“
We ended up at the bar of a little steak house I had never noticed before. It was one of those places that seemed to have slipped through time unscathed and walking into it was like walking into a different decade. Dark walls, leather booths, thick slabs of beef, ashtrays on every table. The man behind the bar in a red plaid vest had the open, sad face of an old-time baseball player.
“Mrs. S.,” he said in a thick nasally voice when we sat on the red-leather stools. “Terrific as always to see you.”
“Rocco, this is Victor,” she said. “Victor and I are in desperate need of a drink. I’ll have the usual. What will it be for you, Victor?”
“Do you make a sea breeze?” I said.
Rocco looked at me like I had spit on the bar.
I got the message. This was a serious place for serious drinking, a leftover from an era when the cocktail hour was a sacred thing, when a man was defined by his drink and no man wanted to be defined by something as sweet and inconsequential as a sea breeze. Kids in short pants with ball gloves sticking out of their pockets drank soda pop, men drank like men.
“What’s she having?” I said, nodding at my companion.
“A manhattan.”
“What’s that?”
“Whiskey, bitters, sweet vermouth.”
“And a cherry,” said Alura Straczynski. “Mustn’t forget the cherry.”
“No, Mrs. S.,” said Rocco. “I wouldn’t forget your cherry.
”
”