whiskey sour cocktail, the long version

You know what's worse than everybody piling onto you?   Nobody saying anything about you.  Know what's worse than nobody saying anything about you?  Nobody saying nothing at all.  But that is my situation this Tuesday.

Like Beagles I have done some writing myself and here is the story of the whiskey sour cocktail: 

 

It was around five o’clock one night when I was tending bar at the Castle Lodge. A classy joint, we wore white shirts, a fake bowtie, and black vests.  We were paid a couple bucks more than minimum wage and the tips were very good.

High class crowd, sometimes you saw their photos in the newspapers.  I was taking orders from a group of them, old fashioneds, bourbons on the rocks, that sort of thing, and when I got to her she said, “I’ll have a whiskey sour cocktail.”

A whiskey sour is a cocktail.  There is no such thing as a whiskey sour cocktail.  But I didn’t want to make any mistakes, this was a good job, so just to make sure that things were clear, I kind of nodded and said, “A whiskey sour,” because that was surely what she had meant to say.

    

"No, no," she said, "I would like a whiskey sour cocktail."

I looked at her and she looked at me, and I said, “Yes Ma’am.”

Stupid bitch.  I made her a Goddamn whiskey sour just like every other Goddamn whiskey sour I'd ever made, kind of slammed it down in front of her, kind of gave her a cold stare, but very subtle so as not to offend.  Not that she noticed, the way that she grabbed at it as soon as it hit the bar, a Goddamn lush to boot.

But maybe not, she just had the one while the crowd around her had a couple more rounds.  Delivering that last round and collecting her empty glass, I just had to ask, “How was your drink Ma’am?”

“It was okay,” she said, “It was fine, but it wasn’t a whiskey sour cocktail.”

The way she said it, not angry, not complaining, not anything, just not what she was hoping for, that stuck with me through the long dead period when the high class crowd was out on the town, and they all got back a couple hours before closing and got really sloshed, and even as I was cleaning up afterwards and wanted a little music from the jukebox to relax with.

There was only one Merle Haggard on the box, Montego Bay, not a song I was crazy about, not the usual Merle, but the only one on the box, so I pushed the buttons. Kind of a sappy song, this guy has given this girl everything he has, and she keeps saying, “I like it here, but I love Montego Bay.”

And I’m listening to this as I’m wiping down the tables and the chairs and the railings, and it slowly dawns on me that this girl has never been to Montego Bay. Merle never comes out and says this, and if you’re not paying attention, if you’re not thinking about that empty glass and that disappointment, you’d never notice but it was clear as a bell that this woman had never been to Montego Bay.