“We have a few more cases for you to test,” Neil said, pointing to the two stacks of boxes.
Dash blanched.
“Don’t worry,” Neil said. “I think just a sip per case will be plenty.”
“Thank God,” Dash said, settling on a stool next to an out-of-the-way sink.
Neil nodded at me. Funny. He hadn’t mentioned that some of the boxes had just arrived from Bohemia.
As the others worked and Travis went downstairs to check on the dinner prep, I methodically pulled and opened bottles from the cases. I poured Dash his first taste in a glass I found in one of the cabinets. He spit it out almost immediately.
“Whoa no!” I said, and everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and looked up in horror.
Dash glanced at me and then at everyone else.
He laughed. “You all look like goldfish at feeding time. It’s fine. It’s great! I just don’t want to be smashed before the dinner.”
“Oh!” My face heated. “Well, there’s nothing like a quick heart attack to get the evening rolling.”
Though Dash spit out most of the samples and rinsed the glass each time, he still managed to imbibe a bit. Gradually the whiskey took the edge off his stress, and he tilted toward relaxed.
When he was tasting the last of it—the last of the batch that had come straight from Bohemia—he pushed his hat back and sighed. “I feel better. This is really good stuff. I’m proud of my whiskey, no matter what.”
Neil’s phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen and came over to Dash and me. “We’re good,” he said quietly. “Cray says the new bottles are clean. Those last several cases came today from the distillery.”
Dash’s eyes widened. “Then the problem wasn’t at home. The stuff we had at the hotel is from the same batches in the warehouse at home. That’s great news!”
“Yes and no,” Neil said. “The logical conclusion is that there was deliberate tampering of the stuff at the hotel. We’re taking extra precautions.”
I liked how Neil took the responsibility, sliding it away from Dash as naturally as a cat tricks a dog.
Still, Dash’s face fell when he processed the fact that there was someone out there with evil intentions.
“There’s good news,” I said to Dash. “If anything happens to come up in your Q and A with the bloggers, you can dismiss the idea that anything’s wrong with your whiskey.”
“Do you think they’ll ask?” exclaimed Dash, aghast.
“Oh, no. Absolutely no chance.” And then I chickened out of further coaching because I didn’t want him to freak out. Neil raised his eyebrows at me, and I offered him a weak smile.
It turned out that Travis had arranged for the press to arrive twenty minutes before the doors opened, so we didn’t have to worry about serving the crowd during their chat. The journalists consisted of three bloggers and a reporter from one of the foodie mags that did a lot of articles about cocktails, and Dash and Travis sat with them around a big table in the unoccupied restaurant downstairs while Neil and I loitered in the background.
The first question for Dash was, “I heard that you might have a problem with your whiskey. Can you tell us about that?”
To his credit, he smiled and answered in a partial truth. “One of our employees had a little too much to drink and we had to get him medical attention,” Dash said. “It happens. It’s Cocktailia.”
That got a laugh out of them, and they didn’t push for more. Travis looked like he was biting his tongue, but he kept mostly quiet except when one of the women—all but one were women—asked about whether being at the beach influenced their distillery’s identity, and then he launched into some nonsense about the sun and the attitude and how the best things happen where the land meets the sea and she really ought to come to Bohemia to take a tour sometime.
Neil declared the interview over at five minutes to showtime and invited the journalists to go upstairs and claim their seats and welcome cocktail. A couple of restaurant staffers stood at the front door to check tickets and usher the guests directly up the stairs, and Neil and I practically flew up there ahead of Dash and Travis to help the others get the Blinkers poured and garnished to welcome the horde.
I paused for a minute at the top of the stairs, watching the crowd come in, a foolish hope in my heart. I’d sent a note to my parents telling them about the dinner, offering to buy them admission. They hadn’t responded, but I thought maybe they’d get tickets anyway.
When it was clear they hadn’t, I headed back to the kitchen and the bartenders.
“Hey, who’s that?” Luke asked as we worked, looking through the window of the kitchen into the dining room, where the window was disguised as an antique mirror.
We all looked up to see a highly polished blonde in a little black dress enter the room with an entourage of two guys in dark suits.
“I can’t decide if those are goons or lawyers with her,” I said, “but they look protective, don’t they?” The suits hovered while she shook hands with Dash, who looked uncomfortable, and she allowed Travis to kiss her cheek after he and she exchanged a warm smile. The Travis charm at work.
“That’s Raquel Tocks, one of the prime sponsors of Cocktailia,” Neil said. “Big developer throughout the South. So let’s make her really good drinks, OK?”
We took the hint to get back to work and redoubled our efforts at mixing and garnishing. We lined up the welcome cocktail on trays for the servers to take out as I snuck glances at Ms. Tocks, who’d seated herself next to Travis. Maybe if I looked like that, was a bigwig in some company, my parents would’ve come to dinner.
Then again, I was used to disappointment when it came to my parents. Running a bar and going on adventures with the Bohemia Bartenders was enough for me. I was pretty sure I knew what made me happy.
My eyes drifted to Neil. He perched the grapefruit-peel spirals on the bowl of each coupe, those classic champagne-style glasses that mixologists loved. They gleamed with the reddish-brown Blinker cocktails. As if he felt my gaze, he glanced up at me and smiled before diving back into his task.
Whew. That’ll make a girl tipsy.
The dinner went surprisingly well. It was what came later that had me shaken, not stirred.
9
Dash and Travis welcomed the crowd with their origin story and introduced Neil and the Bohemia Bartenders, and then the real fun began—mix, pour, stir, pour, shake, pour, garnish everything—in a different type of glass for each drink—so three hundred glasses passed through our hands. The meal was over by eleven, and the room was happy, so we were, too. Truth was, even if our last couple of drinks had sucked, which of course they didn’t, half the crowd wouldn’t have known it because they were as obliviated as a muggle by the dessert course. This wasn’t like a wine dinner. Those were for amateurs. Distiller Dinners were not for the faint of liver.
A string of cabs lined up outside La Bonne Vie afterward to haul off the hammered. Some of the tipsy guests chose to ensconce themselves in the restaurant’s adjacent bar and pile on, but the mostly sober Bohemia Bartenders were ready to rock. We cleaned up what we had to, leaving some of it to Cocktailia volunteers, and Millie and Bennett reappeared to escort the leftover whiskey back to the secure room at the hotel.
“We’re going out, and I’m buying!” Travis announced to us as we gathered outside the restaurant. His cheeks were a bit flushed, as he and Dash, unlike us, had partaken of the dinner. We bartenders had only engaged in strategic taste tests.
“Hell, no, cuz. I’m going to crash,” Dash said.
“Nonsense. You are coming out. We’re celebrating. And we’re treating these fabulous bartenders for making us look even better! You don’t want to seem ungrateful, do you?”
Travis’s remark seemed a little manipulative, but I was like everyone else, in a party mood. “You should come,” I said to Dash.
“What about tomorrow’s workshop?” Melody asked, shooting a sidelong glance at Neil.
He quirked his
mouth. “It’s not until two. Surely you can recover by noon.”
“Yes!” Luke and Barclay shouted simultaneously.
“I heard there’s a great bar nearby,” Travis said. “Can’t quite remember the name. They serve little drinks or something. Do you know the one I mean, Pepper?”
“Snaiquiri! That’s a great place,” I said. “We can walk there.”
“Ooo, I’ve heard of it,” Melody said as we started walking. “Do you know how exciting it is to be in a place where I don’t have to make pink frozen drinks all day?”
“You can always get a job on Bourbon Street if you miss the sugar bombs of Bohemia Beach,” Barclay said.
“Shut up,” Melody told him. “I won’t be working in that hotel bar forever. Right, Neil?”
“You know your way around a cocktail. That’s why I asked you to join us,” Neil replied. “Have you talked to the managers there about starting a real bar program?”
“They’re letting me do one special cocktail a night. It’s driving me crazy. But when the tourists order a daiquiri, I always ask if they want a real daiquiri or the stuff in the machine. Maybe one in ten asks for the real thing, and then at least I get to make a Hemingway daiquiri.”
“Now you’re talking,” Barclay said.
“Rum,” Luke pointed out.
“Well, you’re going to get a mini daiquiri with the first drink you order in here,” I said as we reached the bar.
In other words, a snaiquiri. The seven of us settled around the elbow at the end of the bar so we could all sort of see one another, with the help of the mirrors tilted above and behind the rows of bottles in the back. I ended up near the end, with Dash on one side of me and Neil on the other. Travis and the others were seated on the straightaway, ordering from another bartender.
It was hard to hear much of the extended conversation because of the noise: lounge music with a slinky beat and tipsy chatter from the fair-size crowd, many of whom sat at tables or in comfy clusters of chairs and couches. The décor was a funky mix of old and new—brick walls and LED lighting, wood-beam ceilings and bright orange folding screens.
The most important element, of course, was the cocktails. Infusions with fruit and spices were steeping in elaborate jars against the back wall, promising great craft flavors. And everything was super-fresh.
I ordered a Last Word. It seemed like chartreuse was showing up in everything these days, but this was a classic that also had gin, maraschino liqueur and lime juice that the bartender squeezed right in front of me. He had a devilish charm, with rumpled black hair and dark eyes, a hint of scruff and intricate tattoos wrapping around his arms and up the sleeves of his black shirt. He smiled at my rapt attention as he worked on three drinks at once, all different, then shook and strained my pale yellow-green elixir into a pretty little coupe glass and pushed it toward me. I sighed as he set a shorter classic rum daiquiri next to it.
“Happy?” Neil asked, taking hold of his Ramos Gin Fizz in a tall Collins glass.
“There’s nothing better than having a handsome man serve you a handsome cocktail,” I said dreamily, kind of wrapped up in the moment, and then I lifted my eyes to see both Neil and the bartender looking at me with huge grins on their faces. “Oh, crap. Did I say that out loud?”
“Works for me, pretty lady,” the bartender said with a wink. “Let me know how you like it. There’s more where that came from.” And then he went back to work on his next round.
“Was that a come-on?” I whispered to Neil when the bartender was out of earshot.
“Definitely,” said Dash, happily sipping his Sazerac.
“Don’t think too much about it,” Neil said. “Drink up. You know what they say. Drink it quickly, while it’s still laughing at you.”
I held up my snaiquiri first. “To Bohemia Whiskey and Bohemia Bartenders.”
Dash and Neil clinked their short glasses against mine. It took me two delicious sips and them just one to make the tiny daiquiris disappear. Then I tasted my heavenly gin cocktail and basked in the beauty of it all.
Twenty minutes later, Travis checked his phone and exclaimed over the time. “I know you were the tired one,” he called to his cousin, “but I’m beat, and I have to make some phone calls home tomorrow.”
“Always working,” said Dash, who’d now relaxed into his Sazerac and had asked the bartender for a Vieux Carré. He was definitely into his whiskeys. “Stay for another. Plus, you’re buying.”
“Can you get it, Dash? I’m good for it. And I may or may not have promised to meet a girl at the French 75.”
“Ah, I love that place,” Neil said.
“We’ll get there,” I answered. “It’s OK, Travis. Have fun, and we’ll see you tomorrow at the awards ceremony.”
“Best craft distillery!” Dash said.
“Don’t count your bourbons before they’re batched,” Travis said. “It’s bad luck.”
“And someone is up for a Best New Cocktail Book award.” I elbowed Neil.
He looked a little embarrassed, but he elbowed me back, leaning into me for an extra second of electric warmth that shot to all my extremities. Or maybe it was the cocktail.
“We’ll catch up,” Travis said, waving.
We had another round, then two, and everyone was feeling pretty happy by the time Neil’s frenemy Alastair waltzed in. He carried the kind of cardboard tray that normally held four coffees. Only this one had four rocks glasses in it, each covered in plastic wrap.
He was dressed in a gray tweed pants-and-vest combination with a burgundy collared shirt, and his blond hair was curling out from under his hat like a fountain of silk. He looked like the frontman for a Brit-pop boy band who’d forgotten he was ten years too old for the part. He scanned our crowd.
“Where’s your other merry man?” Alastair asked in his crisp accent as he approached the bar. “Too bad. One of these was for him.”
“One of what?” Neil sounded more curious than annoyed.
“Sent from La Bonne Vie as kudos for your dinner tonight. Which I’m sure wasn’t as good as Frilly Fairy’s, but I had to take their word for it.”
He handed a glass to Dash, Neil and our devilish mixologist behind the bar. “And since the other ingrate isn’t here, I’ll have to drink his myself.” Alastair pulled off the plastic wrap, which had “Congrats Travis!” written on it in black marker.
The Snaiquiri bartender’s wrapper said “Boomerang me” on top, confirming this was what I thought it was. Boomerangs had only recently crept into NOLA from New York, so they were probably still a long way from Bohemia.
The writing on Neil’s wrapper said, “Well done. You belong in NOLA!” And Dash was holding his so closely, I couldn’t see it. But he had a ghastly, ghostly look.
“Dash?” I touched his arm. “You OK?”
“What?” His voice shook, and he set the glass on the bar. Neil was up in an instant and coming to stand between us. We leaned over to read the tiny hand lettering:
Katrina memorial at midnight
if you want to know the truth
We turned to look at Alastair, who was halfway through his drink. “A reasonably competent Old-Fashioned. What? Did I belch?”
“Did you write this?” Neil asked.
“Write what? I got these straight from Nicki at La Bonne Vie. Mark and I were grabbing a drink, and she asked me to bring them over. I think she wanted Mark to herself, if you know what I mean. He was all over her. Randy bastard.”
“And you didn’t write on them?” Neil pressed. “Didn’t read them?”
“Oh, you know I can’t read after attending Oxford.” He laughed in a giddy, high-pitched giggle that had me shaking my head to dislodge the sound from my ears. “Look, she handed them to me with specific instructions on who was to get what. That’s it.”
“I’ll call over there,” I said quietly to Neil. I slipped off the barstool and stepped out into the street, where small groups of partiers were moving up and down the sidewalk under the st
reetlights, floating from bar to bar. I called La Bonne Vie, asked for Nicki and was told she’d left for the night.
When I got back inside, Neil was trying to convince Dash not to drink the cocktail.
“Nonsense,” Alastair said. “It’s perfectly fine.”
“I concur,” said our devilish mixologist, who took the last sip of his and licked his lips. “Nicki sends these all the time. I’ll be sending one back.”
“I don’t think you need to bother,” I said. “She’s not there.”
“I’ll catch her tomorrow, then,” he said with a smile and moved down the bar to fill another order.
Neil frowned, uncovered his cocktail and took a sip. “It tastes fine, but I don’t want to drink anything else if I’m going with you to the memorial.”
“What memorial?” Alastair asked.
“You really didn’t read these?” Neil asked.
“I told you, no, except to identify who got what. That one was a dreadful scribble anyway. And it was dark. Besides, I don’t care what it says. You lot are no fun at all.” And he huffed and moved down the bar, waving down our mixologist as he went.
Luke, Melody and Barclay were now on their feet and moved closer. “What’s going on?” Melody asked.
“There’s a message on the boomerang,” I explained, and they read it, too.
Dash was still and pale, but he finally spoke up. “I have to go. And I’m going alone.”
Neil shook his head. “I’m going.”
“I’m going, too.” It probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever said, but there was no way I was going to miss this.
“We can all go,” Luke said.
Neil shook his head. “The whole troupe might scare off this person. If they have information, we need to talk to them.”
“But you might need muscle,” Luke said, and Melody and Barclay burst out laughing at their slender friend.
“Actually, if I remember right,” I said, “the memorial is in a cemetery. I need to look up which one.”
Risky Whiskey Page 6
