leased house with dawn seeping into the sky and find Wendy and the baby asleep on the couch, Danny always on the inside, a tiny fist curled under the shelf of Wendy’s jaw. He would look at them and the self-loathing would back up his throat in a bitter wave, even stronger than the taste of beer and cigarettes and martinis—martians, as Al called them. Those were the times that his mind would turn thoughtfully and sanely to the gun or the rope or the razor blade.

So he stopped at the first of them, a frigid hothouse whose front tipped forward over the street in defiance of gravity, taste, and ordinance; inside, the tender daytime flowers could be seen huddling in family groups beneath a constant, unseen sun, and behind them was the hermetic door to the dark Cactus Room where the shy nocturnal plants, genus cereus, could bloom in privacy at any hour. Vivien, once out of the car, appeared less constrained. She did not have that stiffness so many have on first entering bars, that air of waiting stubbornly for alcohol to loosen them, which so often presages their manner when it comes' time for bed. She was already excited when the martinis came.

The two of them went on from many faculty parties, hitting the bars until they closed, then stopping at some mom 'n' pot) store for a case of beer they would drink parked at the end of some back road. There were mornings when Jack would stumble into their leased house with dawn seeping into the sky and find Wendy and the baby asleep on the couch, Danny always on the inside, a tiny fist curled under the shelf of Wendy's jaw. He would look at them and the self-loathing would back up his throat in a bitter wave, even stronger than the taste of beer and cigarettes and martinis-martians, as Al called them. Those were the times that his mind would turn thoughtfully and sanely to the gun or the rope or the razor blade.

Hemingway, pulling up to the Ritz with two truckloads of his French irregulars, told the bartender, “How about seventy-three dry martinis?” Later, after he and several companions had dined on soup, creamed spinach, raspberries in liqueur, and Perrier-Jouët champagne, the waiter added the Vichy tax to the bill, explaining, “It’s the law.” No matter: “We drank. We ate. We glowed,” one of Hemingway’s comrades reported. Private Irwin Shaw of the 12th Infantry, who later won fame as a writer, believed that August 25 was “the day the war should have ended.” To Ernie Pyle, ensconced in a hotel room with a soft bed though no hot water or electricity, “Paris seems to have all the beautiful girls we have always heard it had.… They dress in riotous colors.” The liberation, he concluded, was “the loveliest, brightest story of our time.” *

MET therapists build up motivation by encouraging their patients to talk about their healthy desires. There’s an old saying: “We don’t believe what we hear, we believe what we say.” For example, if you give someone a lecture on the importance of honesty, then have them play a game in which cheating is rewarded, you’ll probably find that the lecture had little effect. On the other hand, if you ask someone to give you a lecture on the importance of honesty, they will be less likely to cheat when they sit down to play the game. MET is a little manipulative. When the patient makes a statement the therapist likes, referred to as a pro-change statement, such as, “Sometimes I have trouble getting to work on time after a night of heavy drinking,” the therapist responds with positive reinforcement, or a request to “tell me more about that.” On the other hand, if the patient makes an anti-change statement, such as, “I work hard all day, and I deserve to relax in the evening with a few martinis,” the therapist doesn’t argue, because that would provoke more anti-change statements as the debate goes back and forth. Instead, she simply changes the subject. Patients usually don’t notice what’s going on, so the technique slips past their conscious defenses,

The story we are told of women is not this one. The story of women is the story of love, of foundering into another. A slight deviation: longing to founder and being unable to. Being left alone in the foundering, and taking things into one's own hands: rat poison, the wheels of a Russian train. Even the smoother and gentler story is still just a modified version of the above. In the demotic, in the key of bougie, it's the promise of love in old age for all the good girls of the world. Hilarious ancient bodies at bath time, husband's palsied hands soaping wife's withered dugs, erection popping out of the bubbles like a pink periscope. I see you! There would be long, hobbledy walks under the plane trees, stories told by a single sideways glance, one word sufficing. Anthill, he'd say; Martini! she'd say; and the thick swim of the old joke would return to them. The laughter, the beautiful reverberations. Then the bleary toddling on to an early-bird dinner, snoozing through a movie hand in hand. Their bodies like knobby sticks wrapped in vellum. One laying the other on the deathbed, feeding the overdose, dying the day after, all heart gone out of the world with the beloved breath. Oh, companionship. Oh, romance. Oh, completion. Forgive her if she believed this would be the way it would go. She had been led to this conclusion by forces greater than she. Conquers all! All you need is! Is a many-splendored thing! Surrender to! Like corn rammed down goose necks, this shit they'd swallowed since they were barely old enough to dress themselves in tulle. The way the old story goes, woman needs an other to complete her circuits, to flick her to fullest blazing.

Mostly Gaylord deals with insurance scamming. He takes a car off a lot and the insurance company pays.” “That’s still stealing.” “I guess, but it’s an insurance company, and everyone hates those people.” “I don’t hate them.” “Well, you’re weird,” Lula said. “Do you like the car?” “I love the car.” “There you go. And by the way, you might want to put a dab of concealer on your nose.” Kranski’s Bar was on the corner of Mayberry Street and Ash. This was a neighborhood very similar to the Burg, but the houses were a little larger, the cars were newer, the kitchen appliances were probably stainless. I parked in the small lot beside the tavern, and Lula and I sashayed into the dim interior. Bertie was working behind the bar that stretched across the back of the room. A bunch of high-top tables were scattered around the front of the room. Two women sat at one of the tables, eating nachos and drinking martinis. At one end of the bar four men were drinking beer and watching the overhead television. I spotted Kenny Morris at the other end. He was alone, nursing what looked like whiskey. Bertie caught my eye, tilted his head toward Kenny, and I nodded back. “I guess that’s the guy you’re looking for,” Lula said. “You want to tag-team him?” “No. I just want to talk to him. I’ll go it alone.” Lula hoisted herself onto a barstool by the four men, and I approached Kenny. “Anyone sitting here?” I asked him. “No,” he said. “No one ever sits there.” “Why not?” “The television is at the other end.” “But you’re here.” “Yeah, I’m not into the team television thing.” He looked a lot like his yearbook photograph. His hair was a little longer. He was slim. Medium height. Pleasant looking. Wearing jeans and a blue dress shirt with the top button open and the sleeves rolled. He was staring at my nose with an intensity usually displayed by dermatologists during a skin cancer exam. I couldn’t blame him. I’d smeared some makeup on it, but even in the dark bar it was emitting a red glow. “It’s a condition,” I said. “It comes and goes. It’s not contagious or anything. Do you come in here often?” “Couple times a week.

to exonerate him. Given the personalities involved, Skarpellos and Lama, I would suddenly discover that Tony was playing cribbage with a dozen elderly matrons the night Ben was killed. “Suspects are your job,” I tell Nelson. “I think we’re satisfied with the defendant we have. All we need to know is who helped her. Who carried the body, used the shotgun,” he says. “It’s an offer made to fail. Even if she were willing to enter a plea to a crime she didn’t commit in order to save her life, she can’t fulfill the terms.” He looks at me, like “Nice story, but it won’t wash.” Lama kicks in. “Have you heard,” he says, “we got a photo ID party goin’ down at the office? Seems the lady was a creature of habit. Ended up at the same place every night. A motel clerk from hell says she brought her entire stable of studs to his front door. We got him lookin’ at pictures of all her friends. Only a matter of time. Then the deal’s off.” Harry meets this with some logic. “To listen to you, our client already had all the freedom she could ask for. Lovers on every corner, and a cozy home to come home to when she got tired,” says Harry. “Why would she want to kill the meal ticket?” “Seems the victim was getting a little tired of her indiscretions. He was considering a divorce,” says Nelson. “You have read the prenuptial agreement? A divorce, and it was back to work for your client.” Harry and I look at one another. “Who told you Ben was considering a divorce?” I ask. “We have a witness,” says Nelson. He is not the kind to gloat over bad news delivered to an adversary. “You haven’t disclosed him to us.” “True,” he says. “We discovered him after the prelim. We’re still checking it out. When we have everything we’ll pass it along. But I will tell you, it sounds like gospel.” Lama’s expression is Cheshire cat-like, beaming from the corner of the couch. I sense that this is his doing. “I think you should talk to your client. I’m sure she’ll see reason,” says Nelson. “If you move, I think I can convince the judge to go along with the deal.” “I’ll have to talk to her,” I tell him, “but I can’t hold out much hope.” “Talk,” he says. “But let me know your answer soon. If we’re going to trial, I intend to ask for an early date.

She thought about all the baking therapy she and Char had done together during that time. Usually in the wee, wee hours. Those sessions never had anything to do with their respective jobs. And everything to do with salvation. Their worlds might be uncontrolled chaos, but baking always made sense. Flour, butter, and sugar were as integral a part of her as breathing. Lani had long since lost count of the number of nights she and Charlotte had crammed themselves into her tiny kitchen, or Charlotte's even tinier one, whipping up this creation or that, all the while hashing and rehashing whatever the problems du jour happened to be. It was the one thing she truly missed about being in New York. No one on Sugarberry understood how baking helped take the edge off. Some folks liked a dry martini. Lani and Char, on the other hand, had routinely talked themselves down from the emotional ledge with rich vanilla queen cake and some black velvet frosting. It might take a little longer to assemble than the perfect adult beverage... but it was the very solace found in the dependable process of measuring and leavening that had made it their own personal martini. Not to mention the payoff was way, way better. Those nights hadn't been about culinary experience, either. The more basic, the more elemental the recipe, the better. Maybe Lani should have seen it all along. Her destiny wasn't to be found in New York, or even Paris, or Prague, making the richest, most intricate cakes, or the most delicate French pastries. No, culinary fulfillment- for her, the same as life fulfillment- was going to be experienced on a tiny spit of land off the coast of Georgia, where she could happily populate the world with gloriously unpretentious, rustic, and rudimentary little cupcakes.

I prefer the Duck and Grouse further up the high street, but Gary’s not a fan, probably because they have Sky Sports and he almost choked on the olive in his martini one time when England scored a goal and the place erupted into cheers. I keep telling him, it’s not like there’s much danger of it being repeated,

A red carpet and red rope stanchion sets demarcated a runway and seating areas. Silhouettes of prominent action heroes posing on silver and gold LED blocks illuminated the whole area. Black silk covered tables and chairs, with centerpieces of colossal martini glasses containing glowing ice cubes.

Imagine the cocktail party raconteur who captivates his listeners with some adventure story while taking dramatic sips from a gin martini. Chances are he is not a writer. This seems counter-intuitive. After all, writers create characters that are so darn interesting. A good writer can hold you spellbound through a two-hundred page story. Why aren’t all writers scintillating, life-of-the-party types in person? Some are. But many are not. Part of the answer is that writers are not required to think on their feet. Spur-of-the-moment wittiness is a necessary quality for improv actors, talk-show hosts, and politicians. But writers don’t think or work in real time. They create at their own pace, spending hours or days on clever dialogue, or crafting a scene in which they get to micro-manage every detail. Real life doesn’t work like that. And that’s okay. There is really only one place where a writer needs to be absolutely charming and irresistible; not at cocktail parties, not on television, not in front of a live audience -- but on paper.

I’ve often wondered what the original foods tasted like. My parents complain on a regular basis about things that have been taken away. “First they took away our two-martini lunches, then vendor-supplied golf outings, then they tried to take our guns (thank goodness that failed); when they couldn’t get our guns, then they took our cigarettes, then finally meat.

It was a street of conformity; where identical houses were painted at the same time every spring, a place of rules where gardens, parenthood and the future were planned with equal care, and even if everything went wrong the master plan remained in effect–keep up appearances, clip the hedges, mow the lawn, so that no one will suspect that there’s a third mortgage and that Mother’s headaches are caused by martinis not migraine.

When pressured, my mother told me that God just hadn’t sent her any more children, but most of the time she liked to say that I was so perfect she knew she could never have another one like me, so she had stopped. Whenever she told me I was perfect, I wondered what was so terrible about me that she would have to lie this way to cover up.

Getting Steve to open up was a lot like opening a jar of martini olives. It helps if you bang on his lid a few times.

Much you know about it,” Susan said disagreeably. “James Bond eats all the time. He thinks he’s a gourmet or something. He gives people karate chops if they shake his martinis ten times instead of twelve. Not that I blame him. I mean, being chased and scared and beaten up uses up a lot of energy. If I ever write a suspense story, I’ll have my people eating lots.

But circumstances make victims of us all at times.

He frowned with difficulty at everyone’s quick transition. He felt something crack in the room. It was like the feeling an artist got when he closed up his gallery, walked upstairs to his living quarters, and stared at the window to watch his former crowd rush to party next door and forget his exhibition one martini at a time. It was like goodbye. There was an unsaid, incomprehensive quality of unfairness to endings. They lacked a transition. The guitarist’s identity, for example, was in her strumming ten seconds ago, not when she finished and looked up at the seduced crowd as “her” again. The singer’s heart was housed in his lyrics, not in his thick-accented voice that rooms never understood.

It took a special talent to learn absolutely nothing about your job in that amount of time. I asked Sardina about it once, and her reply was jovial. “I like it here. It’s quiet. I can read magazines. Records is considered scut-work, a stepping-stone to other positions. If I did a good job, I’d be promoted out of here. So I don’t do a damn thing.” It made a warped kind of sense.

It was Jefferson who warned that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” There

DOES SUGAR REALLY MAKE KIDS HYPERACTIVE? Parents are always looking for an excuse to explain their children’s bad behavior, and sugar has taken a lot of blame. This may come as no surprise, but the Coca-Cola Company doesn’t want to take responsibility, and makes it very clear that studies have failed to find any substantial evidence proving a relationship between sugar consumption and hyperactivity. Well, the company is correct. Sugar does feed the body as an energy source, but it doesn’t make kids hyperactive. It is more likely that kids tend to eat sugary foods at times when they would be excited and rambunctious anyway (parties, holidays, movies, weddings, funerals). This can only be good news for the producers of such fine healthy treats as Cap’n Crunch with Crunchberries, Pixy Stix, cotton candy, and Laffy Taffy.

what was happening just in time to watch the flaming pickup truck start on its fiery trek down the hill. Fuel spilling from the vehicle’s gas tank left a blazing track behind it on the bare earth as the truck streaked down the steep firebreak on the side of the hill. It

how I became an accountant. You really want to know? Well, I can tell you because I remember the exact moment it happened. It’s one of those major life events that stays in your memory like your first kiss, your first introduction to dirty martinis with extra olives, and the first time you discovered the magic of a vibrator.

It was bizarre the way time was like an accordion, and distinct moments that felt so disparate sometimes folded together with a callous symmetry.

My partner has no use for what passes as journalism these days, particularly on the tube. According to Harry, they spend too much time in deep admiration for politicians who show particular skill in lying, so much so that they have now institutionalized the destruction of public ethics by elevating deceit to a statecraft called “spin.” It is no longer the lie that matters but the qualitative fashion in which it is told. We

Resting on its back in the ocean, the otter drifts along tossed by currents so tumultuous that it disappears beneath the waves for minutes at a time before bobbing back to the surface, one tiny arm behind its neck, looking for all the world as though it should be resting a martini on its chest. This is the California waiting for us: this state, and this state of mind.

By D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review "Historical fiction readers are in for a treat with When I Was Better, a love story set in Hungary and Canada which follows the journey of István and Teréza, who flee the Nazi and Soviet invasions and the Hungarian Revolution to finally make their home in Winnipeg in the 1960s. Maps and a cast of characters portend an attention to details that history buffs will appreciate, but the lively chapter headings that begin with "This is What Dying Feels Like" are the real draw, promising inviting scenarios that compel readers to learn more about the characters' lives and influences. Few other books about immigrant experience hold the descriptive power of When I Was Better: "Her world had transformed into a place of gestures and facial expressions, making her feel more vigilant now than she had ever been under Communism. No one understood her but Zolti. Already she ached for her language and the family she left behind." Rita Bozi's ability to capture not just the history and milieu of the times, but the life and passions of those who live it is a sterling example of what sets an extraordinary read apart from a mundane narration of circumstance and history. Her ability to depict the everyday experiences and insights of her protagonist bonds reader to the subject in an intimate manner that brings not just the era, but the psychology of its participants to life through inner reflection, influence and experience, and even dialogue: “Four lengths of sausage, please?” Teréza watched as the man pulled two small lengths from the hook and wrapped them in course paper. “I beg your pardon, sir, but would you kindly add in two more lengths?” “We got an aristocrat here? If you take four lengths, what d’you imagine the workers are gonna eat at the end of the day?” The account of a seven-year separation, Budapest and Winnipeg cultures and contrasts, and refugee experiences brings history to life through the eyes of its beholders. That which doesn't kill us, makes us stronger. This saying applies especially strongly to When I Was Better 's powerful story, highly recommended for historical fiction readers and library collections interested in powerfully compelling writing packed with insights: “Why is it so agonizing to be truthful?” István asked, not expecting an answer. “It depends on what truth you’re about to reveal. And how you expect it to be received. If you’re expecting an execution, you have two choices. Die for what you believe in or lie to save your life.” “So in the end, it all comes down to values.” István reached for the martini, took another sip. Bela smiled. “Without truth, there’s no real connection. The truth hurts, but love eventually heals what hurts.”" "With sharp insight and the gifts of a natural, Bozi's novel brilliantly chronicles the plight of an entire generation of Hungarians through the intimate portrait of two lovers tested by the political and personal betrayals that ripped through the heart of the twentieth century.

We are the behemoths—lost, lumbering, out of our time. We are about to become extinct. And yet we are young, barely thirty, and we have not even begun to live.

Jesus, who suffered the agony of Gethsemane, comes to our aid, and the power of his consolation is such that life is reborn. It is born again in him who died and rose. Death is the decisive event by means of which the Love that saves reveals itself during the hour of the cross as the ‘womb’ of the sorrows of the world. The resurrection marks the victory of Christ over death which generates the exultation due to the splendour of his glory but, at the same time, calls us to a living encounter and courageous witness of him who is the Risen One.

Eventually he agreed, and when Toby was born, Elizabeth came to finally understand exactly where all her friends had gone. She was astounded by how her priorities shifted, all at once, immediately, how any task other than keeping Toby safe, keeping Toby healthy, seemed like a diversion, or an interruption. She understood with some remorse that if one of her childless friends insisted on coming over during bedtime for martinis and conversation, it wouldn’t feel exactly unwelcome, but it would feel a little irrelevant. Like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the mountain but then stopping for tea. She realized that her old friends had not abandoned her, or at least had not done so in any volitional way; it was just that their attention had been seized, their love redirected, the purpose of each day reoriented, unavoidably and involuntarily. She finally comprehended parenthood’s strange paradox: that it was deeply annihilating while at the same time also somehow deeply comforting. It was both soul-devouring and soul-filling.

Adults didn't like maraschino cherries; nobody ate them but me. "Never give Charlotte just one cherry in her Shirley Temple," everybody said. "Make it at least five or six." But I tired of cherries, just cherries. So after a time, lemon, lime, and orange twists snaked around the brims. Dollops of Chantilly cream floated like water lilies on top of mint leaves in the fizzy pink water. The bartenders dipped sugar swizzles in grenadine overnight so they would look like pink rhinestones, capped cocktail straws with berries they had rolled in honey, and looped lemon peels around the stems of martini glasses. Everyone on the staff called those ones "Bondage Shirley Temples," and then they would wink at one another.

Pickleball is a sport most people have never heard of but is a big deal in Florida's retirement communities. It is a geriatric version of tennis played with Ping-Pong paddles and a Whiffle Ball on a court similar to a badminton court... Jeff Laughlin, a North Carolina sportswriter, visited a pickleball match and reported that "the absurdity of the name can only be rivaled by the absurdity of the sport itself." Because the rackets are pretty lightweight and the Whiffle Ball is, well, a Whiffle Ball, no on can hit the ball hard enough to get it past an opposing player. The result is a game featuring "long, arduous volleys" that seem to end mainly once someone gets tired of swinging the racket or it's time for lunch. Laughlin characterizes the sport as "incredibly easy and boring," but to aficionados, apparently, it is a great way to work up a thirst for an afternoon martini.

If the world had no mirrors, we could imagine ourselves frozen in time, our faces decades younger than we really are, but this window shatters that illusion. I am sixty years old, and I can see every one of those years in my reflection. I also

In a restaurant, I can’t sit with my back to the door. Not sure if I’m OCD, but I excel at organizational skills. Slightly claustrophobic, not crazy about heights. Love martinis but one is enough. Tend to be opinionated at times but good at reigning it in. Love long-legged women, clueless about cars, love trucks. I read several dozen books a year, cook every night, and am uncomfortable if music isn’t playing. Don’t like scat singing or modulation, jazz is my preferred music, and my favorite colors are black and dark blue. Have no problem eating on my own in a restaurant, have to have a dog, and hate clowns and circuses. I’d never heard a Pink Floyd album until 2015, Penderecki’s “Polish Requiem” can make me cry, love trains, and am a confirmed sushi snob. I’ve never wanted to be anyone else, but if I had to choose I’d be Michael Caine.

Yes.” He waves the bartender over. “I’ll have a whiskey neat. And the lady would like…” I’m given a second chance, and I’m not going to hesitate this time. “A porn star martini,” I say. “With lots and lots of passionfruit.” The stranger shoots me a crooked grin. “Interesting choice.” “The drink tastes good,” I say defensively, “despite the name.” “Hmm. Or perhaps because of it?” To my mortification, a blush rises to my cheeks. I clear my throat and nod to the other side of the bar. “I’ve been thinking about the couple in the back… They’re

Hope is something worth practising. Hope makes each day go down as easy as a cold martini or a cup of gazpacho or a spicy shrimp salad or a big, hearty roast chicken shared amongst friends. I wish we were having this conversation in this real life, but i am grateful to have had this feast with you all the same. And I will let Maya Angelou give us a benediction from that stage in New York decades ago. Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older, that's the truth of it. They honour their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up. Not really. They get older. But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It's serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail, and maybe even more, to succeed. What it costs, in truth. Not superficial costs. Anybody can have that. I mean, in truth. That's what I write. What it really is like. I'm just telling a very simple story, feast by feast, friend by friend, nightcap by nightcap, hope by hope. Let's grow up together, just telling our simple stories over a good meal, learning from those who've done it before us.

For anyone feeling sad, just try today. Don’t worry about anything else. Just try today. You have no idea how many others are feeling the same way, but will never say so. Just try today. Whatever that means for you. You’re not alone, even if it feels that way. But, don’t forget: while in your darkness, somebody is thinking of how much they love you. You’re going to laugh again. Long, big laughs that take up hours and fill up rooms. Sunnier days are coming. You deserve them all. You’re sitting on a powerhouse. Driven by your positivity. The keys are right at your fingertips. If not ready, don’t worry; it will be there waiting for you for when you are. Take whatever time you need.

When I was in my early thirties I wrote a profile of Maureen Dowd. She was the sole female columnist at The New York Times then, and had been the second female White House correspondent in the paper’s history. She had started her career as an editorial assistant in 1974, the year I was born, and now she was fifty-three, had won the Pulitzer Prize, looked amazing, and lived alone. I remember sitting in the insanely decorated living room of her brownstone in Georgetown—the walls were blood red, the bookshelves were crowded with feathered fans, old Nancy Sinatra record jackets, a collection of bubbling motion lamps, another of mermaids, a dozen vintage martini shakers, all kinds of toy tigers—and being intoxicated by her peculiarity, independence, and success. I asked if she’d ever wanted children. She told me, “Everybody doesn’t get everything.” It sounded depressing to me at the time, a statement of defeat. Now admitting it seems like the obvious and essential work of growing up. Everybody doesn’t get everything: as natural and unavoidable as mortality.

Sidney E. Klein, a union organizer in Manhattan during the twenties, says that cocktails just weren’t the point when bibbers of the time went out on the town, and that most people just wanted the “straight stuff.” Although this doesn’t mean that Martinis weren’t made and Manhattans left the face of the earth, it certainly wasn’t a period when bartenders could be very creative. The new drinks that did appear during this era were mostly fashioned in Europe, where at least a few American bartenders fled to pursue their careers. Harry Craddock was one such man. He started work as a bartender at the Savoy Hotel, London, in 1925, and compiled The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), in which he admonished bartenders, “Shake the shaker as hard as you can: don’t just rock it: you are trying to wake it up, not send it to sleep!” Craddock is also credited with saying that the best way to drink a cocktail is “quickly, while it’s laughing at you!

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?

Well, you were a difficult child - that’s all there is to it,” Mom said. I remembered all the times my mother ignored me when I needed to talk. “And you were a difficult mother.” With that, I hung up the phone. Again, it was weeks before we spoke.

I drank some of my martini, with great pleasure. A good martini, at this time of the night, with Susan Silverman sitting across from me, at least briefly restored some order to my world, if not more clarity.

Main Street. That’s where I’d usually find him in the evening, six drinks in and raising a ruckus. There were occasions when he actually did meet a client, when he did tell the truth, and that one-out-of-ten occurrence was what always confused me. If he lied all the time, at least I’d have some measure of certainty in life. It’s the possibility of a better outcome that screws with your mind, that breeds hope, which ultimately leads to disappointment. I was like a diamond miner who keeps pounding at rocks, searching for the gemstone in a pile of rubble. You