A Night in a Year: 8. Drink

[jacquelineb]

She peruses the cocktail menu. Each drink has a helpful photograph next to it; muted browns, opaque ice, streetlight yellow, aquamarine blue. Chemical experimentations, lab produced, or happy accidents that drunken willingness to try just about anything could concoct. Just what she liked to drink to start the night. She knew they were dismissed as girly, frivolous, but it was too early for a smart wine or a serious scotch. Now it was time for giggles and grins, teasing winks and drinks you had to lick like the top a cup cake coated in icing.

The bar tender lounges in front of her. She doesn’t look up to see what his eyes are doing, but his arms are open, elbow hook as he leans on it. He is waiting. Then he starts to whistle.
For that, she turns more pages, considering finger at her lips, before she goes back to the first page and places her order. The waiter’s dark eyes are flighty, flirtatious, and he keeps winking at her as he slices the limes, shakes the first layer of the drink, and his hand flourishes as he pours the final one, and he flicks the sprig of a purple flower garish on top.

She winks back, he nods, and she finds a table for herself.

The first sip, as it so often is, is glorious. The flavours trickle into her mouth, each sip poised and slow. She hopes she doesn’t look too elegant, upright, polite; that won’t attract the kind of men she is after. A drop lingers on her lips, and she dabs at it with a finger. Momentarily, she regards the waiter, now onto the next customer, see his arms like sailor’s rope, his tattoos. Maybe, she thinks, but not as a first picking.

Her eyes scan the bar for her first target.

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Next: 9. Sighting

Image found on flickr, by walkn, used under the Creative Commons License.

Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.