Jake's 8 (4 page)

"Not going home with you."

I nursed my drink, slapped a tenner on the bar and ambled on home.

We were lovers in a dangerous time.

There was disease in the water, rebels in the hills and a madman in the Presidential Palace. I drank gin and stale tonic. She drank whiskey spiked with Fernet-Branca.

We barricaded ourselves in a fourth floor hotel room behind pillows and under blankets. We passed the time by making love and not speaking.

This morning the mortars from the hills landed closer and the gunfire in the street grew more frequent. At dawn, she’d smoked her last cigarette. Now, she was growing nervous.

“Is this the end?” she asked.

“Our end?”

“The end?”

“Maybe.”

“I just realized how young I am.”

“Yes. We’re both young.”

“You’re not nearly as young as me.”

“True.”

“Am I too young?”

“In another time, you would be too young.”

“This place ages people.”

“Yes, this place ages people.”

“Is this the end?”

I went to the window. A Toyota pick up bounced down the street. The back was piled with men holding Kalashnikovs, AKs and ARs. They stopped in front of the
bodega
where I bought my afternoon
tamale
and
cerveza
. One of the men climbed from the bed of the pick-up, threw something. He jumped back into the truck which sped away. A few moments later the
bodega
exploded. There was no need for that. Luis, the owner, and his wife, Pilar, and their three children left last week with the Marines.

“Is this the end?” she repeated.

“Yes, this is the end. Get dressed. We’re going.”

Love on the Rocks
is primarily set on Hilton Head Island where my family spends a week every summer. I wrote it in the depths of winter, drinking the warming, brandy-based cocktail The Sidecar while yearning for a Carolina summer ocean breeze.

Here’s how to make your Sidecar.

First, fill your glass with ice to chill it. Next, put a small amount of sugar on a plate. Set both of these aside.

Fill your Boston shaker halfway with ice, put in 1 ½ ounces of a decent, nice brandy. I don’t see a need for the good stuff in this. Top the brandy with 1 ounce of triple sec. Triple sec is an orange liqueur. You can get it pretty cheap or splurge for some Cointreau or even Grand Marnier. The recipe here is for the stuff that goes by the motto ‘the brand bartenders trust.’ If you go with the fancy French stuff, your budget is bigger than mine.

Squeeze ½ ounce of lemon juice into the shaker. If you pour your lemon juice from some sort of bottle you bought and don’t fresh squeeze it, I hope you spend a little time in hell for that sacrilege.

Now put your shaker down.

Toss the ice out of your glass, run a bit of orange juice on the rim, invert the glass and dip it into the sugar. Let it dry a bit.

Now pick up your shaker. Give it a shake. Now shake it some more.

Pour the concoction out of your shaker through a strainer into your well-chilled, sugar rimmed glass.

Find a seat, take a sip, and read
Love on the Rocks
.

– Howard McEwen

It’s one in the a.m., I’m tired and completely sober. I have little idea where I’m at. I’m bumping along some back road in South Carolina with an almost complete stranger in his large pick ‘em up truck, and he’s getting all weepy. He’s got a daughter he loves, see, and she’s supposed to marry her childhood sweetheart on Saturday, but it’s all gone to hell. She’s called it off and somehow it’s become my problem.

But at least it’s warm.

This all started about seven hours ago. I was back in Cincinnati, quick-stepping it down Twelfth Street leaning into an Arctic blast. My goal was Molly, who stands behind the bar at Japp’s. Tonight was to be a celebration of sorts. A reward for myself. Why? I’ve grown pudgy.

Except for one interesting night when we dealt with that business of the spoon, my time at ‘The Offices of Prescott Carmichael' have been exceedingly dull. However, Mr. Carmichael’s compensation—three times what I had made in any year before!—drove me to not give a whip what my bar tab rang up to. By insouciantly downing Molly’s cocktails, I’d added way too much to my waistline. The three suits I’d bought when I started with Mr. Carmichael were now supporting a too-large gut built on ethyl alcohol. So I decided to impose some discipline on myself and avoid Molly and her fabulous cocktails for a short while.

That was two weeks ago and now my belt buckle wasn’t groaning so much. I decided it was time I got reacquainted with the cool, smooth feel of a cocktail glass.

I jumped a frozen puddle as I crossed Jackson. I thought a Manhattan might be just the thing for a night like this. Rye, sweet vermouth and three dashes of Angostura. Served up, I thought. Who needs ice tonight?

But by the time I trudged over a snow pile on Walnut, I thought that a Sidecar would better fit the bill. I was almost as cold as that long-ago, sidecar-riding Army officer it was first made for. And I loved how Molly sugared the rim of the glass on those.

Then I crossed Clay and could see the crowd through Japp’s window. I could almost feel the warmth from the light splashing onto the sidewalk, changed my mind to a Blood and Sand. Equal parts Scotch, Italian vermouth, OJ and Cheery Heering. That was it. I’m not ashamed to say I was a bit aroused.

Then my phone gave a round of rings. I’d normally have let it go right to voicemail, but it was Mr. Carmichael. I’ve worked for Prescott Carmichael for six months and it was only the second time after four in the p.m. that he’d rung, so I didn’t mind, but I knew this would be a case of
cocktailius interuptus
. My arousal retracted.

"I apologize for calling you after hours," he told me, "but we have a client service issue."

Mr. Carmichael is the principle of an investment advisory firm and I’m the only associate. He tells me that our business is all about trust. He tells me that we build trust by handling his client’s ‘service issues’ no matter how far off the beaten path they might be for investment advisors.

"Anything you need," I said.

"I need you to pack a bag and board a plane for Hilton Head Island. You’ll be gone up to a week. The Fink and Nottle wedding has been called off. Messrs. Fink and Nottle both called me and requested our help. Mrs. Johnson has your tickets. She’s at the office waiting for you now. The next flight leaves in three hours.

This wedding has been in the works for a year," Mr. Carmichael went on. "Their parents have invested a lot into it. Not only the wedding itself but in the succession plans for the business… and emotionally."

I could see the folks in Japp’s warming themselves over their drinks. I spotted Molly lifting a shaker above her head ready to give it a good what-for, then laugh at something a customer said. I turned around in the cold and headed back to the office, keeping the phone to my ear.

"So what are we going to do down there?"

"We’re going to try to figure out if this break is serious or not, and if not, get them back together in time for the wedding."

I hiked it over to the office on Seventh Street.

"Here is your ticket," said Mrs. Johnson. "You’ve got just a short time to pack and get to the airport."

We call Mrs. Johnson our receptionist, but every day I’m learning she’s more than that. She’s five-eleven in her stocking feet and normally wears very sensible shoes in the office, but tonight Mr. Carmichael must have interrupted an evening out on the town. She’s got twenty years on me but still grabs my eye. Tonight she is wearing a dress that was cut by a designer who loves to show off real women. It zoomed tightly around each of her curves. Her heels pushed her well past the six foot mark, and her great mass of auburn hair piled high on her head added another inch or two. A large diamond hung from a thin chain and came to a rest at the peak of her cleavage. She was a structure Louis Sullivan could appreciate.

"First class," I said looking at the tickets. "Very nice." Mrs. Johnson flashed me a look of amused tolerance. "Will Mr. Carmichael be meeting me here or at the airport?"

"Mr. Carmichael doesn’t fly."

"He doesn’t fly?"

"He doesn’t fly."

"So I’m going it alone?"

"No, he is at home packing and will follow in a car."

"Okay," I said with some doubt. I didn’t want to be flying solo on a mission where I was so far out of my element. I’m all about P/E ratios, yield curves and analyst reports. The love affairs of others? Not my game. Plus, the Finks and the Nottles had a larger-than-average chunk of change with Mr. Carmichael. The fees they paid were sizable. I didn’t want to be the guy closing the valve on that revenue stream.

"You have any idea what’s going on?"

"All we know is that three days ago, Daisey Nottle came back from a dinner with her fiancé Gus Fink and announced to her parents the wedding was off. They thought it was cold feet, but her feet are firmly dug in. No wedding. No one knows why. Maybe Gus Fink knows, but he’s not telling his parents. The wedding is supposed to be this coming Saturday.

I’d met Mr. Walter Fink and Mr. Jack Nottle once during a client meeting. They were best friends since fifth grade who went into business together. They had a large tool-rental company spread out across the Midwest. You want a chainsaw for two hours? You go see them. Backhoe for a month? Scissor lift? Twenty-foot ladder? They've got you covered. Their children, I was told, were sweet on one another since boys and girls get sweet on one another. They’d dated through high school and college and were now set to be married, or at least they were until Daisey Nottle called it quits.

And Daisey Nottle calling it quits is what caused me to be bumping along this dark South Carolina road at one in the a.m. on a Saturday—strike that—Sunday morning.

Walter Nottle was waiting for me at the airport. I’d have been more than happy to nab a rental, but there he was, just past the gate with a hand drawn sign reading ‘Jacob Gibb.’ I caught his eye. We shook each other’s hands and asked our how-do-you-dos and we walked to his pick ‘em up truck, where I tossed my hastily stuffed bag into the bed. He was an egg-shaped man about five foot nine inches tall and four foot three across. He let me know I’d be staying at his house.

While I didn’t like riding in trucks at one in the a.m. or sleeping in a house with strangers, I wasn’t too busted up over getting away from the Cincinnati chill and sampling some warm climate inspired cocktails—a Dark & Stormy maybe, or a Planter’s Punch, perhaps. But by this time, I just wanted a stiff belt of any brown liquor. I’d gotten to the Cincinnati airport late and didn’t have time for my customary pre-flight drinks. Then the airline, in some horrible post-9/11 edict, didn’t serve the least bit of booze. I guess we let the terrorists win that one. I’d have loved to grab a post-flight drink at the Hilton Head airport, but by the time I landed, everything was closed, and Mr. Nottle was standing there holding that sign moistening about the eyes.

Oh, well, as Scarlett bleated, tomorrow is another day.

"This has really upset all of us," said Mr. Nottle. "None of us have any idea what is going on. Neither of the kids is saying a word. We tried and nothing. That’s when we turned to Mr. Carmichael. He’s always been a godsend to us."

I said something about doing our best and was happy when we finally pulled up to the Nottle house—a enormous modern number right on the ocean. Mr. Nottle put the pick ‘em up truck in park then said the darnest thing. He said it as if he’d not given it a bit of thought.

"We leave for church about nine thirty."

Church? I thought. After this flight? Church? I like the idea of a loving heavenly Being keeping an eye out for me as much as the next guy. I don’t even mind an itchy Old Testament God keeping mankind on the straight and narrow with the occasional smiting. But I’d never gotten the church bug. My thinking is that if a church is the house of God, then who am I to come barging into God’s house on a Sunday morning singing and praying and asking for favors. I sure wouldn’t like it. It was his day of rest too, no? My family was Christmas and Easter Christians. We went twice a year to some big downtown church, followed by a hop over to Grandma’s house for lunch. But when I was twelve, Grandma joined the choir invisible and that was the end of church for us.

Church, I thought again. Between my forced sobriety and the late hour, my creative excuse juices had dried. I couldn’t contrive of the least reason to avoid it and always in the back of my head was the one hundred and twenty thousand dollars that Mr. Carmichael was sending my way each year to provide ‘client service.’ Not six months ago I was pulling in forty a year with sixty K in student loans hanging over my head. I decided I’d keep this client happy and do a bit of kneeling with him.

"Wonderful," I finally said with a bit too much enthusiasm.

Mr. Nottle showed me a pleasant guest bedroom without an ocean view but with its own bath. When I cracked the window I could hear waves breaking. This ain’t all bad, I thought. I unpacked my bag, set my alarm and jumped into bed to lap up whatever sleep I could before the Lord called.

As I quieted down, however, I heard a mousy sniffling. A whimper, perchance? A woman crying, I guessed. I’m a hard-boiled guy, but a weepy woman is a rough thing for even a hard-boiled guy to fall asleep to. I opened up the window some more. The sound of the ocean roared through louder. I stood still a moment. That did the trick. I couldn’t hear a murmur over the crashing waves. I climbed into bed and drifted off to the land of nod.

My alarm nudged me out of sleep and the smell of bacon nudged me out of bed. I did a quick shower, dressed in what I’d call island semi-formal of khaki dockers, a pink Oxford and a light blue jacket, and I trundled down to breakfast. Mr. and Mrs. Nottle were sitting at a breakfast table in the kitchen. Opposite them were Mr. and Mrs. Fink. I gave them the look like my old dog gave me when I tried to feed it carrots.

"Don’t look so confused," said Mr. Nottle. "We always breakfast together." The Finks, he explained, had a vacation house next door. I looked out a window in the direction he nodded his head. Through some trees I saw another over-sized modern number facing the Atlantic. Mr. Fink had the same egg shape as Mr. Nottle. The missus were creepily, eerily similar also. About five and half feet tall, better-than-average figure for women their age and the same, short, suburban mom haircut.

Fink the younger, the potential bridegroom, was nowhere to be seen, but Miss Nottle soon followed me down the stairs. The way the stairs led into the kitchen blocks the descender from complete view until hitting the final step. As Miss Nottle made her way down the steps, she gave a slow reveal starting with her feet on the eighth step. If young Miss Nottle had stopped on the third step I would have married her myself. She was, as The Commodores put it, a brick house. She had a body that’d give Frank Frazetta palpitations. But as she hit the second then final step, she unveiled what looked to be a major flaw. Her face. It was as if Degas had painted her when the light was bad and he really had his misogyny ginned up. It didn’t help that she had puffy, red eyes. Here was last night’s bawler, I thought.

She smiled politely to me.

"Where’s Uncle Prescott?" she asked.

I explained how Mr. Carmichael would be driving down. She then dismissed me like I was the help and sat down to eat. I looked around for a pitcher of Bloody Marys. No dice.

After breakfast, we piled into the Nottle’s Escalade and headed to church. We arrived. We parked. We sat in a pew. And I soon deduced that this wasn’t the Anglicized, anodyne, perfunctory services of my boyhood. These were Evangelical Christians. Holy rollers. Bible thumpers. Then this thought struck me: a cocktail is going to be hard to come by around this crowd.

The service itself wasn’t bad at all. Compared to the Elizabethan blandness of the church I remember as a kid, it was nice to see somebody excited by the prospect of an everlasting life amidst Fatherly love, and not just punching the theological time clock. I just wasn’t sure why you couldn’t have that and cocktails, too.

Back at the Nottle’s house we lunched on deli sandwiches and potato chips. I poked around for some booze but couldn’t find so much as a domestic beer. As we sat around the table, I heard a little gasp from Daisey Nottle. Her eyes were looking over her father’s shoulder toward the beach. Her mother turned and looked and put a consoling hand on her daughter’s shoulder. I followed her gaze and saw a distant figure of a pudgy man doing a bit of aimless ambling along the beach.