Glass in the Ice: A Cocktail Novel

SNEAK PEEK – Chapter 1: Margaritaville

Share your thoughts on the current draft of the first chapter (protected from public searches by paywall):

---

"Welcome to Tia Rita's," the bartender says with his customary smile. "Know what you're having?"

Take your time of course…but the laminated cantina menu holds no surprises. Food and drink, it's all the usual renditions of traditional texmex dive fare.

Everything here is exactly what you'd expect. From the dark lacquered pine bar, to the long brass rung for your feet. The cactus mural and the straw sombreros, kaleidoscopic skulls and the neon signs buzzing about tequila and cerveza. Everything from the patched pleather booths, to the paper-lined baskets of chips and salsa making the rounds.

If you squint just right, Tia Rita's Cantina could be anywhere, in any American city.

The din of conversation and scraping plates…the door chime again, and the clink and clatter of ice in glassware and steel shakers. Breathe it in, the familiar tang of domestic draft beer and sodagun margaritas. The heady fug of sizzling cheese and steaming rice and beans.

Rise of the evening rush. You've been here before, or somewhere very much like it. Find comfort in the certainty of these immutable and predictable offerings. Choices you don't have to make because you've made them before. At Tia Rita's, you know what you're having—shades of happiness you already had.

While the bartenders stand ready, solving typical problems related to elemental hunger and spiritual thirst.

It's only the faces that change here, a constant turnstile tallied by the door chime. Each new body bringing their own potencies and mixtures of sweet and bitter, weird, bubbly, and spicy.

Like this new customer approaching the busy bar, elbowing her way in between occupied stools like someone used to living among heedless giants. Slapping a menu down on the wood with a small pink-manicured hand—pointing out various items and periodically glancing back at her companions behind her as she speaks.

The bartender has to lean in and cup a hand behind his ear—the better to hear you with, my dear. Keeping a smile on his face and nodding patiently as he takes her meandering order.

"You got all that?" the customer asks politely incredulous, her dusky voice straining over the digital jukebox. "Without writing it down?"

"Yes ma'am," the bartender assures her. "Three margaritas, two of em strawberry; one bourbon ginger, one dirty martini. Anything else?"

"That's it for now."

“Coming right up," he says punching in the drinks. "Close out or keep it open?”

The ticket cranks out from the printer—followed on its paper heels by another drink order ratcheting up, from the server at the hightops.

“Keep it open please," the customer replies. "Preciate you!”

She watches the bartender as he snatches both new drink tickets from the printer and transplants them into the aluminum bracket over his station and then starts reaching for bottles. 

“Hey," she asks, "what’s your name?”