Whiskey Sour

Lainey POV By six o'clock I had been behind the bar for two hours, and I was having the time of my life. I hadn't known I missed it this much. It all came back in the first ten minutes: the reach for the opener without looking, the tilt of the glass under the tap, the small math of who had come in first and who was pretending they had. My hands remembered everything before my head did. I passed out beers. I poured shots. I learned that the man from the hardware store drank the same lager every time and would nod at the tap instead of saying its name. I learned that Mayor Abbott tipped in exact change. Some of them only wanted a Coke, or a water. Opal had been sitting on the same ice water since four, on a stool with a clear view of me, sipping it like it was something much stronger. I was starting to think I was the best show in town. I didn't mind. The tip jar didn't mind either. Beck worked the other end. He didn't say much. Every so often we had to pass each other in that narrow space, and one of us would turn sideways, and I would hold my breath until it was over. I wasn't thinking about that. I had a bar to run. "Excuse me, dear." I had just run a beer out to a table by the wall. I was on my way back to the bar when a hand lifted from the corner booth and stopped me. She was sitting by herself at the very back, with her purse on the seat beside her and nothing in front of her yet. She was an older woman, with silver in her hair and laugh lines around her eyes. It took me a second to place her. She was the woman with the broom. She had the same small, knowing smile. There was something about her eyes, too, that I felt like I had seen somewhere before. "Hello. What can I get you?" I asked. "A whiskey sour, please. A proper one. Shaken." I glanced back at the bar. There were taps, and bottles of beer, and one long row of whiskey. I hadn't seen a shaker all night. I wasn't sure this place owned one. I smiled at her. "I was told that anybody who asks for something other than beer or whiskey in here is lost." She had a kind face, and it got kinder when she laughed. "Oh, I'm not lost," she said. "I'm just thirsty, is all." "Then I'll see what I can do for you." "Thank you, dear." I went back behind the bar and started opening cabinets. There was no shaker under the register and none by the well. I checked the shelf above the cooler, where a bar keeps the things nobody uses, and found a dusty blender with no lid. Beck was at the taps with his back to me. "Do you have a cocktail shaker anywhere?" "No." He glanced over his shoulder. "Why?" "A lady asked for a whiskey sour. Shaken." He turned all the way around at that. I didn't stop to look at him. I had my head in the glass rack by then, because I'd had an idea. A real shaker is only two cups that seal together. I pulled a pint glass, then went down the row of smaller ones, holding each of them up to it. The fourth one had a rim just a little narrower than the pint. I turned it over and pressed it down inside, and it seated snug. It would work. If it came apart while I was shaking it, I'd be wearing a whiskey sour, but it would work. "Who asked for that?" Beck said. "The lady in the back corner." I didn't see his face. I was already in the cooler, digging out two lemons that looked like they had been in there a while. I found sugar by the coffee pot in the back and melted a spoonful with a splash of hot water. I added the whiskey, the lemon, the sugar, and the ice. When I looked up, he was gone from the taps. He was across the room, standing at the corner booth. I fitted the small glass into the big one, wrapped both hands around the seam, and shook it over the sink. It held. I watched them while I did it. I couldn't hear a word over the room. I could only see that he had his arms crossed and his head down, the way he'd had it at the fence on moving day, and that he was doing the talking. She let him. She sat there with her hands folded on the table, smiling up at him, as calm as a woman waiting on a bus. Then she reached up and patted his cheek. And he let her do it. He stood there, this big, short-spoken man who had told me no three times in five minutes, and he let a little silver-haired woman pat his face in the middle of his own bar. I poured the drink through my fingers into a clean glass. Whoever she was, she wasn't just a customer. I carried it over on a napkin, since I hadn't found a tray either. Beck was still standing at the booth. He stepped back to let me in and didn't say a word. "One whiskey sour," I said. "Shaken. More or less." "Thank you, dear." She took a sip. I watched the surprise come over her face. Her eyebrows went up, and she looked down into the glass, and then she took another one, slower. "Wow," she said. "I'll be honest with you. I didn't think he had sweet and sour mix." "He doesn't. But apparently I remember more about my college days than I thought." She laughed. It was a warm, delighted laugh, and she looked up past me at Beck when she did it, like the two of them were in on something. "Well," she said, and she patted my hand. "My son is very lucky to have you." Son. I turned around. Beck had his eyes closed.