Lawrence Block - The Burglar on the Prowl

The same blonde bartender was on duty, and I don't know how she remembered me, but she proved she did by asking me if I wanted a Pellegrino. I shook my head and said I'd have scotch.

"Good for you," she said. "Any particular brand? The bar pour is Teacher's."

"You don't have Glen Drumnadrochit, do you?"

She wrinkled her nose and said she'd never even heard of it, and I wasn't hugely surprised. I'd only come across it once, at an eccentric bed-and-breakfast in the Berkshires,*and when I came home I had three bottles of it in my suitcase. I made them last as long as I could, but they were gone now, and I wondered if I'd ever taste anything that good again.

The thought alone spoiled me for Teacher's, and I asked for a single malt, and they had a decent selection of them. I settled on Laphroaig, perhaps out of pride in my ability to pronounce it, and ordered a double. It's got a distinctive taste, one that you have to acquire. I'd acquired it some years ago, but it had gone the way of the Drumnadrochit, so I took a sip and set about acquiring it all over again. Slow sipping, that's the way to do it. You take little sparrow-sized sips, and you keep telling yourself you like the taste, and by the time you get to the bottom of the glass, it's true.

I took a first sip, and thoughtYes, that's Laphroaig, all right. I'd forgotten what it tastes like, but that's it, and I'd know it anywhere. Later I took a second sip, and was able to decide how I felt about the taste. I decided that I didn't like it. Somewhere around the fifth sip, it had achieved the virtue of familiarity. I was accustomed to it, and the question of whether I actually liked it no longer seemed pertinent. It was like, say, a cousin.The man's your cousin, for God's sake! What do you mean, you don't like him? You don't have to like or dislike him. He's your cousin!

I was almost ready for a sixth sip of Cousin Laphroaig when a woman marched up to the bar and settled herself on a seat two stools from mine. It was getting on for two in the morning, but she looked as though she'd just come from the office. She was wearing a pants suit of charcoal gray flannel, and her dark hair was done up in a knot on the top of her head, and you already know who she was, but it took me a minute, because the last time I saw her-the only time I saw her-she had her hair down and her clothes off and her mouth open.

The big blonde knew her, and knew her drink. "Hi," she said. "G and T?"

"Heavy on the G," the brunette said. "Just a splash of T."

"You got it. Little late for you, isn't it?"

I was watching out of the corner of my eye, so I didn't actually see the brunette roll hers, but I think she probably did. "I didn't think I was going to get here at all," she said, "and I was starting to wonder if you did takeout."

"I don't think the State Liquor Authority would go for that."

"I wonder if the time is right for a test case?" By now the gin and tonic was mixed and on the bar before her, and she took it up and put away more in one swallow than I'd managed in my five delicate sips. "Ahhhh," she said, with real appreciation. "I needed that. Sigrid, back in the days before you decided on a career behind the stick-"

"Hold it right there, huh? Being a bartender's not a career, and I didn't decide on it."

"You didn't?"

"Of course not. Nobody does, not in New York. You decide on a career in the arts, and you wait tables to make ends meet, and it begins to dawn on you that bartenders make more money and don't have to work as hard, plus they never get yelled at for dropping a whole tray of pasta dishes on a table full of people from Ridgeway, New Jersey -"

"Did that happen to you?"

"No, but it could have. So you go take the course at the American Bartenders School, which isn't exactly rocket science, and you get a job when you graduate, and you mix martinis and screwdrivers, which isn't exactly brain surgery, and you quit when the boss puts his hand up your skirt-"

"Did that happen?"

"No, but it could have. So you get another job, and you finally find a place where they treat you right, and one day you notice you haven't been on an audition or a go-see in months, and for a while you feel guilty about it, and then you feel guilty that you don't, and then that's it, you're a lifer, you'll be mixing Salty Dogs and Harvey Wallbangers until the cows come home. But that doesn't make it a career."

"Wow."

"I'm sorry," Sigrid said. "Way too much information, huh?"

"No, actually it was pretty interesting." She drank some more of her gin and tonic, and I seized the moment to take a sip of my Laphroaig. It was definitely improving.

"I don't know what got me started," Sigrid said. "Except it's been a long night, and it didn't help that there was a guy hitting on me about an hour ago."

"Oh, come on. That must happen to you all the time."

"It does, but most of them take no for an answer, and the rest generally take fuck you for an answer. This guy thought he was God's gift, and he couldn't believe I didn't see it. Come to think of it, he's been in here before, and-"

"And what?"

"And nothing." She grinned. "My train of thought just pulled out of the station, and I wasn't on it. You know, you were starting to ask me something, before I went into my rant."

"I was? Oh, right. I just wondered if you ever gave any thought to going into the law, and I guess you already answered that. You set out to be an actress."

"Actress and model, actually."

"Oh? I can't believe you didn't get modeling jobs."

"The camera likes you to be really thin, and so do the misogynists behind the cameras. I got work anyway, but nobody ever wanted to use me more than once. I had a bad attitude."

"Oh."

"I still do, but it's okay for a bartender, especially if you've got the tits to go with it. But no, I never thought about becoming a lawyer. Why?"

"Because tonight I was beginning to wish I hadn't, either. Though this"-she raised her now-empty glass-"is definitely helping."

"Another? You got it. And how about you? You all right with the Laphroaig?"

I said I was fine, and she went off to assemble another gin and tonic.

"What did she just call your drink?"

"Laphroaig," I said.

"That's what it sounded like. Is it some kind of cordial?"

"It's scotch. It's a single malt from the Isle of Islay."

"Is that near the Firth of Forth?"

"It would have to be, don't you think?"

"I guess. Is it good?"

"It's getting there. I figure another three sips and it'll be excellent."

She nodded judiciously. "It's an acquired taste, and you haven't quite acquired it yet."

"No."

"But you're getting there."

"It improves with each sip."

"Thus the small sips," she said. "If you were doing shots, you'd be blotto before you got anywhere close to liking it."

"That's exactly right. What was so horrible about your evening?"

"Just that I never thought I was going to get out of the damn office. I'm a lawyer. You probably figured that out."

"I took two and two," I said, "and I put 'em together."

"I'm with this firm about ten blocks from here. Very convenient, walk to work, and most of the time the work's fine, but every now and then you get one of those deals that has to close, if it goes past deadline everything's screwed up and you have to start over, and sometimes it's even worse than that, so we had one that had to close by midnight, and of course everything went wrong."

"Of course."

She reached and picked up the gin and tonic that had magically appeared in front of her. Sigrid, having noticed that the two of us had struck up a conversation, had set it down and moved off without a word. I don't know if they teach that in American Bartenders School, but they should.

"It was a transaction involving a hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana, and it could have been worse. We could have had to go to Shreveport for the closing. But since the buyer and seller both live within a few blocks of each other on the Upper East Side, we decided, hey, whatthehell, we'll do it right here."