A FEW POPS

Without his baritone recitation, Treasure Island was not as good. My attention wandered and I heard him in the kitchen.

The sidedoor was open to the deck and the cool wind blew in and rustled stacks of yellowed newspapers resting eternally upon the hearth.

The noise. A handful of ice cubes into a silver shaker. An assembly of bottles as characters from a silent film. They neither said nor did anything without animation. But merely sitting there upon the counter was enough. They were connected to this ritual, this act, and whatever sort of being they held inately was amplified a hundred fold near dusk.

Dry Vermouth. Sometimes Noilly Pratt, sometimes Martini & Rossi.

Gin: never an expensive brand, and in those years of waning health never anything but Gordon's, straight from the freezer, a skin of ice, clear and cold upon its expanse.

Some bitters: Angostura.

Two glasses.

Cheap grocery store brand pimento stuffed olives and cocktail picks.

He swirled the gin around the shaker and it began to sweat and then frost and then freeze entirely.

You don't want the gin to bruise, he said and then he laughed fanatically.

He shook bitters into the glasses. The liquid looked like brown blood and it settled in an inverted cone. He shook the bitters from the glass into the sink and wiped its stain out with a napkin.

The flavor will stay in there, he said. That's what you want - just the remnant of the bitters.

He uncapped the shaker and tilted it towards the lip of the glass and the gin crawled from the receptacle and fell into the glass and frosted the sides as it filled it. He staked an olive and dropped it into the glass. He staked another one. He put the martinis on a small bamboo tray and carried them out to the deck.

The deck was a rough work of stones and small purple and yellow flowers grew up from the cracks.

Thanks, Pap, Nan said as he handed her a martini.

I need to get these up, he said, pointing to the flowers, his breathing labored, heavy.

Really? I think they look kind of jazzy, she said, sipping her martini.

They talked little. We all stared out into the backyard and watched as the sun faded from white to yellow to orange to gold and purple and red.

Can we read Treasure Island? I asked.

In a bit. We're going to have a few pops first, he said.