Old and Cold Read online

  THREE

  SO YOU’RE IN THE BAR WITH YOUR $5000. IT’S A BAR YOU KNOW intermittently well, the intermittence in direct relation to how the work goes, they make their martinis very cold in there, and this is how they do it. The ice, the glass, the cocktail shaker and the bottle of gin and/or vodka (we’re not going to get into a pissing match about what constitutes a real martini, are we?) are kept in a freezer. Everything else—olives, vermouth, even the toothpicks—are kept in a refrigerator. First, the shaker is removed from the freezer. It’s better that the top of the shaker and its vessel are separated, as they are rinsed with cold water while in transit from dishwasher to freezer, otherwise the unit will have to thaw a bit, after freezing, before they are able to be separated and thus, by the delay, accrue deleterious calories. As a concession to intimacy as opposed to alcoholism, no more than two martinis are conceived simultaneously. Vermouth is dispensed from a spritzer of the kind you’d mist your pitcher plants with (Sarracenia, Nepenthes, or Darlingtonia, they’re all cool), and one or two spritzes, so as to mist the wall of the cocktail shaker opposite the user, and no more, are quite sufficient, particularly if you’re drinking high-end vodka or gin, which products declaim otherwise definite opinions vis-à-vis the net flavor of their constituent herbals. In fact, if you’re spending more than one hundred dollars on your fifth of vodka and particularly your gin, you might want to dispense altogether with your vermouth. In the event, however, only dry vermouth will do, never a sweet one. It’s important to remember the origin of the martini, which derives from the American era of Prohibition (1919-1933: can you believe it?), whence arose the necessity of masking the flavor of bathtub gin. Hence, in researching the recipes of the era, at the San Francisco Public Library, one will discover the startling admonition to mix one’s martini in the ratio of two parts gin to one part vermouth, an admonition unthinkable, nearly a hundred years later, in an era of, in fact, the hundred dollar bottle of gin into whose flavor some chemist has devoted a career of experimentation and taste, which holds true for all but the lowest rotgut—a contraction with which we have learnt to live—product available from your corner ghetto grocery. And, a piece of advice from the smart money? You can turn rotgut vodka into entirely acceptable cocktail material with an inexpensive, home-built charcoal filtration system. Be that as it may, do not let such stray thoughts deviate you from building the perfect martini. Spritz with dry, chilled vermouth, as I was saying, the far wall of the frozen canister, once or twice is enough. Drop in three or four cubes of ice; better, two scoops of cracked ice; crushed ice will work if everything is properly chilled and celerity is not sacrificed to a phone call or a text message. Next, enter vodka or gin sufficient to fill your cocktail glass(es), judging which quantity only practice will perfect. Cover and shake vigorously. None of your pussified shaking, shake vigorously. If the shaker is stainless steel (do not use an aluminum cocktail shaker, or a plated one, as the constituent metals may aggravate the infantilization already brought on by excessive alcohol consumption) and the ingredients have been properly conditioned, the shaker may well numb your hand, your hand may even become frozen to it. Be tough. Separate your hand from the metal, which should frost nicely, like a windshield in Chicago in January. Let stand. Meanwhile, remove olives and toothpicks from the refrigerator, spear two of the former with one of the latter, remove one frozen martini glass from the freezer and drop the garnish into it. Immediately take up the shaker and vigorously shake as before. The touch of the frosted stainless steel to the fingers and palm of your hand should by now be painful. Persevere. Experience will teach you how long to prolong this second shake. Now pour, shaking the cocktail shaker as you do so. This should result in shards of ice garnishing the volume as well as the surface of the cocktail, to the extent that, just rattling the last of the driblets out of the shaker, the volume of the martini is shot through with filaments as in some polar febrile dream, and its surface should have a skim of slush atop it. Taste. An expostulation should be readily available. And there I was, between that first sip, when the conic beaker is too full to move or to touch, other than with envacuumating lips, and my first expostulation, when a guy sits down next to me and says, “Did you hear the one about George Bush getting evicted from the White House?” I didn’t even answer the guy. George Bush has been out of office for—what, a year? Five years? Ten? I lost track. I skim the second blast off the top of this polar martini, maybe two molecules deep, half vodka and half ice crystals, they only make such martinis in one bar in all of San Francisco, where they call such a drink the Apsley Cherry-Garrard, and it’s so cold my lips turn black with frostbite and my larynx turns to permafrost, so I can’t answer the guy anyway. “They couldn’t get him out,” the guy says, “because he was caught between Iraq and a hard place.” He slaps the bar. “Get it? Iraq and a hard place?” The bartender, whose name is Gerold, points at the door. “Get out,” he says. “What?” the guy says, “you some kind of Republican?” “No,” Gerrold replies, “I’m a publican, and I’m cutting you off.” “But I haven’t even had so much as a single drink,” the customer complains. “You’re disturbing my best customer,” Gerrold says. “Who,” the guy says, “this bum?” I don’t care, I’m into my third sip now. My chin is only maybe an inch off the bar, not counting whiskers, my lips couldn’t have been more extruded toward the rim of the martini glass if they’d been on the flatulating southbound end of a northbound jackass. “That’s right,” Gerrold says. He tapped the bar with a forefinger. “My best fucking customer.” “But what about the smell?” the citizen protests. “The color of his money cancels his odor without prejudice,” the publican declares. “It’s like having a cushion between your ass and a bed of nails.” The rim of the cocktail glass is like a knife easing laterally through the crease between my lips. It’s a wound, a stigma of devotion almost, a holy aperture, and, while you know, you can’t feel. The only sound is of the last slurp of a bilgepump felching a limber hole. But it’s not the last. “That’s impressive,” the citizen admits. “How about I buy him a drink, he looks like he needs the boost, and we forget my little indiscretion and make a drink for me, too.” “Up to him,” Gerrold says. “My name’s Marty.” The citizen offers a hand. I show him mine. The guy visibly winces. I shrug and sip. The hand is still filthy from when, while mulling my algebra, I absently masturbated the besooted rabbit’s foot. The martini’s gone down enough to move the glass now, so I reposition it onto a fresh napkin, right in front of me, and hunch down on the stool like a shitting ape. The conversation diminishes into the background. You should try to be more sociable, the smart money mentions. You’ve mentioned that before, I point out. Yeah, but it’s getting worse, you know. Pretty soon they might not even let you in here. That would be a shame, I say, with a loving look at the martini. As it is, they make certain allowances. You should come in here after you clean up. It’s only after I come in here, I remind him, that I can face getting cleaned up. I know it’s easier to maintain your degradation than to go through it all over again, the smart money responds, and it’s true, he’s put his mouth on the pulse of the matter, a sensation one experiences but rarely. “He seems to be in some kind of holy state,” the citizen says from far away, but not so far that I can’t hear him. “You might have something there,” Gerrold says. “On the other hand,” the citizen reflects, “he might just be an alcoholic bum.” “I would rather you modify your tone,” Gerrold tells him. “Gladly,” replies the citizen, “so long as you serve me a drink.” He looks one way, then another. “There are only but the two customers in here, taking myself into account.” Let the man have his drink, the smart money suggests. “That’ll be a Guinness,” the citizen says. “But I’ll take it down here,” and he moves to the far end of the bar. You’d think one look at you and a man would be fed up with drink, the smart money observed. More’s the pity, I say to him, you can lead a citizen to the blackboard but you can’t make him dust. There’s something to that, the smart money allows. Then perhaps you’ll be
so kind as to explain it to me, I reply. It’s a real twister, the smart money ponders. It’s precisely dust that you or he or someone at any rate but in the end, one way or another, life itself will make of him. Dust. Precisely, I tell him. Dust precisely. “How about them ‘Niners?” the citizen at the bar says after he’s had a sip. “Think they got a chance?” There’s barm on his upper lip. Gerrold sighs as loud as a man can sigh without flapping his lips injuriously. “Listen,” Gerrold says, “you’ve paid good money to sit in this bar and drink in peace, as did this other fellow, here.” He indicates me, of all people. Fellow implies peer, and I bristle. “Can’t you leave well enough alone?’ “But I’m concerned,” the citizen, Marty, says. “What if they don’t make the playoffs?” “I’d be more concerned if they did make the playoffs,” Gerrold interpolates. “Why?” the citizen says. “Because then I’d have to listen to any number of silly fucks like yourself,” replies Gerrold, “instead of just the one.” “Am I to suppose,” the citizen declares with sufficient incredulity, “that I’m the only person in this establishment who gives a shit about the ‘Niners?” Gerrold looks at him. “It’s one-third of the population,” he says. “Don’t you think that’s enough?” “What’s the ‘Niners?” the smart money astutely injects. “What?” Incredulity elevates the brow of the citizen to new height. “What?” he flusters. “Is it an agglutination of endeavor, the sole purpose of which is to advance the oblate token of pseudo-nationalism from one end of a screen to the other?” “Say,” concludes Gerrold, somewhat gleefully, “that might well be the ‘Niners.” “Organized sports pave the road to fascism,” the smart money postulates darkly. The citizen’s gob waxes, smacked. “I have a phone,” he finally says. “I could report you.” “To whom, and for what offense,” the smart money demands, deploying a tone, it is true, of pseudo-incredulity. “To Homeland Security, the citizen replies without hesitation, “for unpatriotic fervor.” “And the result?” the smart money sneers. “Whatever time you spend in confinement, “the citizen replies with no hesitant uncertainty, “will be well-compensated by loud and unceasing broadcast of football and other, akin, behavioralisms. Country music, for just one example.” “Until you cry uncle,” Gerrold whispered timorously. “That would be correct,” the citizen replied. But, sensing his moral superiority, he allowed his voice to snarl, and gave his lip to ostentate a ready sneer. “Better you than me,” Gerrold turns to me and says. But I’m now drinking the martini with an actual hand motion, bending of the elbow. And it’s not judiciously I’m drinking it. One two three, maybe a fourth sip, and the glass is pushed aside empty, keep the olives, and the knuckle is rapped on the winter grain of the plank, in hopes of a wintry riposte, in the form of the second Apsley Cherry-Garrard. A word about olives. They should be of the small, Manzanilla type, pitted and stuffed with a scrap of pimento. Some like their martini “dirty”, with a bit of the fluid packing the olives in their jar adduced to the cocktail, and the connection is well-named but, one man’s linoleum floor is another man’s ceiling and, by extreme metaphorical extension, his vision of upper-case G God or H Hell, as the case may be, life is too short to adjudicate errant tastes; although of course the contra-positive of that homily is the more forceful admonition that, either you adjudicate the tastes of others, or they will endeavor to adjudicate yours. Is not that the foundation of all human earnestness? I ask you, the smart money says. As go dirty martinis, cf. viz. vermouth, above, I reply; but, and I blink: did not I ask you first? No, the smart money returns smoothly, it had something to do with the apostrophe upper-case N ’Niners. I shake my inner head gravely. I think not, I think not me, I think not I, I think not that I have ever let the word ‘Niners escape my lips, lo these sixty-odd years. Nor has any of my nominative pronouns. Not once. Surely, the smart money elides urbanely, you have never so much as discussed the Gold Rush? I shiver my jowls until my wattle quivers. Indignation, I respond with dignity, is my sole remaining vehicle of transport. What if the top line of your email suddenly goes black with refreshment? postulates the smart money. Do you not quicken? Gerrold, I telepath aloud, your martiniless environment heaps me. “Last year they went ten and six. It sucked, man. I’m telling you, I was ready to kill myself.” Gerrold, I telepath, what are you going to countenance next? Autonecrophilia? “The salary cap hamstringed the entire club,” the citizen continues. Hamstrung, I wince. Hamstrung the entire club foot. The smart money shakes the head. It’s like a rattle on a stick. So many puns, so much money. “Smith said it was not a blow to the ego to take a large pay cut after making $26.3 million over the first four years of his contract.” The smart money sighs the sigh of the deeply, profoundly tired. With a rattle of sharp-edged cubes and by the light of the ancient Olympia waterfall, the shaker twinkles high over Gerrold’s head. “No key injuries reported,” the citizen says, between ineffectual flicks of his tongue at the ridge of barm on his upper lip. Finally, he drags a sleeve over the foam and says, “I don’t believe what the front office is putting out there.” “If the agora had been as rife with intell about Iraq as it is with factoids about the ’Niners’ locker room,” Gerrold has the temerity to point out, “we might not have to be facing the present-tense karma of the second Bush administration.” “It’s hard to discuss politics with the patriotic,” the smart money put in. “What Smith really wants to do is not change teams,” the citizen continues, “but stick with the club in order to prove to them they haven’t invested in his future in vain.” “But they fucked with his contract,” Gerrold suddenly blurts. Gerrold, the smart money telepaths, do your job. And as if by the miracle of telekinesis, Gerrold sets down the shaker, revealing a perfect handprint in its frosted carapace, and spears a couple of olives while saying, as if to them, “But his contract was based on his starting at least half the games in the season, and there’s a reversion clause if he doesn’t,” revealing an incredible ability to multitask, while, suffused with relief, despite Gerrold’s apparent hypocrisy, the smart money soothes my neurasthenia. The thing about the Manzanilla olives, the smart money is saying, projecting through the miasma of a near migraine, is that they take up only a fraction of the volume of vodka or gin in the martini that those big ones do. It seems pretty obvious that, given that your basic olive is a prolate spheroid, its volume is determined by the expression